ABSTRACT

During the past several years, we have all witnessed events of great emotion in the context of the political upheavals in Eastern Germany and Europe, as the constraints of foreign and domestic repression were lifted. The emotional reactions to the achievement of freedom were particularly pronounced in those countries that had previously experienced liberal democratic freedoms, such as Czechoslovakia (until 1938) and.Eastern Germany (until 1933). Apart from the results of wars, such as the relatively brief, though brutal, German subjugation of most of Western Europe, these emotions were somewhat alien to our experience in modern liberal democratic states. Though not true for all their citizens, constraints on political and personal liberty in liberal democracies have been relatively tempered and infrequent. The absence of constraints tends to be taken for granted.