1/ Not if you live in Cuba or China; 'Herzogovina'. . .et al. . .not to mention, the ME. . .
2/Not if Government is a representative Democracy
3/Coup d'etat can happen anywhere; but show me a Country that has a stable 'democratic form of Government that has suffered a violent overthrow or takeover. Finding stability is the first challenge of course; but, hey. . .all things 'good'; take time to grow.
Nothing can be 'perfect'. . but .the principle of democracy is that it recognizes the individual and his inherent right to be 'free' ; the individual supercedes the 'state'. . .and of course, a 'morality' is required for any form of Democracy to work. IOW. . .Character Matters - especially, for those who sit in positions of power.
That said. . .as Rummell points out; Countries that have Democratic forms of Government do not suffer genocides. . .they do not randomly kill, innocent citizens; they do not suffer famines. . .they do not imprison their citizens based on their politics or race; they do not make war on other 'Democracies'; they are safer (and happier) neighbors. . .
(Which is 'why', the principles that GW is trying to introduce are so critical to the goals for a greater 'peace' in this world; and why as well, the amoral 'totalitarian'; power-obsessed mind rejects them at every turn).
More from Rummell:
As a government's power is more unrestrained, as its power reaches into all the corners of culture and society, and as it is less democratic (less moral);then the more likely it is to kill its own citizens.
There is more than a correlation here. As totalitarian power increases, democide multiplies until it curves sharply upward when totalitarianism is near absolute. As a governing elite has the power to do whatever it wants, whether to satisfy its most personal desires, to pursue what it believes is right and true, it may do so whatever the cost in lives. In this case power is the necessary condition for mass murder. . . .
. . . other causes and conditions can be operated to bring about the immediate genocide, terrorism, massacres, or whatever killing an elite feels is warranted.
Finally, at the extreme of totalitarian power we have the greatest extreme of democide. Communist governments have almost without exception wielded the most absolute power and their greatest killing (such as during Stalin's reign or the height of Mao's power) has taken place when they have been in their own history most totalitarian.
As most communist governments underwent increasing liberalization and a loosening of centralized power in the 1960s through the 1980s, the pace of killing dropped off sharply. Communism has been the greatest social engineering experiment we have ever seen. It failed utterly and in doing so it killed over 100 000 000 men, women, and children, not to mention the near 30 000 000 of its subjects that died in its often aggressive wars and the rebellions it provoked.
But there is a larger lesson to be learned from this horrendous sacrifice to one ideology. That is that no one can be trusted with power. The more power the center has to impose the beliefs of an ideological or religious elite or impose the whims of a dictator, the more likely human lives are to be sacrificed.
This is but one reason, but perhaps the most important one, for fostering liberal democracy.
The more Countries who share democratic forms of Government; the safer our world will be. That is the best starting place for 'PEACE'. . .(no 'freedom'. . .no peace).
This is surely the underlying MO for GW efforts to bring an appreciation of 'freedom' to those who by their own cultural imprisonment; have given themselves to becoming the most dangerous people on the planet or just their victims.
R.J. Rummel is the author of several books on government murder of citizens, a listing of which can be found here. His web site, Freedom, Democide, War can be found at http://www2.hawaii.edu/~rummel
Professor Rummel will be 73 this fall and I doubt if anyone on FR had ever heard of him before the recent emergence of this democracy nonsense.
This obscure, Utopian, revisionist historian had the good fortune to have had an intellectually lightweight, Wilsonian internationalist emerge from, of all places, Texas.
It was Rummel's good luck that Bush Jr. was elected before he (Rummel) had met his maker without getting his 15 minutes of Warholian fame.
Unless Mr. Bush comes quickly to his senses. reviews conservative principles and turns away from his internationalist, corporate globalists and back toward the base that elected him then I fear he may become the Hoover of the 21st century.
These SC appointments offer him an opportunity ... what will he do with it?