Making Democracies
Let’s take a little issue with this snippit of Daniel Henniniger’s article in the WSJ on how democracies are better able to manage crisis:
Among the Western intellectual classes in the U.S. and Europe, there is no idea more routinely mocked than George Bush’s proposition that what the world needs today is more democracies. Much of this has to do with the Iraq war and the apparently bottomless, neurotic antipathy to Mr. Bush. But make no mistake: The steady stream of pushback against “exporting democracy” as quixotic or inappropriate has gone far toward throwing out the democratic baby with the Bush bathwater.
I don’t think anyone really disagrees that more democracies is better (with the possible exception of a century of US and British foreign policy) and the argument that they respond better to natural disasters isn’t a new one, I just think it’s hard to imagine anyone who invade a country and dismantle it’s government without any plans on what to replace it with (or even how to go about doing that) is really taking their aim of ‘exporting democracy’ that seriously.
The one-sided use of ‘economic’ language is ironic coming from the WSJ.
Conservatives definitely disagree that democracies are better - the whole episode exposes their prejudiced understanding, all the while trying to impose their incoherent view of order by means of received dependance on authority.
The point that the more radical right-wingers miss is that no contract (economic or otherwise) has any real value unless it is freely entered into.
Looking at Iraq, numerous form of the perverted philosophy present themselves - like the use of torture in Abu Ghraib for example - this wasn’t any form of democracy, just a sheer exertion of a democratically-formed power.
What was the exchange undertaken? Blood for oil?
What is the mechanism for measuring the rate of exchange and ensuring its fairness?
No wonder the whole Republican government is implicated in the corrupt practices which lead to massive corporate failures like Enron - it’s a bad business!
thomas
19 May 08 at 6:01 pm
Hillary is quite able to make extraordinary decisions as far as matters of state!
Do any of you all remember the name “Vince Foster”?
Dear old Vince was the fellow getting ready to expose Bill & Hillary’s under handed dealings.
Suddenly Vince ended up in a park apparently committing suicide but it was quite amazing, NO loss of blood at the crime scene; No brain matter. Then Woof-O-poof-O, NO more talk about Bill & Hillary’s investigation and NO more Vince to get in their way.
What’s the Clinton’s have in store for Mr. Barack Obama???
He best keep his butt puckered; this may be another Martin Luther King episode. Hillary can handle matters of State!
OH YES!
M.L.Willmore
20 May 08 at 4:33 am