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To ask the question is either to invite scoffing (how can any one issue be described in this way?) or to call forth a cacophony of replies. For starters: the North Korean confrontation, globalization, climate change, rising inequality, terrorism or the ongoing troubles in the Middle East.

But at the risk of being accused of cultural imperialism, Id argue that the challenge to liberal democracy is far and away the most consequential question facing the world. If liberal democracy does not survive and thrive, every other problem we face becomes much more difficult.

The very phrase liberal democracy is vexed. In the United States, liberal is associated with a New Dealish center-left. Elsewhere, particularly in Europe, it often implies minimal governmental interference with the workings of capitalism.

But liberal democracy is, in principle, a simple if also profound idea: a belief in governments created through free elections and universal suffrage; an independent judiciary; and guarantees of the freedoms of speech, assembly, religion and press. Some of my more libertarian-leaning friends and in our shared desire to defend liberal democracy, we are friends would define it as excluding various forms of regulation and redistribution.

Id agree with them that the right to private property is a characteristic of liberal societies but insist that there is also an important place for social insurance, government provision of various services (education and health care among them) and rules protecting workers, consumers and the environment. Indeed, the vast inequalities that capitalism can produce when unchecked typically undermine liberal democracy, and are doing so now.

For those who claim that liberal democracy is simply a Western idea, consider that India is the worlds largest democracy and that many nations in Africa, Latin America and other parts of Asia are working democracies or struggling for democratic rights.

Liberal democracy is essential for solving every other problem because it assumes that history is open and that free electorates can change their minds and their governments. Oppressed groups have a right to agitate and organize against injustices, and new ways of reforming society are given room to emerge.

But is there a crisis of liberal democracy? We could argue for days over whether the word crisis is appropriate, which is why I like the more modest title of Financial Times columnist Edward Luces compelling book published earlier this year, The Retreat of Western Liberalism. Crisis or not, liberal democracy is in trouble partly because, in the years after World War II, liberal democrats became complacent.

Luce affectingly describes the elation he felt when he and a group of fellow students raced to Berlin as the Wall was coming down: Borders were opening up. Global horizons beckoned. ... Though still alive, history was smiling.

But history is starting to scowl as once-solid democracies (Hungary, Poland and Turkey, along with many outside Europe) move in an autocratic direction. China, meanwhile, offers a path to development and growth that involves neither freedom nor democracy.

Even where liberal democracy has its strongest foundations, authoritarian brands of populism have gained ground by exploiting widespread discontent. Luce is especially powerful when taking to task those at the global economys commanding heights for failing to address the stagnation of middle- and working-class incomes. The worlds elites have helped to provoke what they feared: a populist uprising against the world economy.

In 2017, there has been something of a liberal democratic comeback in France, the Netherlands and, it would appear from the polls, Germany. Movements of the far right are (at least for now) receding. My Washington Post colleague Fred Hiatt recently pointed to the Trump boomerang effect as other nations learn from the mistake the United States made in November 2016.

And we should not petrify ourselves with too many comparisons between our time and the 1930s. On the eve of World War II, as the historian Ian Kershaw reminds us in To Hell and Back, his monumental history of Europe from 1914 to 1949, three-fifths of Europeans lived under authoritarian regimes a calculation that does not even include Stalins Soviet Union.

We are far from such a catastrophe, but Im grateful to Luce and others for warning us not to take liberal democracy for granted. When liberal democrats become arrogant and forget that governments have an obligation to create the circumstances for widespread well-being, autocrats will always be there offering security and prosperity in exchange for less freedom. Liberal democracy must be defended. It must also deliver the goods.

2017 Washington

Post Writers Group

Email: ejdionne@washpost.com Twitter: @EJDionne

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Standing up for liberal democracy - San Francisco Chronicle - San Francisco Chronicle

It is more than ten years since Al Gores documentary An Inconvenient Truth brought climate change to the masses. At its heart, it showed the former US vice-president giving a comprehensive global warming slide show warning of the dire consequences if we do nothing about the climate crisis.

The film grossed US$24m in the US and US$26m internationally. Not only was the film a financial success but it was also a critical success and won two Oscars. An Inconvenient Truth has been credited for raising international public awareness of climate change and re-energising the environmental movement. The documentary has been included in science curricula in schools around the world. It was also instrumental in Al Gore sharing the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

A decade on, Gore has made a follow-up entitled An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power. This film updates us on the major changes that have occurred over the past decade; including the accelerated retreat of the ice caps, extreme weather events and the historic signing of the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015.

