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Rwandan president Paul Kagame greets supporters at the kickoff of his reelection campaign on July 14.

KIGALI, Rwanda

Next month one of the worlds most remarkable leaders, President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, will be overwhelmingly re-elected to a third seven-year term. Kagame runs an authoritarian state and does not tolerate serious opposition. That is not, however, the main reason he can count on such an overwhelming victory. He is being rewarded for turning his devastated country into a most unexpected success story.

Rwandans will re-elect Kagame because they want this progress to continue. They can also be sure that while he holds power, his strong hand will assure ethnic peace. That is no small matter in a country that still lives with the unfathomable trauma of fratricide that killed nearly a million people in 1994.

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Ten years ago I wrote a book about this trauma and Kagames role in ending it. This is my first visit back since then. It comes as Kagame faces what may be his greatest challenge, one that few strongmen have mastered: transition to a more open society. His success or failure will resonate far beyond the verdant hills of this poor and landlocked country.

Rwanda is following the path blazed by countries like South Korea and Taiwan: development first, then democracy. Under Kagames leadership, it will probably continue to grow and become more prosperous. A stable political system, though, would be something entirely new here. Kagames place in history will depend not only on what he achieves, but what happens after he is gone.

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From outside, the formula for political evolution seems obvious. Over the next seven years, Kagame could ease restrictions on free speech and allow political parties of every persuasion to grow and campaign openly. Then, in 2024, he would remain above the fray and accept whatever voters decide.

Decades after a genocide, the country is remarketing itself as the regions economic miracle.

This simple formula ignores Rwandas painful realities. Kagames restrictions on free speech mean that the countrys two traditional ethnic groups, Hutu and Tutsi, cannot preach hatred of each other. If democracy means an end to these restrictions, the result could be another explosion of murderous violence. This presents Kagame with an immensely complex set of choices. How can he arrange a peaceful transition to some new form of government without risking a disaster that would destroy everything he has built?

One certainty is that Kagame will not turn to advanced democracies for advice. He scorns the models that Western countries have sought to impose on African countries. Now he must find an alternative for Rwanda that allows debate, but also maintains social peace.

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It is a daunting conundrum. Kagames success in raising his people from ruin has impressed all of Africa, as reflected in the recent election of Rwanda to head the 55-nation African Union in 2018. Shaping a transition to the next phase in Rwandan history may prove even more difficult.

The ethnic conflict that led to genocide in 1994 has faded from view. Whether it still festers in peoples hearts is less clear. The governments mantra, which all must adopt, is that every citizen is only Rwandan, not Hutu or Tutsi. Even using those words is taboo. Government leaders insist that repressing discussion of ethnic differences is the best way to reduce tension over time. Western human rights groups disagree.

Traveling through Rwanda is a revelation. Kigali, the capital, is the cleanest and most orderly city in Africa though Human Rights Watch says this is largely the result of a deliberate practice by the Rwanda National Police of rounding up undesirable people and arbitrarily detaining them. Good roads cover the country. Most people are poor, but the state assures that none truly suffer. More than 90 percent have health insurance and when there is an emergency in a remote area, supplies of blood or medicine can be delivered by drone within an hour. Nearly all children attend school, though the quality of education is often low. Electricity and running water reach more people every year. Tourism, which barely existed before Kagame took office, is now the countrys leading money-earner. Caring for the environment is a national imperative, reflected not only in the protection of majestic mountain gorillas but in less obvious ways, like Kagames ban on the plastic bags that plague much of Africa.

Direct criticism of Kagame or his development project is strongly discouraged sometimes violently, according to outside critics. Nonetheless it seems clear that many Rwandans are genuinely grateful to Kagame. The most obvious reason is that he has kept them from killing each other. He has also given them a sense of hope and pride.

When I traveled to other countries, people used to ask to see the blood on my hands, one man told me. Now when you say Rwanda, they think of security, hygiene and development,

Headlines over articles about Kagame often fit an established narrative: Savior or Dictator? Visionary or Tyrant? This formula misses the point. Kagames success in raising Rwanda from devastation is beyond question. Next months election may herald the beginning of the end of his era. If he can find a formula for political transition that is as successful as his anti-poverty formula has been, Rwanda will be a permanent model for the world.

