Posted on 02/26/2005 11:16:52 AM PST by Ohioan
Moderator:
Welcome to our debate between the current President and the first President of the United States. The subject is, "Should The United States promote Democracy In Every Land?" George W. Bush speaks via his Second Inaugural Address, January 20, 2005. General George Washington speaks via his Farewell Address, September 17, 1796. Since Mr. Bush has proposed an increased involvement of the United States in the domestic affairs of other peoples, in variance to specific policies recommended by General Washington, he has the Affirmative, and will go first. Then General Washington will answer. After that President Bush will offer a summary, succeeded by General Washington's rebuttal.
You will note in the text, that President Bush's paragraphs have been numbered, General Washington's lettered. These designations are to facilitate the reader in following our comments and analysis of the quality of the two presentations, which will immediately follow the debate. Such designations did not appear in the original texts. Now, President George W. Bush.
(Excerpt) Read more at pages.prodigy.net ...
wow.
President Washington's words quoted in the debate, in my opinion, outline a foreign policy guideline that still works. Frankly, had we had George Washington's approach to the world in effect from 1992 on, I doubt if bin Laden could have recruited anyone to attack us. The rationalization would not have been possible. But, I will admit that that is pure speculation. But Clinton had the same Democracy mantra as Bush, for eight years.
William Flax
You appear to want to jettison that principle. Why, I can only guess. But if you jettison that principle, we are back to square one, in a hideously presumptive world. Indeed, your rationalization justifies every thing that has been deleterious in world affairs over the past three generations. You are not the only one who thinks that you have the inside track to a new order for the world. Both the Communists and Nazis tried to justify their assaults on other peoples as "liberation" movements.
What you propose is indeed international anarchy. But you are too focused on your own "virtue," to see it.
William Flax
As for Washington and Jefferson having a different foreign policy? Jefferson was Washington's First Secretary of State. They both favored avoiding foreign entanglements. They both favored a policy of independence through strength, and dealing fairly with all peoples.
The illusion of a difference grows out of Jefferson's early sympathy for the French Revolution--before he recoiled in horror over where it went. But sympathy for a foreign revolution is not the same thing as advocating that we stir up foreign revolutions. Washington was heartsick over what happened in France, to people who had helped him win our independence. But these emotional differences did not amount to a difference in long term policy.
I would love to see the Shah restored in Iran--I mean his family, I know he is dead--but for the United States, today, to announce that they mean to change the Iranian Government, is not the way for that to happen--not if such a new Government would have a chance to last; and not if we are to regain our reputation for honorable dealings with all peoples.
On the other hand, when Chile under the Marxist Democracy seized billions of dollars worth of American property, we were fully justified in supporting Pinochet. There we were "punishing the first insult," as Jefferson recommended.
There is nothing in the traditional policy that I have urged--in effect--by letting General Washington explain it--which restricts us from acting firmly in our interest. It is a policy for the ages, readily adaptable to every situation.
William Flax
Washington's views on the Constitution are included, briefly, in the debate. But as for "Democracy" (Federalist #10)? You must be kidding if you think that Washington was more in favor of "Democracy," than Madison. Nowhere did Washington suggest that the suffrage be extended--or that the provision of the Constitution, which left the extent of the suffrage up to each State, both for that State and for voting for Federal Offices in that State--be changed.
We did not have anything even approaching universal male suffrage in Washington's life. Even 25 years later, most White males did not have the suffrage. The big explosion came between 1824 and 1828, but not all States participated then, either.
Oh I dunno,......It wasn't a real debate?
And, you know, over 2,000 years after Rome lost her Republican form of Government, wise men still debate its ideas and merits, as very relevant indeed to the ongoing human experience.
As for you query, I am not sure which you want the evidence for, the higher IQs of the lands where popular forms of Government seem to work? Or the lower IQs in much of the third world? Or the relationship between intelligence and intelligent voting? (I assume that you understand and accept the latter.)
Most of the studies that I have seen reported put the average IQs in the Near East in the 80's--with the exception of Turkey and Israel, where they are higher. (They may be in Lebanon, also, I do not have anything handy on that.)
William Flax
Proposing, discussing, arguing, drafting, etc., etc.. But what they were not doing was demand one man/ one vote "Democracy."
Yes you did, you're just to slow-footed and to hypocritical to know.
The first principle of respect between independent nations is that no nation has the right to sit in judgment on another. You appear to want to jettison that principle.
A government that doesn't respect the unalienable rights of its citizens deserves no respect from anybody. There is no unalienable right for a tyrannical government to exist. That is the first principle of individual rights.
But if you jettison that principle, we are back to square one, in a hideously presumptive world.
A hideously persumptuous POV according to "ohioan":A government that doesn't respect the unalienable rights of its citizens deserves no respect from anybody. There is no unalienable right for a tyrannical government to exist.That is the first principle of individual rights.
