Quote:
Originally Posted by blankall
Hamas is in no way a democratic government. Being elected does not make you democratic. In order to be democratic you have to respect basic free rights, such as freedom of religion, speech, assembly, etc...
Electing a dictatorship is merely mob rule, which could not be further from democractic rule.
Lebanon has it's own problems, which are related to a massive cultural clash and have nothing to do with the style of government in place.
Jordan has a constitutional monarchy. It ranks very high, relative to its peers, in terms of democratic indicators such as freedom of speech, religion, press, etc.. Although their democracy is flawed, as the king holds way too much power, the citizens of Jordan are relatively free. Jordan ranks 1st among all arab nations in terms of basic human rights and democratic reforms:
http://www.voanews.com/content/repor...57/160141.html
There was nothing democratic about the nazis. Once again winning an election does not make you democratic. The majority of the citizens choosing to estinguish democracy and target minorities is not democractic. Basically, having an election is a necessary part of a democracy, but does not in itself make you a democracy unless basic human rights are respected. |
Well in that case Israel isn't much of a democracy since they are one of the worst offenders of human rights in the world. Israeli news article:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7...261912,00.html
Also, they rank extremely poorly on the Human Rights Index
http://escolapau.uab.cat/img/program.../2011INDHi.pdf
Yes Lebanon has a massive cultural clash, but they can probably be pretty high in your definition of what a democracy is if they declared tomorrow that they are a "Democratic Christian State" and decided to "occupy" all Muslim areas. Scratch that, it wouldn't be occupation, Muslim areas would just be "Disputed Areas" as our friend Mr. Ayalon would say.