The Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, for example, did not treat every atrocity as identical-he had nothing to say about American atrocities. When he was asked about them, he said, "I don't know anything about them, I don't care about them, what I talk about are Soviet atrocities." And that was right-because those were the ones that he was responsible for, and that he might have been able to in­fluence. It's a very simple ethical point: you are responsible for the predictable consequences of your actions, you're not responsible for the predictable consequences of somebody else's actions.

He could have joined the Soviet protests against American Jim Crow laws like a good little model Soviet citizen, shaming that other empire but instead he bravely stood up to his own.