[Destro]

But democracy already existed. Men remembered and were probably members of Japanese political parties and movements before the Generals took power in Japan. The great depression almost cost the USA her democracy. Huey Long anyone? When Americans said we will hold free elections and that mionority views can be expressed Germans and Japanese knew exactly what that meant even though they spent a generation under totalitarian rule.

The USA did not teach any of that-it just reinserteted those already understood and accepted concepts into those nations.

Nice attempt to over up your ignorance.

Once again, democracy can not be imposed from outside. In all cases where democracy flourishes a pre-existing condition for its truimph existed (as in the case of Japan and Germany). The USA has never been able to impose a democracy on a nation that did not have the foundations for a democracy and the USA has never been able to create anywhere-anytime the foundations that would allow for a democracy to evolve. - Name me one nation where the foundations for democracy did not exist (never held elections on their own) that the USA has been able to transform it to a democracy via nation building or any such method? Dare ya. Double dare ya.

[prion]

Nice attempt to over up your ignorance.

Your arguments might be more compelling without this sort of sophomoric chest-thumping.

In all cases where democracy flourishes a pre-existing condition for its truimph existed

Well, I'll concede that - since pre-existing conditions for democracy are the human condition. I think, therefore I want a say in what happens to me.

To pretend that the Germans and Japanese had a firm tradition of democracy briefly interrupted by totalitarian otherness is...something else again. In the East, particularly, the idea of subordinating individual desires to the needs of a collective is the underlying ethos. Far more inimical to democracy than the historical traditions of the Middle East.