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Rwanda and the dangers of democracy - The Boston Globe - The Boston Globe

Dear Editor,

We thank the Ulster County Legislature for voting down the sanctuary county law.

The biggest problem with immigration is that we did not enforce the laws, resulting in people not knowing the rules, often disobeying the rules and then feeling entitled. They can also be manipulated and abused, which has happened in many cases.

The resiliency of a democratic form of government is based on its citizens and governmental agencies adhering to its laws. Without that philosophy, you no longer have a trued government of the people, by the people and for the people.

In order for a democracy and its people to thrive, we need a sense of who we are as a nation, including borders which define us and a strong cultural identity while embracing legal immigration. Without any of these components, you create a threshold for anarchy and the emergence of an oligarchic form of government in which we all lose. We become the pawns in the grab for power.

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Thanks to the proven leadership of our county legislators and their adherence to the rule of law, Ulster County residents can be assured that our elected officials continue to promote a true democracy.

Michael and Joan Paccione

Woodstock, N.Y

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LETTER: Defeat of Ulster County 'sanctuary' is victory for democracy - The Daily Freeman

The United States is not a humble country. Despite widespread voter suppression tactics and a criminal justice system that imprisons a higher percentage of black people than South Africa did during apartheid, Americans have a disconcerting tendency to insist that they live in the greatest democracy in the world.

Not only is this claim to be the worlds best highly disputable, but the United States wouldnt classify as a democracy at allfrom the perspective of the ancient Greeks who invented the term.

Josiah Ober, professor of political science and classics at Stanford University and the author of several books on early democracy, argues that the ancient Greek conception of democracy is widely misunderstood today.

We tend to mistranslate it as majority rule. For the ancient Greeks, the word didnt mean majority rule, or majority tyranny. Instead it really means people have the capacity to rule themselves, he says. Thats the core idea of democracy, the capacity for self-governance, not power of one part of the population over another part of the population.

Ancient Greeks believed in widespread self-governance, and would likely be disturbed by the ignorance, apathy, and lack of political service today. Ober believes that they would describe the US as a pseudo-democracy or straight-up oligarchy.

It is not enough that to have elections to select the officials that then govern the United States; ancient Greeks would still view these disparate levels of powerwith one small group of people ruling over the massesas a form of oligarchy. And Ober says they would be particularly unimpressed with the current president of the United States.

Ancient Greeks had a definite idea of the characteristics of a tyrant: A Greek tyrant was a megalomaniac, extremely greedy for material possessions, a sexual aggressor, he sought to block out all of his enemies from any role in politics, says Ober. I think they would look at our current president and say, How doesnt this fit the view we have of what a tyrant is?

The notion that a democracy could remain a democracy while headed by a tyrant simply doesnt hold up, according to Ober. If you have a tyrant, and you accept it and say, Oh, thats too bad, we have a tyrant, then you dont have a democracy.

There are further problems that prevent the US political system from meeting ancient Greek democratic ideals. Rather than the relentless contemporary focus on elections, under a true self-governing democracy, ordinary citizens would take turns holding the majority of public offices.

Moreover, Ober says any strong democratic nation must first establish shared interests, such as a mutual desire for a basic level of national security or welfare.

And strong civic educationexploring the values of the nation, and the responsibilities that go with being a citizenis necessary to a functioning democracy. I think these skills can be learned. Its not like magic, says Ober.

I think the Ancient Greeks would say the US is a failed democracy, he says. Theyd say the inability of the wealthy and relatively non-wealthy to come to some kind of a common judgment about things like healthcare and public education and so on is an example of a failure.

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The inventors of democracy would define the US as an oligarchy run by a tyrant - Quartz

Shaun King, columnist for the New York Daily News, knows how to fix American representative democracy. For King, a democracy that could elect Trump is no democracy at all, and he has five solutions, growing increasingly more ambitious: automatic voter registration, mail voting, making elections a national holiday, abolishing the Electoral College, and making the Senate more representative.

Now, I have no problem with moving federal elections to weekends or allowing mail voting, and it doesnt bother me very much when states institute automatic voter registration. As for abolishing the Electoral College and making the Senate more representative well, those are truly terrible ideas, but they have approximately no chance of happening anytime in the near future. The actual proposals in Kings article are a convenient mix of the inoffensive and the unrealizable, and therefore are not particularly concerning. But the underlying attitude behind the piece is concerning indeed, it reflects a very popular theory of democracy that is unworkable in practice and incoherent in theory, and that undermines confidence in our own quite excellent system.

