According to former Israeli legislator Natan Sharansky, the best way to tell a free society from a dictatorship is through what he calls the "Town Square" test.

"If you can go out into the square and say what you think without fear, then you are living in a free society," he said. Sharansky said it is important that these "free societies" are championed over "fear societies."

Sharansky spoke in Langford Hall on Wednesday night as part of this year's IMPACT Symposium on the theme of "Diplomacy in the New Millennium." Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright spoke Tuesday night.

The former legislator outlined his view of the importance of diplomacy as a means for spreading freedom and democratic government in a world increasingly overrun with dictatorships. Sharansky, who was imprisoned as a political dissident in the Soviet Union before immigrating to Israel in 1986, has always stressed the importance of human rights in all discussions of diplomacy.

"You must connect all your support with human rights," he said. "I can assure you that in every country in the Middle East that is not free, there are dissidents."

Sharansky said it is the free world's responsibility to make clear to these dissidents that they are its allies. It is only then, he argued, that the dissidents will be able to crumble the very structure of their dictatorships.

"This is how the Soviet Union fell without a shot," Sharansky said. "In different cultures, and different mentalities, there are dissidents living a life of double-think, and they are suffering for it."

He listed Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, North Korea and Cuba as places in which freedom of political expression is right now being repressed.

"To choose between life in constant fear for expressing their views and without it, they will choose to live without it," Sharansky said.

Sharansky likened the freedom that came with dissenting from a dictatorship to the relief "that comes after a hike." He illustrated the power of dissident thought through an anecdote from his days as a political prisoner in the Soviet Union.

"I told the interrogators nasty jokes about the communist regime. They were almost exploding with laughter, but they could not laugh, because that would be the end of their careers," Sharansky said, his face pulled into a wry smile. "I said to them, you want to say that I am a prisoner and you are free? You cannot even laugh when you want to laugh."