These are grim times for liberal democracy. Ukrainians ousted their pro-Russian president after months of demonstrations in February, only to see their country dismembered by Moscow’s first major military intervention in Eastern Europe since the Prague Spring in 1968. In July, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, emulating Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, cracked down on civil-society groups and publicly moved toward “illiberal” democracy in Hungary. And in Syria’s civil war, more than 191,000 people have now died in what began three and a half years ago as a peaceful, pro-democracy movement—the equivalent of a fully loaded 747 …read more
Source: The Atlantic
