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Message: <blockquote data-quote="haakon1" data-source="post: 4173318" data-attributes="member: 25619">Got ya.  Liechtenstein's actual form of government, having read up on it now, reminds me of England after the English Civil War, or America if the President were hereditary -- that is, it has a strong executive, but he's limited somewhat by a legislative branch, an independent judiciary, and a constitution.  Really neither fish nor fowl between absolute monarch and parliamentary democracy.I tend to be a moral absolutist, but I wouldn't call Liechtenstein evil.  That is, I think democracy is, to paraphrase Churchill, the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried.  But I don't think other forms of government are necessarily evil. For example, my wife is Singaporean.  I have almost complete respect for their form of government and for what Lee Kuan Yew achieved, going from Third World to First in a generation with no great social upheavals or mass inhumanity.  But some people say Singapore's not a real democracy, since they same party keeps winning almost all the seats and since their government has imposed some laws that feel draconian to outsiders (namely, the ban on chewing gum, and the one foreign kid who was caned for graffiti).  On balance, however, I think it's a well-meaning and Lawful Good -- with a capital LG! -- government that has vastly benefited its population.And normally you'd think a imperialist who started a colony was an "evil" guy, from a 21st century perspective, but Sir Stamford Raffles, who founded Singapore, was a singularly well-meaning and non-racist colonialist, still highly respected there as a founding father.  So go figure.Whereas South Africa had a democratically elected Lawful Evil government until it had a change of heart and ended apartheid in 1994.So, I see your point, but I respectfully don't think it's ALWAYS true that democracy = good, and undemocratic = evil.But while I truly love talking about all these things, I should probably shut up since it seems a very minor issue in the perpetual D&Der argument about the nature of good!</blockquote>

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