politics

The West is a series of institutions and values. The West is not a geographical place. Russia is European, but not Western. Japan is Western, but not European. “Western” means rule of law, democracy, private property, open markets, respect for the individual, diversity, pluralism of opinion, and all the other freedoms that we enjoy, which we sometimes take for granted. We sometimes forget where they came from. But that’s what the West is. And that West, which we expanded in the nineties, in my view properly, through the expansion of the European Union and NATO, is revived now, and it has stood up to Vladimir Putin in a way that neither he nor Xi Jinping expected.

How come it is easier for us to imagine the end of all life on earth than to imagine a modest change in our economic order?

As I have taught you, persuasion can be ranked like this:

1. Identity (best)
2. Analogy (okay)
3. Reason (useless)

…Zar onda

ne bi bilo lakše da vlada

smeni ovaj narod i

izabere drugi?

When I realized that people believe what the Internet says more than reality, I discovered that I had the power to make people believe almost anything.

Be the sand you wish to see in the gears.

An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.

Nothing changes without individuals and nothing lasts without institutions.

Tyranny is probably established out of no other regime than democracy.

Filipino president verbally attacks the Pope, jokes about raping missionaries, announces that “I don’t care about human rights”, catcalls female journalists, encourages citizens to shoot drug dealers, and called the US ambassador “a gay son of a whore”. But also, he is lauded for his work promoting women’s and LGBT rights in the Phillipines, and during his tenure as Mayor of Davao transformed it from “the murder capital of the Philippines” to “the world’s fourth safest place”.