Quote of the day re: DEMOCRACY...from guess where?

[Gloria]

This story is up in the current World Media Watch. When I saw the quotation yesterday, I mulled it over and it was still on my mind today....so here it is, broken out so more people can see it.....I like it so much I'm going to try to work it into my sig line.

The quote is:

"The Orange Revolution proved the old saying that freedom is when the people can speak, but democracy is when the government listens."


4//The Moscow Times, Russia Wednesday, December 29, 2004. Page 7.

http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2004/12/29/007.html



OPINION: LESSONS IN ORANGE FOR UKRAINE AND THE EU

By Hryhoriy Nemyria

Hryhoriy Nemyria is director of the Center for European and International Studies at the Institute of International Relations at Taras Shevchenko National University in Kiev.



Viktor Yushchenko is the new president of a new Ukraine. This is the main outcome of the dramatic five weeks of revolution that changed the country. The Orange Revolution proved the old saying that freedom is when the people can speak, but democracy is when the government listens. The remarkable unwillingness and inability of outgoing President Leonid Kuchma and his regime to listen to the people and respect their will eventually contributed to peoples' outrage and brought them to the streets. In doing so, Ukrainians reinvented themselves as a nation and Ukrainian society rediscovered itself as a civil society. Thus, Homo sovieticus died peacefully in Ukraine.



(SNIP)

[fob]

1. That. Is. Awesome.

And pithy enough to fit on a bumpersticker so as to infilitrate amerika's 20 second attentionspan culture.

Freedom is when The People Speak
Democracy is when Government Listens

With credit going to the author - Hryhoriy Nemyria, who is director of the Center for European and International Studies at the Institute of International Relations at Taras Shevchenko National University in Kiev


There's some kind of lesson to be learned there somewhere that this clear-eyed look at democracy comes from a Russian.

[Gloria]

2. Thank you for reading this! You're the only one so far!!

What, the word "democracy" doesn't grab anyone anymore?????
Maybe I should post it in THE LOUNGE!!!

And I hadn't thought of it as a bumper sticker..but, you know, it actually works!!

[fob]

3. I hear ya, Gloria. Some days there are threads that I skip because

I just can't take one more example of bush*s assholery that particular day.

Just keep at it.

Peace.

[Gloria]

4. Thanks! We'll just have our own little party reflecting on this

on!

[fob]

5. OK. Hey I checked out your website and printed out the

Shakespearean Insult Kit. Now THAT would get some responses in the DU Lounge and if you happened to link to this thread by mistake, well who knows what could happen.

As for that churlish, earth-vexing miscreant some call president bush*...

[Gloria]

6. I'm a bit embarrassed by my website...I've let it go and didn't

even post the piece I had written for Buzzflash about Teresa before the election!
And my radio page is out of date...

I just got so busy...and then got a new computer and had to set that up....maybe in the New Year! It's a daunting task, though.....

[fob]

7. I knew it was out of date when the Military spending graph only listed

$343 billion/year for the US, but the SIK still rocks!

Although I hereby declare you change your errant, idle-headed mumble-news way of maintaining your website!

'Tis fun, say I!