Posted on 04/05/2022 8:20:41 AM PDT by Kaslin
"In the battle between democracy and autocracy, democracies are rising to the moment, and the world is clearly choosing the side of peace and security," said resident Joe Biden in his State of the Union address.
"This is a real test. It's going to take time."
Thus did Biden frame the struggle of our time as the U.S. leading the world's democracies, the camp of the saints, against the world's autocrats, the forces of darkness.
But is "democracy" really America's cause? Is "autocracy" really America's great adversary in the battle for the future?
Not all autocrats, after all, are our enemies, nor are all democrats our reliable friends.
When Ukraine was invaded, the U.N. General Assembly voted on a resolution which "deplores in the strongest terms" Russia's "aggression" against Ukraine.
Among the 35 nations that abstained was India, the world's largest democracy. Whose side is India on in the great struggle?
Freedom House ranks Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, all friends, partners and sometime allies of the United States, as "not free."
Are we in a global struggle against all of these nations, all of these regimes, because all of them are autocracies?
As for America's own wars, democracy-versus-autocracy would seem to be a misguided way to describe any of them.
In the Revolution, we were military allies from 1778 on with King Louis XVI of France, against Great Britain, the Mother of Parliaments. Our goal was not establishing a democracy, but our independence, separation, from the most democratic nation on earth.
When we declared war on the kaiser's Germany in April 1917, we allied ourselves with four of the greatest colonial empires on earth: the British, French, Russian and Japanese empires.
When that Great War began, Germany's Second Reich was a good deal more democratic than the czarist regime of Russia's Nicholas II.
In World War II, we allied with the world's largest colonial empire, Great Britain, and the USSR of Joseph Stalin. Democracy was not the cause for which we went to war, but payback to Japan for the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. Our most important ally in that Asian war was the Nationalist China of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, no democrat.
History, religion, race, culture, tribe and territory more often define the 100-plus nations of Africa, the Middle East and Asia than whether they are democracies or autocracies.
During the Cold War, we collaborated openly with dictators -- Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua, Chiang Kai-shek in China, Syngman Rhee in South Korea, Augusto Pinochet in Chile, Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, the shah of Iran, Ngo Dinh Diem, and a succession of generals after his assassination, in South Vietnam.
If they stood with us against the Communists in the Cold War, we stood by them. "He may be a SOB, but he's our SOB," FDR said of Somoza.
Communism was our ideological enemy, not autocracy.
If you were an enemy of communism in the Cold War, autocrat or not, you were likely to be treated as a friend by the USA.
If we make global "democracy" the measure of success in the great struggle of our time, our victory or defeat in that cause depends on political decisions and internal choices of scores of nations not our own.
But when did the internal politics of other lands become either the business of the United States or the yardstick of our success as a nation?
To make global democracy our goal in this century's great "battle" is to allow America's success or failure as a nation to be judged and measured by what other nations, not our own, succeed or fail in doing.
America's founding mission was not democracy, nor any other ideology. It was what we declared it to be in the document our fathers agreed to at the Constitutional Convention of 1787:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
"Democracy" is not even mentioned in the Constitution or in the Bill of Rights.
If whether other nations are democratic or autocratic is the measure by which we judge America's success, this must lead invariably to U.S. interference in the internal affairs of those nations not our own -- to ensure success in the great struggle.
To pursue global "democracy" is thus a formula for endless interventions in the internal affairs of other nations, endless conflicts and eventual war. The antidote is John Quincy Adams' formulation:
"(America) goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy; she is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all; she is the champion and vindicator only of her own."
Pat, Pat, Pat......... Biden is President.
America has no mission
i believe Ben Franklin believed that the American Experiment would be a success if every individual around the world could be protected by the individual rights guaranteed in the US Constitution.
The world has been at peace for 70 years because America has been in charge. The Pax Americana has been the greatest period in human history, and it has been because every country in the world knew that the USA would rain hellfire on them if they got too far out of line.
Will American hegemony survive? I’m not sure, but every country in the world will miss it when it is gone.
