Open your newspaper - any day of the week - and you will find a report from somewhere in the world of someone being imprisoned, tortured or executed because his opinions or religion are unacceptable to his government.
I'm optimistic because I'm pragmatic: Neither of the two sides, the military government nor the Islamic front, is capable of winning. If they continue to fight, they will both bleed to death.
With my government, we engaged in bringing our help to fights for national freedom. At that precise moment, several countries were still colonised or had barely overcome colonisation. This was the case in practically all of Africa. We supported them.
Nonetheless, we continue to be obsessed with finding or inventing a European nation which, as in the nation state, guarantees homogeneity and thus an appropriate form of democracy and centralized government.
'Hello my name is the Republican Party and I got a problem. I'm addicted to spending and big government.' I'd like one of them just to stand up and say that.
I've found that when you roll up your sleeves and join people in their daily work, they tend to open up quite a bit and let you know what they really think about the issues facing our country and what kind of job they think the government is doing.
When I came to Congress, I came to bring what I thought was a real-world business perspective to government because, in the business world, I spent over 20 years in the high-tech industry, but it certainly was not unique.
