If Greece had gone through a very normal political life I may have not been in politics. But just the fact that I lived through huge upheavals and very difficult struggles and polarization and the barbarism of dictatorships - that made me feel that we had to change this country.

History proves that all dictatorships all authoritarian forms of government are transient. Only democratic systems are not transient. Whatever the shortcomings mankind has not devised anything superior.

When the United States was founded the very idea of a nation premised on democratic principles of freedom and tolerance was viewed by the vast majority of the world as an experiment doomed to fail. Dictatorships monarchies and theocracies had for many centuries ruled the world.

True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.