The problem with the West is that they start with political reform going towards democracy. If you want to go towards democracy, the first thing is to involve the people in decision making, not to make it.
When it comes to immigration reform, now is the time ... I've never seen a better political environment ... I'm not doing immigration reform to solve the Republican Party's political problem. I'm trying to save our nation from, I think, a shortage of labor and a catastrophic broken system.
There can be no political reform and democracy in any Arab country without accepting that political Islam is a part of it.
Mere political reform will not cure the manifold evils which now afflict society. There requires a social reform, a domestic reform, an individual reform.
The thing to understand is that if you are going to reform society you don't start with cops. And if you are going to reform intellect you don't start with psychiatrists. If you don't like our present social system or intellectual system the best thing you can do with either cops or psychiatrists is stay out of their way. You leave them 'till last.
I happen to think that as the Ukraine moves to the West, towards the E.U., eventually towards NATO, it will pave the way also for Russia moving towards the West. Because it will become a logical extension of the same process, and it will eliminate any imperial ambitions.
It would be a mistake to view Camacho as the beacon of democracy in Mexico. He has played by the PRI's rules for more than 15 years. As mayor of Mexico City, he was recognized as a political broker, not as an apostle of substantive political reform.
Families in Logan, West Virginia, were going through the same struggles as families in the Bronx, San Francisco, and Houston. This was not a West Virginia problem. This is an American problem, and it has to change.
Democracy doesn't recognize east or west and democracy is simply people's will. Therefore, I do not acknowledge that there are various models of democracy; there is just democracy itself.
Democracy doesn't recognize east or west; democracy is simply people's will. Therefore, I do not acknowledge that there are various models of democracy; there is just democracy itself.
Just work. Don't wait. Everybody's waiting until they have the perfect idea to start working. Even if you have an inkling of what you want to do, start moving towards it. And it's going to flesh itself out through the process of moving towards the goal. And by the time you get to where you're going to be, it's not going to look anything like it did when you sat on the couch thinking about it. And if you wait until it's perfect in your head before you get of the couch and start working on it, that's never going to happen.
We had in the West a very romantic vision of Russia back in 1991, when the Soviet Union died and whatever is Russia began to emerge. And we began to think of it as a democracy. We're going to bring it into the West. All is going to be wonderful. That was never in the cards.
Someone else is going to read for me or go at my place to the mosque, and/or to tell me you shouldn't take anything from the West because the West is the enemy and so on. It is to me to decide. I am intelligent enough to be critical towards the West and take what I need and reject what is bad for me.
We have to reform the entire political process. It's got to start with leadership by example.
Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege.
We know a way now to make use of democracy, and we know how to change the attitude of people towards government, but yet the majority of people are without vision. We who have prevision must lead them and guide them into the right way if we want to escape the confusions of Western democracy and not follow in the tracks of the West.