Back to sanity
Robo
It is a more than a little stupid to attempt to assess the worth of various philosophies and systems using examples like the one you have chosen considering the track record of all of them
Your Otto Wambier example is far outweighed by continuing atrocities carried out by Western 'Democracies' or their support of extremist regimes which range from Papa Doc through to selling equipment to the Saudis and propping up Assad – that period takes in support for the torturing Greek Colonels and Thatcher's confession that the policies of the mass murdering Pinochet regime was 'her idea of democracy'
Our Prime Minister attended the funeral of the Patriarch of the present Saudi regime at the same time as a journalist was being administered 1,000 lashes for speaking out of turn by that regime – hardly a thing for a Government leader to "pay his respects to".
"Different countries, different times" doesn't hack it as an excuse when things haven't basically changed over the decades.
We are now stuck in the middle of an oil war that is leading to the "mass murder of defenceless civilians" and our measured inaction on and support for monsters like Assad is filling body bags daily and has le to the rise of a formidable terrorist army.
We call our brand of state terrorism, defence of democracy, elsewhere (like Israel/Gaza) it his described as "defence"
Our economies have now taken in the selling of arms to some of the worst regimes on the planet, some of which have even made their way into the hands of Isis.
Atrocities and the slaughter of innocent civilians has now become a way of life and sanitised by our language – "friendly fire", "collateral damage", "extraordinary rendition – they've even managed to make it sound like an aqua –sport with "water-boarding".
All systems can be accused of excesses and atrocities in pursuit of their goals, some justified, some not – the Cold War produced a great deal of distorted information from both sides.
It is facile to simple put these things down to political and economic systems – maybe they are, but you can only know that by examining the raison d'etre of each system – that is not "throwing spaghetti" it's lifting the stones to see what's underneath
That's a reduced version of what I tried to post earlier – will try to filling the gaps alter
Jim Carroll