Why, one may ask, does American representative democracy need fixing? To be sure, there is much room for debate as to the current state of American institutions: My particular hobby-horses here are the growing power of the presidency and the courts relative to Congress, and the parlous state of civic culture. But Kings concerns have little to do with such institutional concerns what worries King is that American governance doesnt represent the popular will. Our current system is such that the overwhelming majority of Americans despise Trumpcare, but politicians have the power to pass it anyway, laments King. Were not getting meaningful gun reforms and reasonable immigration reforms and its because our government no longer represents the popular will of the majority of Americans.

King is advocating here the popular theory that governance, properly construed, is a sort of constant referendum: that government consists of always advocating the policies that obtain majority support in the latest poll. Put aside the fact that even liberals dont consistently believe this, that Obamacare didnt have majority support when it was passed, that many wanted the courts to mandate gay marriage when most of America still opposed it, that some polls suggest most Americans support one way or another Trumps refugee-ban policy and consider the two main complaints: that some American institutions allow politicians or parties to win without winning a plurality of votes, and that Americans dont vote enough. Both are very frequent complaints generally on the left, but occasionally on the right as well. Both are unfounded.

The first complaint is very often a simple failure of civics. There are two sovereign bodies in the American political system: the states and the federal government. The Electoral College and the Senate the two allegedly undemocratic elements of the American political system fail to consistently reflect plurality popular opinion at the national scale because they are also structured to represent the states. Now, it is possible to make the case that it shouldnt be this way: that the states shouldnt be sovereign units and that the Constitution should be amended to reflect this. As a staunch federalist, I disagree quite strongly with this point of view, but it is an honest argument. But it is disingenuous to claim that these federalist structures are intrinsically undemocratic. Rather, they reflect a federalist view of democracy that balances democracy at the level of the state with democracy at the level of the broader nation. Martin Diamond put it best in his excellent essay The Electoral College and the American Idea of Democracy:

In fact, presidential elections are already just about as democratic as they can be. We already have one-man, one-vote but in the states. Elections are as freely and democratically contested as elections can be but in the states. Victory always goes democratically to the winner of the popular vote but in the states...Democracy thus is not the question regarding the Electoral College, federalism is: should our presidential elections remain in part federally democratic, or should we make them completely nationally democratic?

It is unfortunately representative of the current political debate that the word federalism never once crops up in Kings article.

The second complaint falls apart upon closer examination. The claim that American democracy requires automatic voter registration, mail voting, and a federal holiday for elections is in effect a claim that democracy entails the largest possible number of citizens voting. In the same vein are the occasional proposals that America adopt Australias system of mandatory voting. There is debate over whether voter-ID laws effectively prevent some Americans from voting National Review has weighed in on this debate but that isnt really whats at stake here. Whats at stake here is a matter of just getting as many people as possible to the polls: King, for instance, worries that finding where, when, and how to register to vote is cumbersome beyond belief.

Now, as a 21-year-old who has voted in three elections since turning 18, I would challenge the contention that its really that hard to fill out some forms and make your way to the correct polling place. But it probably is true that if we automatically registered everyone, or made Election Day a federal holiday, or allowed people to vote by e-mail, more people would vote. To which I wonder: So what? What good is done by dispensing ballots to every adult citizen who would not trouble himself with investing the effort to send an application to the registrars office, or to figure out the correct polling place, or to arrange his schedule so he has time on Election Day? How much harm is really done to democracy when those who by all accounts dont seem to prioritize their own voting very highly dont vote?

Liberals like to talk about the sanctity of votingthat it is a civic duty, an ethical responsibility that comes with citizenship. And actually, unlike, say, Kevin Williamson, I agree. But if you believe that voting is a sober obligation, why would you want to make it such a trivial act that it can be done without a moments thought or planning? If voting really is sacred, ought we really to make it frictionless for those who dont seem to take it very seriously at all? Really, its not voting that liberals hold sacred its votes. Liberals believe that an expanded electorate will vote Democratic and, in large part because of this belief, they have internalized a notion that democracy, properly construed, is something of a poll. The higher the response rate, the better the poll as if democracy were nothing more than sampling the attitudes of the broader public to see which candidate is most in line with a Rousseauian sort of general will.

