Quote:
Originally Posted by Peregrino
I've always believed that too; unfortunately, as I look around the world today I see a general decrease in individual freedom and an increase in totalitarianism. .
|
I think you are looking at this through a too-narrow prism. I would opine that, although worldwide freedoms rise and ebb, the world today is more free than ever. One just needs look at this from a long-history viewpoint.
Example, pan back to the cold war era, and look at the Warsaw Pact countries. Approximately 1/2 of Europe lived under a pretty brutal form of government. Today, most of those countries live in a, relatively speaking, improved state. Poland, the Czechs, Ukrainians, Romania, etc. I think that living in East Germany with the Stazi running around would have been less than cool.
Pan back a little more, to WWII days. The Germans had put much of Europe under the Nazi boot, Stalin killed millions of his own people, Japan lived under the rule of the Emperor.
I would argue that, prior to the rise of the United States (or the Enlightenment, depending on your point of view), the thought of people actually governing themselves was laughable around the world. Few are the examples of representative government throughout history.
This doesn't mean that people can avoid being vigilant to maintain their democracy. In fact, people in a democracy must work hard to maintain their freedoms, as opposed to folks being essentially cattle under any other form of government.
One advantage that we have today, in the context of protecting freedoms, is mass high speed media. In most places in the world, the world knows immediately when governments crack down on their people. This is a pretty good deal. When the Russian army stomps through Georgia, or another Muslim ruler jails or beheads a Christian, it becomes news pretty fast.