Liberal democracy's top five leaders

C

Cypress

Well-known member
My list of the top five most historically important and influential leaders of western liberal democracy.

-Pericles of Athens
-Abraham Lincoln
-Winston Churchill
-Franklin Delano Roosevelt
-Charles de Gaulle


How Charles de Gaulle Rescued France
His life shows that right-wing politics needn’t bend toward absolutism.

De Gaulle was a grandiose reactionary, but he upheld French republicanism, and stiffened the spine of liberal democracy.

He is, perhaps above all, a significant figure owing to the fidelity of his republicanism: from a background that in most places and circumstances would have led, in crisis, toward some form of Bonapartism, he remained a faithful believer in the norms of democracy, in oscillating governments and principled resignation. He believed in “a certain idea of France,” to use his famous phrase, but it was a republican idea of France. He embodied a reactionary and regal style of politics, completely distinct in tone from the usual “progressive” kind, but no less committed to the institutions of democracy.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/08/20/how-charles-de-gaulle-rescued-france
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I had either forgotten, or never realized the scope and courage of military service Churchill provided to the British empire, serving in Afghanistan, the Sudan, and the Boer War.

The most compelling story is his capture by the Boers, and imprisonment in Pretoria. Escaping through sewer system, hoping a train, avoiding Boer rebels, and finally making it to the British consulate in Portuguese East Africa.

Holy smoke.

This kind of character, courage, and service contrasts in remarkable ways with Bone Spurs and his "personal Vietnam" of avoiding STDs.
 
evince said:
the march to dictatorship the republican party is on is an affront to democracy
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The thing I liked about the story about Charles de Gaulle is that it illustrated that a rightwing nationalist can still be a defender of liberal democracy and French republicanism. de Gaulle was the kind of guy who could easily have gone the direction of Bonapartism and Trumpism - but he chose not too.

It is a choice to be both rightwing and to be anti-democracy and pro-Oligarchy.
 
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