Message #3208

[AndyHB]

so my idle question is this: how many examples can we think of? where liberal democracies have 'killed their citizens'

Bearing in mind the fact that you have put the 'killed their citizens' in inverted commas, I'd like to offer countries such as the UK, the USA, Europe - in fact most 'liberal democracies' - over the past 50 or 60 years as examples of places that have done this.  In the UK, Maggie Thatcher has been portrayed as a leader who did this, but I'd like to add political leaders such as Clement Attlee, Winston Churchill, Ted Heath, Harold Wilson, James Callaghan, John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Nick Clegg and David Cameron: in the USA, most of the last dozen Presidents would probably fit the bill, whilst in Europe, those who pushed for the euro and then fiddled the entry requirements to allow it to actually get off the ground are also culprits - even Germany and France wouldn't have satisfied the original stringent regulations, and I believe that, at one point, the only European economies that would have done were those of Britain and Denmark, both of whom have opted out!!

By concentrating on one section of society to the detriment of another, or by fiddling economic figures to make out that one's economy is stronger than it really is, or allowing one sector of the economy to develop at the cost of other sectors, political leaders have - in effect - 'killed their citizens'; be that their hopes and aspirations, their educational and/or health provision, or just their right to have their voice heard in the political arena.

come to think of it what actually is a liberal democracy?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_democracy might help answer this question.