Political Quotes

“Madam President, the Russian Federation has a Constitution, and if you read Russia's Constitution, you would know that Russia is a democracy. Why? Because their Constitution guarantees the existence of a vibrant, multiparty political system. The Russian Constitution prohibits the use of extrajudicial force or torture by the government. Their constitution says: ``Censorship of the media is prohibited.'' Russia is a democracy if you read their Constitution, but Russia isn't a democracy, of course. It is a dictatorship. One man rules. No one has the right to dissent. There is no freedom of the press. All of that is under the penalty of death. Now, why is this? Well, it is because democracies aren't made by their founding document. The document is just a piece of paper-- parchment, in our case--with words written on it, and these words are just that: They are words. Democracy doesn't work unless its leaders choose to follow the rules that those words prescribe, but also to operate in the spirit of the values that undergird those words. Vladimir Putin will proudly tell you that, technically, Russia adheres to its Constitution. Now, that is not true, obviously, but what Putin has done over the years is just slowly erode a democratic system by using every single inch of discretion allowed to him by that Constitution to make democracy functionally impossible.…”