Indeed, your rationalization justifies every thing that has been deleterious in world affairs over the past three generations.
A rationalization according to ohioan: A government that doesn't respect the unalienable rights of its citizens deserves no respect from anybody. There is no unalienable right for a tyrannical government to exist. That is the first principle of individual rights.
Your "respect" for tyrannical governments around the world is everything that has been deleterious in world affairs.
are not the only one who thinks that you have the inside track to a new order for the world. Both the Communists and Nazis tried to justify their assaults on other peoples as "liberation" movements.
You compare my POV and the president's POV where we dare advocate that the people of a nation should govern themselves -- you compare that to Communists and Nazis. Your moral relativism is sickening. It's everything the statists of the world preach and you soak it like a milksop.
What you propose is indeed international anarchy. But you are too focused on your own "virtue," to see it.
Governments that respect unalienable rights deserve respect. Governments that. don't respect unalienable rights don't. I don't propose anarchy between nations. The president doesn't propose anarchy between nations. I do propose alliances with and I do advocate that we respect, the nations that do recognize and protect unalienable rights.
But you think thats anarchy, presumptuousness, Nazi-like Communist-like and the root of all evil in the world.
You "ohioan" are a nut!
Argument ad hominem, back at you.
I got one of those, as well. (#84 above.)
But, I am in good company. Just so happened that as this thread began, I finished reading Joseph Ellis' His Excellency George Washington (Knopf 2004). Checking for differences, additions, omissions, disagreements, I had at the same time reread James Flexner's Washington The Indispensable Man (Mentor 1974).
I recommend both biographies to anyone interested in Washington. Both are well written, meaning the narrative is easy to read and follow. Flexner, though, provides more detail.
It's a common mistake that people make, that because some evil is done in the name of good, then everything that is done in the name of good is in fact, evil.
For example, since the islamofascists do what they do in the name of god and religion, all people who are religious and believe in god (i.e. the Christians in the U.S.) are all equivalent to the islamofascists.
The mistake these people make is thinking that evil and good are polar opposites, and look nothing alike, so if one thing bears resemblence to something that was evil, it also, must in fact be evil. When in reality, evil is far from the opposite of good, but the corruption of good. What makes evil so, for the lack of a better word, evil, is that it is often very hard to distinguish from good. Most of the evil that is done in this world, are done in the name of good.
The only thing I would agree with Ohioan is that a certain level of healthy skepticism toward those who want to "do good" and "liberate the world", is warranted. However, when skepticism turns into cynicism, and the person believes that doing good is no longer possible or even be a goal and should be pursued, that all we are left with is doing nothing, then evil would have triumphed, because as someone once said "the only thing required for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
What precisely is wrong with your claimed right to trample on other nations' sovereignty, based upon your judgment? Well, let me get very specific:
1. No one has appointed or annointed either you or President Bush as the keeper of the honor of other Governments. The premise that no sovereign nation has the right to judge another is not based upon the idea that governments are not accountable, or that they are not duty bound to protect their own peoples. It is premised upon the concepts of independence, honor and responsibility.
2. I do not know about your personal analysis of particular Governments, but I do know--as the debate in my feature makes very clear--that President Bush does not even have a clear concept of what the function of a Government, any Government is. He uses conflicting senses of Freedom in his speech; and that hardly qualifies him as a judge of the rectitude of any nation.
3. Their are very few--probably none--Governments that perfectly relate to all their peoples. In the West today, human freedom is generally on the retreat. Even apart from the absurdity of adopting universal suffrage, without any other qualification--which appears to be what Mr. Bush is trying to sell in Asia--from the standpoint that it is absolutely stupid to appoint decision makers without any sense of their qualifications to make decisions; there is no Government with a heterogeneous population, and never has been, which perfectly protects all its subjects or citizens in their pursuit of happiness. Almost any decision made is going to impact someone negatively. And I am not referring to the enforcement of reasonable criminal laws; but to the enforcement of regulations of conduct that find temporary favor, etc..
4. It is arrogant, in the extreme, to think that your or my particular theories for how a society ought to operate, have universal applicability. Generally, the cultures of any people will definitely influence their forms of government; and the cultures of any people will reflect their nature and past experience.
The particular institutions of America--the fine, sound, institutions that the Founding Fathers gave us, which we are gradually losing to Leftwing politicians and overreaching Courts--reflect the population here in the last three decades of the 18th Century: A hearty settler stock, drawn here with a sense of adventure, bent upon acquiring land, and space; a stock selected from the general populations of the Mother countries, for their more independent spirit, greater self-reliance, etc..
