Also, RWE, Marcos was not the cause of the Philippines’ troubles, he was partly a symptom, partly a manipulative showman, and always a generous benefactor and patron. He was at the top of a system that predated him and still exists, to a large extent. I’ve been visiting those islands off and on since the early eighties and my first impression was that most people were loyal, first and foremost, to “family.”

Not family in the strict sense of blood, but in the intertwined network of personal loyalties and connections, somewhat akin to the old Roman patron/client relationship. One did not enter the Philippine military or police or bureaucracy from a sense of patriotism or desire to serve your nation, but to take care of these obligations to the extended family. A fine book on the topic is Stanley Karnow’s In Our Image, which while predominantly about the US-Philippine relationship, necessarily gives much attention to the manner in which Filipino society developed (in short, it was a result of the Spanish colonial administration superimposed over a village or tribal structure).

From our perspective it’s all to easy to view Marco as nothing but a repressive autocrat, which he of course was. However, he had a large segment of the population behind them, because he took care of them and thus they owed loyalty. In such a culture it would never be difficult to find any number of willing tools (even today you’ll find many Filipinos bitter about the “shabby manner” in which the US “pulled the rug” from under him). But lest we become complacent of our own respect for the rule of law, consider how many of our fellow citizens would willingly cooperate with a totalitarian state, for their own advantage, or simply for their own comfort or security.