求拍！ISSUE 113, 153！！

smartratUID: 2102482

The true strength of a country is best demonstrated by the willingness of its government to tolerate challenges from its own citizens.

What's the standard for a country to be really strengthful? The author contends that the willingness of tolerating challenges from its own citizens makes the prior consideration. Of course, the ability and attitudes of tolerating extreme behaviors is a significant mark of maturity and steadiness of a certain country. However, the understanding of "challenges" should be limited and reasonable .

Admittedly, if a government is to be powerful and steady, it should withstand the question from its citizens. Even armed with the capability, this country should also be mature enough to institutionalize the procedure of accepting arguments. For example, the Congress should be a forum for open discussing and arguing. There the government and the president will know what is going on within the country and then relative response will be carried out to resolve the problem readily. The more open and willful the government's attitude towards questioning and disagreement, the more pressure for ameliorating the condition will be imposed on the governors and a more stabilized and prosperous country will appear probably.

However, not all challenges are born healthy to the whole country. For example, problems such as serious crime, drugs, international smuggling and shortage of resources are the problems every man and normal group will try the best to evade and improve. Those "challenges", which would be also aroused by its civilians, are never welcome. If the incumbents tend to incentive such occurrences to take place, so as to procure some certain economical interest for example, then the possibility of the survival of this government should be a problem. reasonable challenges are mostly positive issues like the development and improvement of its people's wellbeing, education, medication and the whole country's economy and steadiness, and any kind of inhumane crimes are to be greatly reduced, not willingly tolerated.

To an even further extent, the standard for a certain country to be truly powerful is an issue of intense complexity. Except the wellbeing of its citizens, the toleration to reasonable challenge as discussed above, issues like the influence on international affairs, and maturity of its legislation system, the constitutional qualities of its citizens are also supposed to be involved. However, we don't have a well defined and universal threshold which could be adapted to all the political authorities. Everyone's notion towards the issue evolves so as each government. It would be too hasty a judgment to label a country strong or not only according to a certain perspective.

To be willful to tolerate reasonable challenges from its citizens is not a closed discussion on whether the country is powerful and exuberant or not, nor it's a fixed standard to make a judgment. But it's true that if the incumbents want the government to survive, autocracy is always the last wise idea.

[ 本帖最后由 smartrat 于 2008-3-10 22:11 编辑 ]

smartratUID: 2102482

The speaker regarded the possibility of identifying a person's political beliefs in a short time reasonable--by simply observing his clothes, friends, the way he speak or things he eats. That's possible. It's often that someone's behavior indeed indicates his politics. But the basis on which this conclusion stands is to be questioned to some extent.

Every single person has his own clothing inclination, so is the same situation in aspects as relationship, verbal expressing and eating as well. Take the indication of culture as an analogy. The features of a certain culture are reflected by the people's appearances and group or individual behaviors. Chinese and Japanese will probably evince modesty while Americans will appear to be very pleased and honored facing flattery. Similarly, while talking about the coming election most commonsense and political-sensitive American will probably express some preference to Republican or the opposite. And that's definitely enough to tell this man's politics, at least the attitude towards this campaign.

However, it will be a great risk for us to totally admit the prevailingly adaptability of this viewpoint. People differ from others, not only because of their appearance and ways of behavior, but also for their discrimination in character. If someone is innately more preserved than the most, or not so demonstrative that you don't even know what he's thinking temporarily, any presupposition obtained by some short-time observation about his political belief will be too presumptuous to be trusted. And the content of the author about identifying a person's politics within a very short time would be impossible to be implemented.

Still, the revealing of a person's politics is anything but a single reflection on his behaviors. For instance, the clothes. What kind of clothes a man is going to wear would reflect the circumstance he is involved mostly. An office secretary will always wear his or her decent suit while working, and farmers, jeans or jacket; it could be any kind of clothes. It's obviously an absurd issue to assert that someone you came across is a definite totalitarian only by his appearance.

To sum up, although sometimes, we can say someone's behaviors are the best justification of his thought, most of these judgment are limited and not so trustworthy, especially such conclusion are based on only a short-time observing, let alone that will be a reliable indication of his political belief. The most effective way to know and understand someone starts with getting involved into his life.