I could go on. But it should be obvious that most of the world do not have those same priorities. And Americans who seek to instill systems devised to further those settler priorities among people with other priorities, have a terrible track record--even as any more objective observer would have predicted--in creating havoc across several contintents. (Dean Rusk was saying the same things that Bush is saying now--albeit a bit more precisely--in the 1960s, and ruined a number of nations in the process.)
It is not a benign mindset that keeps trying to justify such really contemptible experiments.
William Flax
I am not sure why you think the above is in anyway applicable to my Feature. I am not suggesting that people should not actually do good. The term "do-gooder," of course, refers to people who think they are doing good and aren't. And that perfectly describes what President Bush is suggesting in his inaugural speech. We have already seen the results of the policy, in millions of dead, and millions more with broken hopes and dreams, from Dean Rusk's efforts to promote Democracy in the Third World in the 1960s, etc..
On the other hand, George Washington's proposed even handed policy towards the rest of the World, really did do good. We helped a lot of people by our example. We helped our own people thrive by not alienating others, with whom they had to deal. That type of doing good is what is called for, now and always.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
There is where we disagree, I think we clearly are doing good, and I don't see what Dean Rusk has to do with anything. Without getting into whether Dean Rusk did good or not, even if he failed to do good, how would that have anything to do with whether GWBush is doing good or not?
What we did in the 1960s is very relevant. It shows how the policy works in practice. It is absolute folly to assume that a vehicle that works well with one population group, in one cultural setting, is of universal applicability. Frankly, I think it is very naive to suppose that popular government--I disdain the term Democracy, because that is not what we are supposed to have under the Constitution--is still working as it used to in America.
The level of our politics has precipitated downword over the past Century--save only for the brief reversal of the trend under Reagan. Just compare the level of the speeches now and in the 19th Century, in our campaigns. Or look at the judicial arrogance, in foisting leftwing social values on America; or the pandering in Congress to special interests.
What should tell the tale of how foolish the Democracy mantra is, when applied arbitrarily in the Third World, is that no one even discusses how voting rights should be qualified! Can you imagine running a business, where no one even inquired as to the qualifications that you required for management positions?!
There are certainly incidental benefits to some aspects of what Mr. Bush is doing. I applauded his prompt efforts to go after bin Laden and the actual terrorists. I gave him the benefit of the doubt on the decision to invade Iraq. But this one person, one vote "Democracy," in what is really several distinct nations, placed together in an Administrative unit, is not in my opinion either fair or wise. Time will tell, of course, whether there is a net benefit or net loss to the United States, which should be our litmus test. (I do not mean that we should do anything dishonorable. But there is certainly nothing dishonorable in working with people within their own traditional structures and heritage.)
I think once again you underestimate GWB with "Democracy", as we all know the real objective is liberty, democracy simply is more likely to produce liberty than say, autocracy. Bush knows this, as has stressed "freedom" as much as he has "democracy", "democracy" has in the modern usage been used to quickly connote the concept representative government and self-determination.
I don't think Bush in a speech on the big picture wants to get in to the minutia of the political philosophy on the difference between a pure democracy and a democratic republic.
Until recently America's greatest military advantages were the Atlantic and the Pacific. In today's world there is no security when primitives can project force across the oceans. They cannot prevail, but they can do us harm and influence our behavior. In this context, the only way to avoid the foreign influence that Washington detested is to destroy them on their turf and reform the anti-liberty oligarchies that pay protection money and give them their flimsy rationale for brutality.
Washington's fear was that foreign entanglements would inevitable have a negative influence in our newly won independence and liberty. The War of 1812 and the Bank of England currency struggle proved that Washington's fears were well founded.
Today, I believe that Washington would choose to preserve American liberty by extending liberty to the world, rather than shrinking inward and accepting the slow, steady and inevitable erosion of our values. We have already accepted limits on our freedom in the wake of 9-11. What will we have to give up next?
Sometimes we must stand alone (or nearly alone) to resist the forces of savagery, the threat of fanatacism, the expedience of Euro Socialism or any other foreign influence that threatens OUR freedom.
So be it.
Nicely done.
Yes. Washington was as activist as the circumstances of the times allowed him to be in foreign affairs. As were all the administrations that followed his. We've always been a "pushy" country.
Though Washington's Secretary of State tried to organize a "UN type" concerted action against the Barbary Pirates, that failed and Washington had to just pay huge bribes to them for protective treaties since he had no Navy.
But he was able to be aggressive against Spain, making treaties with indians in Spanish territories that weakened Spanish control and bound them closer to us.
Interference in Spain's internal affairs (in it's colonies) was the major goal of early US diplomacy- other than efforts that were required for establishing the new nation in the world- and continued to be until we'd taken over or dominated all their old possesions.
What would Washington have done if Cornwalis had M-1's and Apaches? Times are different. Washington would support Bush.
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