[ThreeOfSeven]

Steyn's really off the wall. The U.S. didn't need to civilize the Japanese and Germans after WWII. They only needed help to recover from the war and set up friendly new governments. Their situation was not at all comparable with the current situations in chronically failing third-world countries like Afghanistan and Zimbabwe.

[reg45]

The U.S. didn't need to civilize the Japanese and Germans after WWII. They only needed help to recover from the war and set up friendly new governments. Their situation was not at all comparable with the current situations in chronically failing third-world countries like Afghanistan and Zimbabwe.

The Japanese and Germans already had modern industrialized societies, otherwise they would have not been able to produce the huge war machines that threatened the allies during the war. What they did not have was a history of popular democratic government.

The Germans had a brief encounter with popular democracy during the Weimar period (1920 -1933). The Weimar Republic was destroyed by the economic instability of the early 1930's.

The Japanese, however, had a long history of feudalism. This had to be overcome at the same time that popular democratic institutions were established.

Third world countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe (literaly from A to Z) need:

1. Democratic institutions
2. Constitutional checks and balances
3. Free market economies

However, they have chosen instead the Marxist model

1. Sham democratic institutions
2. No constitutional checks and balances
3. Command economies

I think it is ironic that third world countries reject the freedom model as "too Western" or "eurocentric" at the same time that they embrace the Marxist model which was clearly a product of European descent.