This version of democracy does not make any sense, for the simple reason that there is no such thing as a static set of coherent public attitudes that can be dispassionately measured. Poll after poll has found that Americans are shockingly ignorant about politics a problem almost certainly compounded within the population that doesnt regularly vote. Public opinions are often far less robust than they may seem support for an issue often changes dramatically depending on how it is phrased in opinion polls. And many widely held political positions are incoherent: Americans often express support for the good parts of Obamacare such as the pre-existing-conditions provision and community rating but not the bad parts of the bill such as the individual mandate as if it were possible to have some without the rest. This all suggests that expanding the electorate would serve less as a transparent view of the policy preferences of America and more as a slightly improved measuring of tribal allegiances.

Fortunately, there is an alternative vision one that I, at least, find quite compelling. In this vision, there is nothing passive about voting: rather, voting is the crucial act whereby the American people affirm the consent of the governed by collectively choosing their leaders and representatives. The heart of democracy is not some abstract correspondence between governance and popular attitudes; it is the citizenry going to the polls and choosing its government. This is a serious task, and it should be taken seriously. It is a shame that many Americans are poorly informed, or lazy, or dont particularly care much for voting. But it is not a failure of democracy that we dont reach out to them with open arms. Democracy is not just a poll. Its something greater.

READ MORE: Why Are Democrats Afraid of the Election Integrity Commission? The Obama Administrations Ugly Legacy of Undermining Electoral Integrity Non-Citizen Voting Has Not Been Debunked

Max Bloom is an editorial intern at National Review and a student of mathematics and English literature at the University of Chicago.

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Democracy Is Not a Poll - National Review

During the presidential campaign, there were regular stories of protesters being attacked at Donald Trumps rallies.In oneparticularly disturbing example, aBlack Lives Matter protester was punched and kicked as he lay on the ground at a rally in Alabama in November 2015.In the video taken of the attack, Trump is heard yelling, Get him the hell out of here! Later when asked about the incident, Trump replied, Maybe he should have been roughed up. It was absolutely disgusting what he was doing.

The concept that fighting for black lives is disgusting is at the heart of a powerful documentary about the uprisings in Ferguson, MO that took place after unarmed Michael Brown was shot to death by a police officer on August 9, 2014.

Directed bySabaah Folayan and Damon Davis, Whose Streets? focuses on how the death of Michael Brown served to catalyze a community into action. Whose Streets? forces viewers to face the reality that when black protesters fight for their rights as citizens they are regularly seen as disgusting or as thugs, rather than as people legitimately protesting a system that denies their basic right to life.

The film is divided into five chapters that roughly follow the chronology of the events in Ferguson, when unarmed Brownwas shot multiple times by 28-year-old white police officer Darren Wilson and left lying in the street for more than four hours. But the real art of the film is not in the way it captures the unfolding of events; it is in the way that it offers viewers a unique form of storytelling that humanizes those in the Ferguson community and offers a model for future activists.

The opening sequence sets the stage for the whole film.The film begins in the interior of a car driving through the rain at night. We hear that the car is about to pass through an intersection that brings together three of the four poorest zip codes in the St. Louis area. The driver of the car mentions that these neighborhoods have the worst schools in the area and then remarks on the irony of a school system that asks parents to help their kids with homework when the parents themselves dont know how to do it. Another passenger then points out that the current school system is simply the legacy of slavery a strategy to deny black kids an equal future.

Remarking on the horrible living conditions in the community, we hear, I dont know what year it is, but it isnt 2014. Emphasizing the lack of historical progress for black citizens, the film then offers a quote from the 1857 Supreme Court ruling in the Dred Scott case that denied slaves basic human rights. The message is clear: We are not as far from Dred Scott as our nation would like to think.

If you arent up on the details of Browns death and the investigations that followed it, you will want to refresh your memory before seeing the film, because covering those details is not its primary goal. Rather, Whose Streets? is a film dedicated to revealing how a community rose up in the face of injustice and helped foster a social movement.