The sequel is different to the first film it is much more biographical and focuses on how Gore became the great climate change communicator and what he has been doing with his charities to build awareness and train future climate change leaders around the world.

Had this film been released a year ago, its optimistic tone would not have seemed out of place. It is almost as if the filmmakers had assumed there would be a different election result. The film has been hastily edited to include Donald Trumps withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. The end of the film seems out of kilter with the optimistic tone of the rest of the film, which occasionally borders on triumphant.

I had the privilege of interviewing Al Gore and we mainly focused on politics and how to deal with bipartisanship both in the US and the UK, as we both believe that it will be in the political realm where the fight to solve climate change will be won or lost.

Mark Maslin: Its clear that the first film had a huge impact. So what is the motivation behind you doing a sequel?

Al Gore: When we reached the ten-year anniversary of the first movie it seemed like an appropriate time to present whats new in the previous decade and there have been two very big changes and a third that occurred during the filming of the movie.

The first is that unfortunately the climate-related extreme weather events have of course become far more common and more destructive. Mother nature is speaking up in a very persuasive way.

The second big change is that the solutions are here now. A decade ago you could see them on the horizon but you had to have the technology experts reassure you that theyre coming, that theyll be here well now theyre here. And for example electricity from wind and solar has fallen so quickly in price that in many regions its much cheaper than electricity from fossil fuels and soon will be almost everywhere.

Electric cars are becoming affordable. Batteries are now beginning to decline sharply in price which will be a real game-changer for the energy industry. LEDs and hundreds of new far more efficient technologies are helping to stabilise and soon reduce emissions.

I was struck in the middle of your film by a profound statement: To fix the climate crisis we need to fix democracy. And then the film moved on to another topic. How do you think we can fix our democracies now in the 21st century?

Well, big money has hacked our democracy even before Putin did. And it accompanied the transition from the printing press to television, when all of a sudden candidates especially in the US were made to feel they have to spend all their time begging rich people and special interests for money so they can buy more TV ads and their opponents.

And thats really given an enormous unhealthy and toxic degree of influence to lobbyists and special interests. Now just as television replaced the printing press, internet-based media are beginning to displace television and once again open up the doorways to the public forum for individuals who can use knowledge and the best available evidence.

If you believe in democracy as I do and if you believe in harvesting the wisdom of crowds, then the interaction of free people exchanging the best available evidence of whats more likely to be true than not will once again push us toward a government of by and for the people. One quick example. Last year the Bernie Sanders campaign regardless of what you might think about his agenda proved that it is now possible on the internet to run a very credible nationwide campaign without taking any money from lobbyists and special interests or billionaires. Instead, you can raise money in small amounts from individuals on the internet and then be accountable to them and not have to worry about being accountable to the big donors.

There was a poignant moment in the film when youre sitting in front of the Senate hearing and theres a Republican senator and hes just not hearing what youre saying. In a two-party system, how do you reach out to those Republicans and some of the Democrats that still dont to get climate change?

Well, part of it is related to the changes necessary in the financing of campaigns. A famous journalist in the US, over a century ago, Upton Sinclair wrote: it is difficult to get a man to understand something if his salary depends upon him not understanding it. And if you substitute campaign finance for salary, you get part of the answer.

But I know for a fact that there are many Republican members of the Senate and House who know that what theyve been advocating is wrong and would like to crawl back from the end of the limb theyve put themselves on. And as more and more people express the passionate view that weve got to solve the climate crisis that can give them the backbone to change their position, some of them already have.

Theres a new Noahs Ark caucus the Climate Solutions Caucus in the Congress a reference to the biblical deluge but also a reference to the fact that they only can join by twos one Democrat one Republican and more Republicans are now switching sides.

Youve done a great job at communicating climate change around the world but perhaps you being a very prominent, highly respected liberal Democrat has incensed some Republicans and actually hardened their view against climate change. Do you feel thats fair?

I dont think thats fair at all and in fact theres been a great deal of social science research that shows thats completely inaccurate. You may know Joe Romm a great climate blogger he has compiled all that research. For two and a half years after the first movie, bipartisanship increased significantly on this issue. The Republican nominee in 2008, John McCain, had a very responsible position on this issue.

