Moral distinctions between democracy and dictatorship do not explain the separatist double standard

Evidence

If you are about to say, “Well, the two cases are not comparable. Canada is a democracy, whereas the Soviet Union was a dictatorship,” or “Ottawa never tried to starve the population of Quebec to death the way Stalin did Ukrainians,” or so on—I agree with you. But such differences, it turns out, have little to do with the double standard shown above. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 1529