Posted on 04/02/2005 5:48:52 PM PST by RWR8189
With the encouraging news of change in the air in Lebanon, Egypt, and the Gulf, coupled with a solidification of democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan, there has arisen a new generation of doubters. Not all are simply gnashing their teeth that their prognostications of doom were wrong, but rather often reflect genuine worries about the viability of emerging democracy in the Middle East.
Concerns about illiberal democracy run the gamut. Some fear that Islamists will hijack democracy and install Islamist or other such theocracies. Others worry that the veneer of voting gives legitimacy to otherwise autocratic societies and leaders that will hide their crimes behind the sanction of the "people. "
There is also a vast body of research, both historical and sociological, that suggests democracy is the aftermath of a long slow evolution toward egalitarianism and economic liberalization. Ancient Greek democracy, for example, was an expansion on earlier consensual government. It did not in itself spring forth at Athens in 507 B.C. from the head of Zeus. The revolution that started in 1776, we sometimes forget, was possible because of nearly two prior centuries of English relatively liberal colonial rule, under which small landowners and shopkeepers enjoyed property rights and participated in local councils despite a distant king.
So what makes Americans think we can plop down a democracy on the ashes of Saddam's Gulag, or see free elections in a Beirut that was once the Murder, Inc. of the 1970s and 1980s? How can we even imagine that Dr. Zawahiri's dream of theocracy won't follow from the end of the Mubarak dictatorship?
(Excerpt) Read more at victorhanson.com ...
I opened Pandora's box last week. Or, rather the guy I was playing in God of War did. Apparently it makes you really big and buff.
And who ever thought Russia would cease to be a communist state and Libya would do an about face and Pakistan would be a good allie of ours.
Going back further (about 50 yrs) who would ever think Germany, Russia and Japan would be friends?
Things take time, it's only been a while in Iraq. Let's see the results in the years to come.
We live in an instant world ... instant food (microwave) instant coffee, instant movies (DVD, video) and instant music. Some things however take years to develop.
The naysayers are just jumping the gun because they can't fathom that they may be wrong on this.
Well, isn't this a classic case of overanalization! (sic, but not really)
It's so easy to look in 20-20 hindsight and come up with a graduate thesis.
Bhutan recently announced that it was becoming democratic in the last couple months for the first time in recorded history. How does that fit into this thesis? It wasn't mentioned. Most people don't know because our MSM won't report good news.
Let me save a lot of graduate students tens of thousands of dollars on education. Democracy works! It doesn't have to be analyzed or studied. It doesn't need to have an American face.
It is the free-will nature of man-kind.
Correct. Give people REAL free will and a good example (the USA) and they will naturally gravitate toward a democratic government.
It was not a long lasting experiment! In places not ready for this experiment we get things like in Ruanda or Weimar Republic.
Or not. Study some history, read some classic political thinkers like Plato, Aristotle or Machiavelli. You do not need "of thousands of dollars" for it. "Save a lot" by buying the books on Amazon or better yet by getting them online:
Yeah sure, as Pogue Colonel said in Full Metal Jacket: "We are here to help the Vietnamese, because inside every gook there is an American trying to get out." I guess a strong kick in the ass and a good example is all that is needed.
And your solution is ... ?
It's too easy to criticize. It's too hard to find a solution. All things being equal, whom will rest easy tonight?
I won't pretend to be a historian, but, weren't Plato and Aristotle key to the original rise of democracy in ancient Greece? And didn't America surpass ancient Greece about 20 years ago as the longest surviving democracy in human history?
Of course, that's just me. I may be wrong. It's more important to indoctrinate our children into revisionist history for the good of all mankind, facts notwithstanding.
That there is no "solution" of the type you are looking for. Puritans under Cromwell, French Jacobins, Bolsheviks, Communists, Nazis tried the solutions and did more harm than good.
Graham Greene said about this idealism in search for the "solution":
"Innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm." (Quiet American).
If you mean republics (pure democracies are short lived) the longest lived republics was Venice (9 centuries) then Sparta and Rome. The oldest surviving republic is Switzerland.
Rome (the most similar to USA) stopped to be a real republic after/because she acquired the empire.
The question is how to keep the republic in America and not how to change the whole world into a democracy.
Actually, if you look historically, no republic has lasted more then 300 years: not Athens, not Rome, not Thebes or the other greek states, not the Venitians, not Novograd, not Poland (before the partitions). None. All eventually devolved into bickering oligarches pretending to represent the people and eventually from amongst them or the disillusioned military, a dictator has always risen up. And these were the well established republics, there are plenty that folded up in no time at all. It's human nature.
Page one, Soldier's Handbook (USA Army): America is NOT a democracy, America is a representative republic.
A democracy is 51% of the population doing what it wants to the other 49%. In other words, Mob Rule. The LA Riots were democracy in action.
If they elect another whack job we'll just blow it up and rearrange the rubble again.
Democratic city-states had already been establilshed in Greece, including Athens, by the time Plato and Aristotle were born. Plato in his "Republic" was actually an opponent of democracy, proposing a society ruled by an elite group of philosophers.
BTW, There was not such thing as Greek state before XIX century. (Unless you count the Eastern part of the Roman Empire after the West was conquered by the barbarians).
There was an Athenian democracy lasting very short and Spartan republic which lasted much longer than USA.
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