Hong Kong was promised democracy under the framework known as 'one country, two systems,' and China is ignoring this promise. The international community should be more attuned to this. It matters.
We think about democracy, and that's the word that Americans love to use, 'democracy,' and that's how we characterize our system. But if democracy just means going to vote, it's pretty meaningless. Russia has democracy in that sense. Most authoritarian regimes have democracy in that sense.
We see the tendency in the world to criticise democracy and sometimes even to say that authoritarian countries like China are more efficient. That is very short-sighted. China looks efficient only because it can sacrifice most people's rights. This is not something the west should be happy about.
As I reflect on the successes and failures of our push for democracy, reading widely in search for a path out of authoritarian rule, I'll keep writing to encourage myself and those on my side.
Authoritarianism, an unrealistic occidental imagination - these issues will never be settled. Turkey will continue to take Europe as a model; it will continue to pursue its search for democracy.
Authoritarianism is not pretending anymore to be a real alternative to democracy, but we can see many more authoritarian practices and styles basically being smuggled into democratic governments.
It has been well over half a century and I'm glad to say we have taken the right path from authoritarianism to democracy and this is a road of no return.
While the United States is closing doors, Canada is opening them. While U.S. President Donald Trump is slouching toward authoritarianism, Canada is safeguarding democracy.
Which, autocracy or democracy, is really better suited to modern China? If we base our judgment upon the intelligence and the ability of the Chinese people, we come to the conclusion that the sovereignty of the people would be far more suitable for us.
In nation after nation, democracy has taken the place of autocracy.
Sometimes, when democracy has to fight with autocracy, what can be done? We have to fight; somebody has to.
It was always presumptuous to expect Russia, an ancient nation-state and proud empire of distinct culture with a tradition of autocracy, to become an Anglo-American democracy overnight - just as it is naive to expect it in other parts of the world.
The deadliest foe of democracy is not autocracy but liberty frenzied.
In Europe, it appears that in the name of democracy, elites are pursuing an autocratic, centralized power, seeking economic control and social regimentation.
Our public life withers when only the most extreme voices get attention. Most of all, democracy breaks down when the average person feels their voice doesn't matter; that the system is rigged in favor of the rich or the powerful or some narrow interest.
When a government goes to war, particularly a democracy, it is the most solemn and awesome responsibility of our leaders - to decide to send our kids to go off and kill and die for us.
Where liberals see as an ever-more-splendid diversity of colors, creeds, ethnicities, ideologies, beliefs and lifestyles, the Right sees the disintegration of a country, a nation, a people, and its replacement with a Tower of Babel. Visions in conflict that democracy cannot reconcile.
Campaign ads are the backbone of American democracy if American democracy suffered a gigantic spinal injury.
China has to go along with world trends. That's democracy, liberty, individual freedom. China sooner or later has to go that way. It cannot go backward.
At Standing Rock, we experienced, first-hand, people coming together in their communities and trying to use the levers of representative democracy to try and say, 'We don't want this in our community; we don't want this in our backyard,' and corporations using their monetary influence to completely erode that process.