The film has a series of themes all of which revolve around the crisis our nation faces in its treatment of black citizens.Filled with footage shot by members of the community, the film emphasizes the fact that protesters in Ferguson were denied their basic democratic rights and treated like criminals when they sought to peacefully mourn a member of the community.

Ferguson was treated like a war zone almost from the moment that Brown was shot and the community was denied their right to witness the treatment of the body. As the film covers the events we see protesters armed only with signs, chanting hands up, dont shoot, while the police are dressed in riot gear, armed with machine guns.

Later the National Guard arrives in armored vehicles and begins shooting rubber bullets and using tear gas. One of the protesters remarks, We are trying to mourn and you show up in riot gear. Another states that he saw no difference between the West Bank and Ferguson. Yet another refers to the events as an unseen war.

One of the most powerful moments in the film takes place as we see some of the protesters crack from police pressures and attack a convenience store. While the leaders of the resistance dont advocate violence, they do find the response to the destruction of property telling. Once a store window was broken, the police and the media were outraged. And yet, nothing similar happened when Brown was shot dead on the street. The concern over store looting makes it clear that in Ferguson property has more rights than people.

Besides emphasizing how black citizens in Ferguson are systematically repressed, the films second key theme is that the media has played a central role in demonizing black lives. Every day, Americans experience a mediascape that humanizes whiteness, delving into the emotional lives of privileged white protagonists while portraying people of color as two-dimensional and mostly negative stereotypes, writeFolayan and Davis in their directors statement. Showing how college-boundBrown was portrayed in the media as a thug and a criminal,the film suggests that the institutionalized racism in the police force is equally matched by the racist practices of the mainstream news media.

Countering the desensitized coverage of Ferguson by the news media, Whose Streets? is deliberately a different type of story, one that humanizes the protesters through a creative use of collective storytelling.

The real art of the film takes place in the unconventional way that it builds connections between the viewer and the activists. While we are introduced to several activists in a traditional documentary format, the film makes a point of not allowing the viewer to become overly invested in stories of isolated individuals.

This technique is the one that is most likely to vex viewers and critics expecting a predictable narrative arc.One reviewer remarkedthat one of the films flaws was the inadequate focus on a handful of key individuals prominent in the struggle.

That reading, though, misses the aesthetic brilliance of the film.Whose Streets? refuses to tell the story of the political awakening of Ferguson through a focus on individuals. Even though the film clearly features a few prominent leaders in the struggle, it most clearly sees the whole community as the collective protagonist of the story.

Thus the art of the films storytelling is in the way that it humanizes a community often depicted like a demonized mass, while also offering examples of remarkable activists that can serve as role models.

Throughout the film the fact that the protesters are struggling for their rights as citizens is emphasized in their chants: We want answers, We are human, Hands up. Dont shoot, We have nothing to lose but our chains, This is not Iraq, you guys are the aggressors, We dont do this because we hate the police; we do this because we love each other. But it is the phrase, This is what democracy looks like, that really underscores the crisis covered in the film.

On the one hand, the phrase reminds the audience that protest is a central feature of democracy. On the other hand, the phrase emphasizes the fact that our so-called democracy acts more like a repressive regime for many in the black community. The phrase encapsulates both crisis and hope and it sets the tone for the whole film.

In the last chapter of the film, the Justice Departmentreleases a reportthat confirms what the black citizens of Ferguson knew all along: The Ferguson Police Department was routinely violating the constitutional rights of its black residents. But while the report is a gratifying acknowledgment ofinstitutionalized racism, it is treated more as a starting point than as closure.

As the film ends one of the activists remarks that, if there is going to be any change, its going to be with our children. Thus the last core theme of the film is in the way that it shows children participating in protests, leading chants and reflecting on the movement.Circling back to the opening lines of the film that pointed out the poor state of Ferguson schools, we hear that the community is overincarerated and undereducated.Closing shots show community members working with kids to raise the next generation of activists.

At a time when protesters struggling against systemic racism are regularly mocked or demonized, Whose Streets? insists that the refusal to take seriously these protests is a sign of the failures of our democratic system. Gentle and fierce, Whose Streets? is an uncompromising look at how this new generation of activists are todays freedom fighters.

Whose Streets?opens in theatersonAugust 11.

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This is what democracy looks like: Why Black Lives Matter is a struggle to save our democracy - Salon