But what happened was in the wake of the Great Recession the carbon polluters launched the Tea Party movement some of them joined on their own, but they actually provided the seed money and insisted that climate denial be a part of that political movement. The polluters have done exactly what the tobacco companies did years ago when they hired actors and dressed them up as doctors and put them on camera to say there are no health problems with cigarettes 100m people died as a result.

Well, now the carbon polluters have taken that same approach hiring the same PR firms spending more than a billion dollars to put out pseudo science and false information. Theyre not necessarily going to win the debate. They just want to give the appearance that there is a debate in order to paralyse the political process. But people are seeing through it now.

What struck me about the interview and also the film is that Gore is making two very clear points. First is that now all the solutions to climate change exist. There is a wonderful sequence in the movie where he meets Dale Ross, the mayor of Georgetown in Texas. The mayor describes Georgetown as the reddest city in the reddest county in Texas and hes a conservative Republican. But he sees moving toward renewable energy, as just making sense. As his job is to deliver the best value for money to his taxpaying citizens and wind and solar are the cheapest energy source.

The second is that Gore makes the profound statement that Western democracies are broken and in order to solve the climate crisis they need to fix democracy. In the interview, Gore suggested that big business has bought many politicians and this must be unpicked so that they are free to make informed unbiased decisions.

He sees social media as the great leveller as campaigns can be run on much smaller budgets reducing the power of party donors. He also suggests in the film that educating both politicians and the electorate on the damages of climate change will make a significant difference. But this is the same rhetoric we here from intellectuals all the time if the poor people were properly educated they would make the correct political decisions.

In the post-truth era this neatly sidesteps issues of growing inequality, poverty and a general feeling of disenfranchisement.

In this way, An Inconvenient Truth was the right movie at the right time and An Inconvenient Sequel is the wrong movie at the wrong time. At the end of the film, Gore makes an impassioned rally speech part Winston Churchill and part Martin Luther King which even the hardened sceptic couldnt help but admire. He finishes by declaring the tag line of the film: Its time to fight like your world depends on it.

Given the forces of big business and Trumpism aligned against climate action, we all need to be as passionate, optimistic and committed to a new safer cleaner future as Gore because he is right, the world does depend on us acting now.

Continued here:
Fixing democracy to combat climate change: Al Gore Q&A - The Conversation UK

For years, Myanmar's state-run media viciously denounced Aung San Suu Kyi. Yet last week, the country's de facto leader endorsed the very organizations that led the charge, declaring that anyone eager to understand the government should read the newspapers and listen to the news ... released by the government. Her statement echoed the commands of the military junta that ruled before her, but it was not altogether out of character. Myanmar's civilian government has increasingly cracked down on independent journalists and activists, dispelling hopes that the democratic transition would break the military's oppressive style of rule.

Since the National League for Democracy, the erstwhile figurehead of Myanmar's pro-democracy movement, took power in April 2016, a puzzling paradox has emerged. At least 80 people have been arrested under the archaic Telecommunications Law that restricts free speech online a leap from the seven cases filed under the military-backed government. The recent arrest of prominent journalist Swe Win on accusations of defaming a firebrand anti-Muslim monk adds to a growing fear that as the transition advances, media freedom is conversely being tightened.

Aung San Suu Kyi's government faces a daunting task in wresting ownership of the government from a military that retains considerable power. Yet, among those arrested are critics of the NLD itself. This raises serious questions about the country's democratic transition. Under military rule, the party campaigned relentlessly to limit the military's role in political life.

But now, factions of the party appear to be aligned with the army's zero-tolerance position on public dissent.

Nowhere is this more visible than in the party's crackdown on the free press. In late June, three local journalists were arrested and charged under the Unlawful Associations Act a law that was often used by the military to arbitrarily imprison dissidents and members of ethnic opposition groups for reporting on a drug-burning ceremony by a rebel army.

The NLD could have taken the military to task on this issue, highlighting the fact that similar ceremonies have been attended over the years by generals, U.N. officials and foreign diplomats and that dozens of interlocutors of various stripes have met with armed groups during recent cease-fire talks.

But it didn't.

Under pressure to explain the arrests, Aung San Suu Kyi deflected, arguing that it was a matter for the courts and not the government. Aung San Suu Kyi knows, however, that the court system remains beholden to the military and is unlikely to defend the free press.

