People's Rights Quotes
His assumption about whether an army was “willing or able to train its guns on inoffensive people” was a little naïve. The Ottomans had massacred the Armenians, and soon the German troops would murder innocent civilians. As did the Japanese. The Russian Communists on many occasions massacred civilians engaging in passive resistance. In Cambodia, the Kmer Rouge Army killed almost 2 million, most of whom had educations which might have made them passive resisters. Islamic Fascist governments like Syria and Iran used heavy weapons to kill citizens in their own homes because they were in neighborhoods that housed many passive resisters. Extreme Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorists regularly killed innocent civilians in their homes, on the streets or in busses, just to intimidate others to surrender to their religious and political demands. He was right that democratic governments and armies would not engage in such killing of their own people, but there are unfortunately still many other governments.
Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier
England had negotiated and signed hundreds of treaties with the many maharajas and others in and regarding India. As India was establishing its own government under Great Britain, they kept running up against old treaties which limited their actions, especially for reform.
While this has been one of the great American principles of political philosophy, in reality we have on many occasions interfered when a people chose an enemy of the United States or made a choice of a government which would seize power and not allow any further free choices. However, from the time JFK made this statement to today, our foreign policy record has become much better on implementing this principle.
For Turgot, see below