I think we should work on securing our freedoms first. Once that is done we can have a conversation about the rest.
Not Biden’s version of Democracy — rule by voter fraud, media and high tech information censorship, and livelihood cancelation.
You are kidding, right? The world has not been at peace. Have you forgotten Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, etc. It isn’t at peace partly because of idiotic progressives pushing their fake democracy, only democracy when they run it, on other people.
Ben may have once said that. But he was also a complete realist about the human condition and knew foreigners well from his times living in the UK and France. So, I believe that realism and his philosophy of frugality would have kicked in after he’d sobered up.
We have utopians like Francis Fukuyama who claimed that there would soon be an End to History as all of the nations morphed into Democracies because of globalism and multinational trade.
Alexander Dugan has a better take that sees the world becoming multipolar because the US is weakening and unable to maintain the unipolar world that it established after WWII.
From the start, many Americans believed “Republican Democracy” was America’s mission. Translations of both our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution were sent to every corner of the world, and Republican Democracy became synonymous with populist revolution. Being called a “Republican” meant you were seen as a radical and revolutionary.
However, something very few Americans then or now see it that the biggest selling point of Republican Democracy is *not* ‘liberty’ and ‘freedom’, though they are prime elements, essential side effects, and outcomes of Republican Democracy.
The biggest selling point is “efficiency”. In government, in society, in culture, in business, and in foreign relations.
By “efficiency”, I mean that government does what it promises to do, and at minimal cost. In society, classes, castes, and rank become less important and almost never essential. In culture, ‘appropriation’ is accepted as the norm.
In business, knowledge and hard work equal success much more than other factors. And in foreign relations, there is a general rejection of war and conflict. Republican Democracies will fight other forms of government, but almost never fight each other. For why should “The People” fight “The People”?
“Spreading democracy around the world” has never been anything more than a silly platitude peddled by politicians to generate public support for military campaigns that were not in America’s best interest by any objective measure.
The US has only existed for just under 300 years. We have only really been an empire since the end of WWII, which would make us about 70 years old; a mere infant in historical terms.
Yes we put a man on the Moon and probes on Mars, but these other empires had their own major accomplishments given the knowledge they had: pyramids, aqueducts, extensive trading routes like the Silk Road, command of the sea, numerous inventions and developments in math and philosophy.
We might claim we have more freedom, but our tax burden is much heavier than that of Medieval serfs or conquered peoples. And although the emperors were technically "all powerful" they were also far away from most average citizens. Our leaders might not technically have as much power over us, but they now have the ability to locate us with exact precision, and threaten our livelihoods if we don't follow their health advice.
I know that somewhere in the Bible Jesus says that Americans are now The Chosen People (and he spoke those words in perfect English so we know it's true), but we don't seem to be holding up our end of the bargain. And if Jesus handed over Most Favored People status from the Jews to us Americans, then he can hand it over to someone else like the Chinese or the Sri Lankans.
If that is America’s mission, then that mission is a fool’s errand. I believe that we are created to be free, but free societies are a recent phenomenon in history, and take a lot of work and dedication to maintain. They don’t happen spontaneously, but take a decades or centuries to develop. I used to believe that the best hope for freedom was in the Angloshpere, but I am starting to have my doubts that it is going to last there.
Groom the World to be your Slave
You are kidding, right? The world has not been at peace. Have you forgotten Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, etc. It isn’t at peace partly because of idiotic progressives pushing their fake democracy, only democracy when they run it, on other people.
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Sadly, he’s not kidding. He really believes it...the “it” being that the world must effectively be conquered for “US interests” to be safe and secure. It speaks volumes that he called the last 70 years “a period of peace”. It never occurs to Neo-Cons that their actions might actually be precipitating the next great war.
That’s funny. It used to be. And they say their NWO Globalist Utopia will be “Democratic”. More LOLs.
That’s funny. It used to be. And they say their NWO Globalist Utopia will be “Democratic”. More LOLs.
Global Ism.
He’s right about one thing. The fight is not “democracy vs autocracy.” And the US government is not on the side of the people.
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