Let's examine typical examples of authoritarianism: Stalin, Pol Pot, Pinochet, Franco, to name a few. Note these are people, not nations, yet they they instant

Let's examine typical examples of authoritarianism: Stalin, Pol Pot, Pinochet, Franco, to name a few. Note these are people, not nations, yet they they instantaneously identifiable with the USSR, Cambodia, Chile, and Spain. This is a key aspect of authoritarianism - the origin of laws and their enforcement are from a person or cabal, not from the people of that nation. Dictatorship is not synonymous with authoritarianism, but they have a large overlap. All of my examples are universally considered extremely immoral. However, there are also some countries that are mostly authoritarian, but are arguably not immoral (some middle eastern sultanates come to mind). There is an enormous body of though on the morality of laws. This starts in Greek time with Plato and The Republic, and has had contributions from Aquinas, Hobbes, and more recently MLK. A non-authoritarian state can easily pass immoral laws, too. Finally, the degree of enforcement of law is a concept which I consider separate from the system of government and the particular laws of the society. So my objection is that the post commingled three separate ideas: the origin of law within a society, the morality of law, and the rigor of law enforcement. I think the commingling was incorrect. I think some of this is so obvious that not recognizing it can be fairly characterized as stupid. Hope that I hope that clarifies things. To offer my opinion, the US is not close to being an authoritarian state. However, it has some immoral laws. That can be rectified via a democratic process. I think the enforcement of those laws in this case was actually fairly lax, because he clearly committed crimes and it would not have been difficult to have made a case for treason which would have been eligible for capital punishment, as another commenter noted.