I was talking of Central not Eastern Europe. While Slovenia is indeed a former communist country, I focus far more on the states we have sought to model ourselves after (Germany, Scandinavia, ect.) that any deviations or imperfections we may have to them comparing ourselves by our standards. Also I suggest you check your assumptions, Slovenia is a developed country by nearly any ranking, and indeed one of the very much nicer parts of the planet to live in and according to international opinion and the estimates of various organizations one of the "more democratic" or "free" ones.

I mean sure they could be wrong, indeed I do suspect they are biased. But if they are wrong then basically democratic societies (naturally America is apriori the golden standard of democracy ) seem to systematically mislead its citizens to what a democratic society is or isn't. That's a bad isn't it? And isn't the NYT and your own educated opinion often leaning towards such models? Aren't there many many people who criticze the US for supposedly not measuring up to the Liberal Democracies of Europe? I don't think they mean Spain or Italy or Ukraine. I do think they mean places like Germany or Austria or Finland. And those are just the places I'm going to talk about!