Then, when the U.N. special rapporteur on Myanmar, Yanghee Lee, tried to visit the town where the journalists are being held, she was denied access.

The government justified the decision on the grounds that it disagreed with Lee's end-of-mission statement, which was critical of the country's human rights record.

It also denied visas to a U.N. fact-finding mission charged with looking into military abuses against ethnic minorities yet another indication of its intolerance of negative press.

The NLD's actions are particularly disappointing because its ranks are populated by hundreds of luminaries of the pro-democracy movement who spent years behind bars for doing exactly what this new crop of political prisoners is doing: calling out the shortcomings of authority in Myanmar and illuminating critical issues military abuse, corruption and so forth that affect the country's most vulnerable.

The NLD's inability (or unwillingness) to engage with criticism of its handling of the transition is fundamentally at odds with the promise of pluralistic change that gained the party such overwhelming support just more than a year ago.

Analysts have spoken of the trade-offs the government needs to make to persuade the military to open itself to reform.

There is some truth in that.

And, indeed, there are some in the NLD who oppose the party's stance on free speech and are seeking ways to revise the law.

Yet the refusal to condemn the jailing of its own critics reflects a deeper problem. Authoritarianism, if left to develop long enough, can produce a culture that envelops even those who outwardly resist it.

This paradox has left the country's political landscape as uncertain as ever. In Myanmar today, the uncertainty over what lines can and cannot be crossed is breeding a culture of fear that is entirely antithetical to the democratic compact. Without a revolution of the spirit, Aung San Suu Kyi once said, the forces which produced the iniquities of the old order would continue to be operative, posing a constant threat to the process of reform and regeneration.

Today, it seems, the momentum toward that goal is being compromised by the very same party that once championed that revolution.

Francis Wade is a journalist and author of Myanmar's Enemy Within: Bud-dhist Violence and The Making of a Muslim 'Other.' He wrote this for the Washington Post.

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Myanmar's democracy still tenuous - Fort Wayne Journal Gazette

Scenes From a Last Gasp of Democracy

As Venezuela creeps toward dictatorship, is an insurgency brewing?

By IOAN GRILLO and Jorge Benezra | Photographs by TIME

A protester carries rocks to a protest in La Castellana, Caracas, on May 1.

Before dawn broke in Venezuelas colonial city of Valencia on Aug. 6, a convoy of SUVs pulled up to a nearby army base and a gaggle of men in green fatigues stormed out, clutching rifles. After a bloody exchange of gunfire, a number of men escaped with grenade launchers and 93 Kalashnikovs. While military helicopters searched in vain for the assailants, a video swept the Internet showing a former army captain claiming credit for the raid to save the country from total destruction.

The assault marked a troubling escalation from protests that have convulsed the South American nation since April, as President Nicols Maduro creeps closer to outright dictatorship.

For months, a section of demonstrators have faced off against police and soldiers with rocks, Molotov cocktails and cardboard shields in clashes that have cost more than 120 lives. They have also dodged the bullets of paramilitary groups who claim loyalty to the socialist vision of Maduros predecessor and mentor, Hugo Chvez.

This latest stage of the crisis was sparked by the July 30 election of a so-called Constituent Assembly, with sweeping powers to rewrite the constitution. Opponents decried a fraudulent ballot, but many still seem committed to pursuing justice at the ballot box in governorship elections at the end of the yeara move some protesters see as a betrayal after so many have died on the street.

Protesters retreat from tear gas in Caracas on April 19.

Protesters face off against Venezuelas National Guard in eastern Caracas on April 26.

Left: A boy prepares Molotov cocktails in the Chacao area on July 31. Right: An injured youth holds a Molotov cocktail in eastern Caracas.

Now, after the attack on the army base, calls for insurrection are growing louder. Oscar Perez, the rogue police inspector who has been on the run since he reportedly piloted a helicopter that launched a grenade at the Supreme Court in June, hailed the uprising in a filmed interview from his hiding place. Hacked government websites urged citizens to unite with military units and police who declare rebellion. The streets of Caracas were relatively quiet following the assault, with residents queuing for hours to feed their families, but some did applaud the idea of an army uprising. The military is the only hope, said Luis Garmendia, a shopkeeper in the city center.

