The world needs a strong and democratic Russia

That deal sort of fell through a few centuries ago. The priests have other interests now that include spreading bigotry and trying to get people to have as many children as possible. Why, I can’t imagine. Anyway, if a little skepticism were more wide spread in the world it would have been harder for Dictators like Hitler, Stalin and Mao to murder hundreds of millions of people in the last unhappy century. And it would be a lot harder for men like Bush to lead us down that same path again today, by helping to create and protect a new aristocracy. So my first suggestion is that people in all countries ought to become a little more skeptical and a little less trustful of what governments and the people who run them say about themselves and about each other. When nationalism and politics become sacred, they invariably lead to the same bad ends as religion: thirty years wars, reigns of terror, burnings at the stake, mass executions, and so on. It gets ugly.

	The world needs stronger Russia
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Skepticism and critical thinking will go along way to protecting our common future.

But what defense does the average person really have? What super human power keeps governments in check? What protection do we have against the rising of a new aristocracy? First and foremost, our best weapon is democracy. Behind all the rhetoric, the operational genius of democracy is that it issues to all citizens an equal number of “political dollars”. Each person gets one vote, which they can peacefully exchange, at election time, for the redistribution of real economic dollars. Used wisely, the power of the ballot box is a huge break on aristocracy. But democracy alone is not enough. History teaches that the world is safest when the natural tendency of governments toward self-aggrandizement is contained by a balance of power. That is to say, peace and freedom are best maintained when the power wielded by any one State is contained and offset by the power of other States. For example, if Saddam Hussein really did have operational weapons of mass destruction, it is very doubtful that the Bush Administration would have been so bold as to invade Iraq.

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