Reply #30: Oh? What about Germany?

[LeftishBrit]

Under Hitler, that was as right-wing and oppressive and just about as evil an influence on the world as it's possible to be. Yet for many years it has been a decent, mainstream, reasonably progressive Europaean country, which often has socialist governments. Its current government is Europaean-style conservative, which still means way to the left of Bush. That is certainly a country which went to the right and came back.

Or, in case you argue that this is not a good example as the move to the left originally followed a military defeat - what about Spain? Spain was ruled by a right-wing, essentially fascist government until and through the war and beyond it - *until the 1970s*! That's a long time! Franco died in office in 1975. But since then, Spain has been a very democratic country, which often has socialist governments, as it does at the moment.

I think that any country can change for the better, and this is especially true of countries, such as Israel, that had been left-wing until fairly recently.