Too Much Democracy?
Don’t Blame Democracy Promotion
Finally, recent election results in Palestine and Lebanon suggest that neither Hamas nor Hezbollah enjoys the support of majorities of the Palestinian and Lebanese people. In Lebanon, Hezbollah’s Shiite base of support constitutes approximately 35 to 40 percent of the population, and in Palestine, a defective electoral law allowed Hamas, which received roughly 44 percent of the vote in last January’s elections, to secure the most seats in the Palestinian legislature.
Yeah, I really hate defective laws that allow people to take office even if they don’t get the majority of the votes. Don’t you hate laws like that? Defective, defective, defective.
Whatever. The main point Steven A. Cook is making in this Washington Post editorial is that violence in the Middle East can’t legitimately be blamed on the Bush administration’s promotion of democracy in the area. Okay. I can agree with that. But… who ever said the violence was specifically because of “democracy promotion” to begin with? Cook’s entire editorial is a response to the “critics” who are supposedly making that claim but, honestly, not only have I never read of anyone claiming such a thing — I can’t even imagine that anyone would make such a claim. It’s all pretty obviously a lot more complicated than that.
Cook goes on to say that the Bush administration hasn’t been pushing democracy hard enough in the Middle East. I maintain a different view: We should quit pushing democracy on other cultures. Democracy isn’t the only valid or good form of government.
Posted by RebeccaHartong on July 29, 2006 under Uncategorized
You are wrong. Democracy is the best and most valid form of government. Only democracy can preserve and augment the rights of individuals. The important thing is not to confuse true democracy with the political system of a singe country: in this instance, the U.S.
Only democracy can preserve and augment the rights of individuals.
That’s not at all necessarily true. Just as a benevolent dictator might allow his subjects to have all sorts of freedoms, the majority vote in a true democracy could severely limit personal freedom. Our enthusiasm for democracy is based in a belief that people are essentially good and essentially able to know what’s best for them. I don’t have any faith at all in that presupposition.
Your presupposition that there might be such a thing as a “benevolent dictator” places a far greater amount of faith in the optimistic belief in human goodness. The freedoms accorded to citizens by a benevolent dictator would rest on the whim of a particular individual and would be easily revoked. Democracies guarantee the rights of their citizens through an irrevocable social charter—consented to by the people—known as a constitution; these rights are guaranteed futhermore by the separation of governmental powers and by checks and balances. Your dictator would have to be supremely benevolent to uphold the freedoms which democracies secure by the consent of the governed.
Gee, it seems like OUR democracy rests on the whims of a few corporations and their political toadies. Lately, little that is passed as law is done with the consent of the governed. The most obvious example: 68% of the public does not approve of the war in Iraq, and at best, the war had 52% popular support (when we were in the “Shock and Awe” stage). I hardly see our distinguished representatives taking the wishes of the governed, to start gradually withdrawing from this mess, into serious consideration; wishes that are more than mere whims as this war costs American lives and much of our hard-earned money. So to preach democracy to the Iraqis while dismantling it at home by gerrymandering voting districts, defending campaigning excesses that allow only the wealthy to have a serious shot at the presidency, and having our congress in thrall to lobbyists like Abramhoff–not to mention the assaults on our civil liberties through warrantless wiretapping, etc.– is truly insulting to the Iraqi civilian population who has paid the dearest price for this fiasco. Rshuddies, your presupposition is a wondeful civics lession, but has little basis in reality: just as Stalin’s reign did not represent the tenets of Marxism, our government does not represent the democracy you painted above.