President Wilson, is that you?
if they cared so much we woudn't have to go in and give it to them.
Tenneman Square really proves your point here. Those folks don't need any help. The communist Chinese government caved under the pressure and today all Chinese people are in charge of their own lives. I hear tell they can even have a second child now - as long as there first state-authorized child was killed in an earthquake.
how about the Berlin Wall?
Exactly. Its existence was a testament to the natural human yearning for freedom.
yes, if the people of the country really wanted to. We didn't go into East Germany to "introduce democracy"
there may not have been an actual invasion, but what did you think the cold war was all about?
it was an ideological conflict. The people in E. Germany did want a change from their Authoritarian government. They rose up and changed it. Do you think that if a majority of the people in china actually rose up against their government today, instead of a handful of students, that they would try to suppress them in the same manner?
and BOTH of those cases are examples of the natural human desire for individual liberty and democratic government. one just worked, while the other failed.
do you recall what the original discussion was about?
yep, but my examples of countries giving up democracy with a vote counter that.
that just doesn't track with history or reality. typically, what happens is that a country elects a leader that later manipulates the apparatus to create a thugocracy from what was a democracy.
not quite the same.
The ones I listed, especially the south American ones, openly ran as Marxists/fascists. The people knew what they were getting into.
fine. then the south americans are the exceptions that prove the rule.
I'm not sure that bizarre forms of government found in 2 or 3 chaotic little south american countries are anything but a footnote in the face of the ever expending democratization of the rest of the
PLANET, but if you want to hang onto your banana republics as incontrovertible proof that basic human nature craves to be oppressed by despots, then knock yourself out.
