This entry was posted on Monday, July 13th, 2009 at 7:22 pm and is filed under General Discussion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
I am worried by Dominic Lawson’s statement in The Sunday Times (July 12th 2009):- ‘Democracies may lack outward “harmony”, but they are able to accommodate internal political disagreements — and changes of government — without bloodshed.’
Lawson, I hope, is speaking about developed Western societies where institutions are strong. In others societies where institutions are weaker and values different, the overarching question being asked every day is how to move from dictatorship to greater freedom — without bloodshed.
Most of us in the West have failed to answer this. It’s time we started.
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August 2nd, 2009 at 6:21 pm
Zimbabwe was the bread basket of Southern Africa at a time where vast swathes of land were “White” owned with what at the time seemed to be a stable democratic political edifice under Robert “can’t stand Mogan Tsvangirai” Mugabe. We have all seen the unfolded process of a nation in tatters.
Rewind to Grenada In 1979, where Eric Gairy’s corrupt elected government was ousted in a bloodless coup and the Marxist-Leninist People’s Revolutionary Government (PRG) came to power, headed by Prime Minister Maurice Bishop. Subsequent splits resulted in the firing squad death of Maurice Bishop and the invasion by US Special Forces under the pretext of liberating US medical students and crushing any possibility of another Communist-type government within the Caribbean Basin…
So I am not sure whether we ever really learn anything from history…
We know that the only thing in life that is constant is change – but the more things change, the more they seem to stay the same…