Or to a president of Venezuela whose intolerance of the business class causes jubilation in the streets, but emigration by those whose initiative is crucial for the welfare of the people. Less damaging, yet problematic, is the election as in Poland of a minority government that ruthlessly pursues its members personal interests and breaks all promises of cooperation made before the polls.

Now these are things about general culture, but I'm also very much interested in political culture and whether liberty and democracy is appreciated, or whether there's an authoritarian political culture in which the state is supposed to impose things on the citizens.

But nevertheless, the system has moved in a more liberal direction, moved in a more democratic direction.

Before, revolutions used to have ideological names.

Democracy encourages freedom.

I had such faith in our democratic system, our selfgovernment.

On the political level the response was the nationalist and fundamentalist revolt of the Maccabees.

He was arrested for taking part in a Burma's nation wide protest in 1988.

Democracy is one form of government.

Before this, though, one must leave behind the self imposed oppression of politics, ideology, religion, and nationalistic narrow mindedness.

And I think the getaway message from that would be that Islam, despite some of the skeptics in the West, has the potential in itself to create its own way to democracy, create its own way to liberalism, create its own way to freedom.

And that's why the Ottoman Empire in its last decades turned into a proto democracy, a constitutional monarchy, and freedom was a very important political value at the time.

What that will do is avoid the problem I was talking about earlier, where currently we have political parties presenting democracy as merely a political choice in those societies alongside other choices such as military rule and theocracy.

Please raise your hand high right now. OK.

And what's more, converted it to liberalism.

I'm definitely a libertarian.

One reviewer for a Roman Catholic newspaper called it totalitarian.

Hunger is humiliation. Hunger is hopelessness.

Today we have globalized the markets but we have not globalized our democratic institutions.

But to get to that stage, where democracy builds the fabric of society and the political choices within that fabric, but are certainly not theocratic and military dictatorship i.e. you're voting in a democracy, in an existing democracy, and that democracy is not merely one of the choices at the ballot box.

And democracy was the political innovation which protected this freedom, because we were liberated from fear so that our minds in fact, whether they be despots or dogmas, could be the protagonists.

Here's another really bad one.

90 percent of the funding came from Thailand.

Statically, China is a one party system, authoritarian there's no question about it.

In their own words to an open ended question we heard, Their political system is transparent and it's following democracy in its true sense.

The foundation of free nations is democracy.

He is a so called liberal.

And that regime that we got rid of was actually a dictatorship, an authoritarian regime, that for decades created a great sense of paralysis within the nation, within the people themselves.

Certain themes keep coming up justice, loyalty, violence, death, political and social issues, freedom.

We feed our political impotence by allowing ourselves to call democracy something that is the very negation of our rights.

The existential and social and political impact an artist has on his nation's development of cultural identity is very important.

Individual freedom is the soul of democracy.

Politics, man. Politics.

This is political!

Democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others that have been tried.

He loves talking about politics.

And we can lose this with the very noble idea to keep people accountable for showing the people that we're not going to tolerate politicians the opportunism in politics.

Communism was the political system in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, but that stopped in 1993.

Cause shit's fucked up and bullshit!

There are many reasons to celebrate the current democratic wave. Democracy is associated with less injustice and abuse, with basic civic and political freedoms, and with greater sensitivity by governments for the true priorities of its citizens.

Freedom is the very essence of our democracy.

A certain amount of certainty gives the sense of a non zero outcome.

But certainly, recently, we've had some real tangible things about where society's changing.

It can give credit to sound decision making, adding momentum to success.

Democracy is the government of the people, by the people, and for the people.