And now for a word from Phillip Bennett

I just wanted to make note of this interview with the Washington Post Managing Editor.

Democracy means many things. How do you define democracy? As a Chinese journalist, you may have your own definition of democracy which corresponds to your history and your way of seeing the world. I may have another definition. Someone else may have their own definitions. Democracy means a lot of different things.

Let me give an example. Democracy in one sense means the majority decides, but it also means the rights of the minority are protected. As UK late Prime Minister Winston Churchill said, democracy is the least bad system that we have ever thught of. So democracy is never perfect. It always has problems. Our democracy here in the US has many contradictions, problems and challenges. So democracy is not a cure that could turn everything bad into good. It has its own advantages and its disadvantages.

So now of course, to Phillip anyways, the answer to everything is that everyone is democratic because they are able to vote. It doesn't matter that people in Iraq were forced to vote at gunpoint, they were a democratic nation! It didn't matter that Hitler wasn't elected by the masses, because Germany was democratic! So now we have people telling us that democracy is a subjective determination (which I am sure he thinks is the wrong decision) and then tells us that democracy cannot turn bad things into good. I bet he wouldn't have said this in 92 and 96