Why should the idea of Western liberal democracy automatically imply unregulated free-market capitalism?
Thru the auspices of the viewers who become - I think this is an import - in a democracy, become a working unit with law enforcement against the criminals.
A Hillary Clinton presidency would have represented an important step away from the country's lagging acceptance of women as powerful, full participants in our democracy.
Democracy, good governance and modernity cannot be imported or imposed from outside a country.
For Russia, there is not and there may not be another political option but democracy. However, Russian democracy is... not at all the realization of standards imposed on us from outside.
Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
Similarly, it is argued that the culture of Islam is incompatible with democracy. Basically, this conventional perspective of the Middle East thus contends that democracy in that region is neither possible nor even desirable.
But I think we need to remember that democracy everywhere is by its nature incomplete, a work in progress.
I am an Indian, and I know what India is. I know Indian culture. I know Indian constitution and democracy.
Public confidence in the integrity of the Government is indispensable to faith in democracy; and when we lose faith in the system, we have lost faith in everything we fight and spend for.
The Bill of Rights is a remarkable document because it weaves into the fabric of our democracy the idea that government has a responsibility to protect individual liberty.
Democracy without respect for individual rights sucks. It's just ganging up against the weird kid, and I'm always the weird kid.
Some of our best and biggest allies in this struggle and fight against radical Islamic terror are Muslims, the vast, vast, vast majority of whom are people who believe in pluralism, freedom, democracy, individual rights.
I loved teaching social studies. And I loved starting each year by teaching about John Locke and the social contract. That lesson helped me teach not just about our rules for the classroom, but how, in our democracy, we give up some individual rights to ensure we collectively have the right to live and prosper in a society.
In Jefferson's mind democracy was tantamount to extreme individualism.
I also know that there have been many times in our history when the proximity of an election has induced exactly the kind of leadership and consensus-building that produce progress in our democracy.
The atomic weapons race and the secrecy surrounding it crushed American democracy. It induced us to conduct government according to lies. It distorted justice. It undermined American morality.
President Obama has said that our aspirations should be realistic. We are not going to turn one of the poorest countries in the world, that was plunged into 30 years of war, into an advanced, industrialized, Western-style democracy. What we want to achieve is Afghanistan's capacity to secure and govern itself.
The reason societies with democratic governments are better places to live in than their alternatives isn't because of some goodness intrinsic to democracy, but because its hopeless inefficiency helps blunt the basic potential for evil.
The good news, to relieve all this gloom, is that a democracy is inherently self-correcting. Here, the people are sovereign. Inept political leaders can be replaced. Foolish policies can be changed. Disastrous mistakes can be reversed.