But there was also speculation that the raid was a ruse by the government to divert attention from its economic disaster. Despite sitting on the largest oil reserves on the planet, Maduro has steered the economy into hyperinflation that has left millions hungry and poor. He has long blamed mysterious right-wing subversives for the mess, and he did so again on Aug. 6 when he called the raid a terrorist attack by mercenaries financed in Colombia and the U.S., linking it to the long history of gringo intervention in the region.

With all this oil money, we dont have any food to eat.

A masked teacher attends an antigovernment protest in Caracas on July 31.

Juan Requesens, an opposition lawmaker and former student leader, rides toward the National Assembly building on Aug. 2.

Left: Empty seats in the chamber of the National Assembly on Aug. 2. Right: A bloodstained wall in the building.

The chaotic situation in Venezuela makes it tough to predict whether the threat of a coup is real or whether Maduro and his allies will be able to cling to power for years. But there is fear an armed struggle could lead to civil war. The scenarios of violence are something the government is pushing for by closing the channels for dialogue, Juan Requesens, an opposition lawmaker and former student leader, tells TIME. They are pushing toward confrontation, but it will be an unequal one. They have the arms. We dont.

That makes the armys loyalties a matter of intense speculation. Chvez, a paratrooper who launched his own failed coup in 1992, put officers into his government and gave others expropriated land to win their loyalty. He also installed a Cuban-style system to watch for any dissent in the ranks, says Pedro Pedrosa, a political consultant and former Venezuelan naval officer.

Yet under the surface, Pedrosa says, many soldiers are getting angrier, especially as they repress food riots in their own neighborhoods. Inside the military, there is much, much discontent, he says. In the end, it could explode. Benezra reported from Caracas

A woman watches protesters run from the National Guard in the Las Mercedes area on May 1.

If it wasnt for my mom I would be protesting again.

Left: Im tired of the protests and the barricades, said Juan Carlos Ramos, a D.J. and clothing designer, pictured here with his mother on Aug. 1. But if it is the price to pay to get rid of this government then Ill pay it. Raquel Velasquez, an opposition organizer, wishes for her family to be together again: Our table used to be full at holidays. Now were spread out all over the world. Right: Pedro Yammine, 22, shows his wounds on Aug. 2; a tank rolled over him in May.

When you kill a young boy, you kill the whole family.

Luisa Castillo Bracho sits in the bedroom of her brother, Miguel Castillo, who was fatally shot at a May protest, on Aug. 1.

Tear gas wafts into the trees during clashes in Altamira on April 19.

A woman stands on the curb during a protest in Altamira on April 19.

A silent march honoring the martyrs led to a clash with authorities in Caracas on April 22.

ioan grillo is a journalist and writer based in mexico. Follow him on Twitter @ioangrillo.

jorge benezra is a journalist based in venezuela. Follow him on Twitter @jorgebenezra.

Andrew Katz, who edited this photo essay, is Times Senior Multimedia Editor. Follow him on Twitter @katz.

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Scenes From a Last Gasp of Democracy - TIME

Photo Supporters of Rwandan president Paul Kagame attend the closing rally for his campaign in Kigali, two days before he was reelected to office on August 4. Credit Marco Longari/Agence France-Presse Getty Images

Paul Kagame has held the reins of power in Rwanda since 1994, when his forces ousted the Hutu-led government that oversaw the slaughter of 800,000 Tutsis and others.

Since that bloody beginning, Mr. Kagames notable success in turning Rwanda around has raised hopes among not only his supporters but Western governments that, beyond healing divisions at home, he could be a ray of hope in a continent long troubled by authoritarian rulers.

But his election to a third term last week with a ludicrous 99 percent of the vote, against two opponents, is further evidence that despite Mr. Kagames achievements, he has all the makings of yet another strongman going through the motions of democracy.

Rwandas political opposition is all but eliminated, its news media silenced. The United States State Department cited irregularities observed during voting on Aug. 4. Elections in Rwanda have become little more than rubber stamps for Mr. Kagames perpetual presidency. Mr. Kagame has done everything possible to make sure balloting will just be a formality, as he put it last month. And a 2015 constitutional amendment paves the way for Mr. Kagame to remain in office until 2034.

Unlike others in Africa who use similar tactics to stay in power, Mr. Kagame has delivered real progress economic growth, reductions in poverty and maternal mortality, progress in education and a business-friendly environment with low corruption and low crime.

Some of those gains may be exaggerated, however, and lower crime levels have come at a terrible price.

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Democracy Is Rwanda's Losing Candidate - The New York Times - New York Times