Posted on 03/07/2003 12:40:11 PM PST by CyberCowboy777
The President, of course, believes that democracy can spread to Iraq. Why shouldn't it? Democracy is not boxed in," Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary, explained last week. "Democracy doesn't live in limits. Democracy, as the President says, is God's gift to the world."
This is flatly wrong.
Oh, I'm in favor of trying to democratize Iraq and all of that. But it's worth keeping the record straight on first principles. Democracy doesn't come from God, it comes from Greece. Liberty comes from God. As Fleischer went on, he used liberty and democracy interchangeably. That's goofy.
It's really not a hard point to grasp. For example, God gives us trees. Carpenters give us bookshelves. If you want to say that God gave man birds in the sky and the animals in the field for you to have dominion over, that's cool. But if you make them into soup or a hat, that's your idea. He gave us metal and oil and the like; he didn't give us the Buick.
Similarly, the Declaration of Independence doesn't assert that we have the right to life, voting, and the pursuit of happiness. It says we have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. So far, the best system we came up with for preserving liberty is a rich mélange of non-democratic courts and a Rube Goldberg system of voting for different public officials. In the past, we defended liberty with less democracy and more republicanism, as when senators were selected by state legislatures instead of by the people. Indeed, if you don't understand that liberty and democracy aren't the same thing, just look at the rhetoric we use for the Supreme Court as our leading "guarantor" and "defender" of "individual liberty." Nobody votes for Supreme Court justices, and yet they defend our liberties more than mayors, congressmen, etc.
The confusion can be partly explained by the fact that in a very significant way we've come to define the pursuit of happiness as the right to vote. In a very superficial way, this was the point of Francis Fukuyama's The End of History (See, for example, "History Makes a Comeback"). Liberal democracy, in its various forms, won the long-running and bloody argument about how best to organize society. It's the system which satisfies the desire for recognition and respect for the most people. Borrowing from Plato, Fukuyama calls this desire to be treated with respect "Thymos." Borrowing from Al Sharpton, I call this "getting my props."
But whomever you borrow from, it doesn't much matter. Because at a basic level, this argument's been settled. Even in dictatorships and monarchies, the state still feels the need to use the language of liberal democracy to justify its existence. Communist countries call themselves democratic republics and bend themselves into pretzels to explain how their people have democracy. Part of this is for propaganda purposes. Yassir Arafat's cronies constantly refer to him as the "democratically elected representative of the Palestinian people" largely in the hope that people in America and Europe will believe it if they hear it often enough. But, the fact remains that the language of democracy is the most legitimate we've got, even for non-democratic regimes. Heck, even Saddam Hussein held an election recently. He was the only one on the ballot and if you got caught voting against him you'd likely get a porcupine enema for your troubles, but — hey — it was an election.
Which gets me back to this whole thing about democracy coming from God. Personally, I have no passion for democracy. As I've said numerous times, in its purest form, democracy is little more than the system by which 51 percent of the people can pee in the cornflakes of 49 percent of the people. In a pure democracy — i.e. no courts, no constitution, no authority given to tradition — the mob rules. If numbers make the law, then whoever has the most numbers on his side can do whatever he likes. If ten men can vote to rape one women in a democracy, you can see how democracy and liberty aren't synonymous. I can very easily see how my liberties could be better protected in a monarchy or an empire or even a dictatorship than in a democracy. It's just that over the long haul, liberal democracies — with enough undemocratic checks in the form of constitutions, courts, etc. — are more reliable defenders of liberties than dudes in nice chairs.
Which brings us back to Iraq. I'm all in favor of democratizing the place. I'm in favor of it because democratic countries, oddly enough, don't go to war with each other and so therefore it would be in our interest if we democratized the place. I'm in favor of it because the Iraqi people deserve better. But, when we get into the postwar phase of things, it's important to recognize the differences between liberty and democracy. It is undoubtedly true that if Iraq were democratized tomorrow, freedom in Iraq wouldn't prosper. The Shiites would vote out everybody else and we'd switch back dictatorships. When you think about it, it seems indisputable to me that a military ruler — an American or other Westerner — would be a far greater guarantor of liberty than premature democracy. The rule of law is always more important that the rule of the ballot box.
This seems to be the Bush administration's plan. They'll ease into democracy, after they've set up courts, tribunals, representative and consultative bodies, etc. And that's all to the good. What will be annoying is the almost instantaneous clamor from liberal quarters — and from a few conservatives — here in the United States and in Europe to move directly to national elections and the like. These demands will stem from at least three camps, with very different motives. First, it will come from those who opposed the war in the first place. They will be eager to set the standard for success outrageously high so they can claim they were right for opposing the war all along. The second camp — which will include some conservatives — will want elections as soon as possible in order to get the U.S. out of Iraq as soon as possible. And, last, these demands will come from people who honestly believe that you can't make any progress toward liberty without votes, as if being released from jail doesn't make you free unless you were able to vote on it.
MEGA ANNOUNCEMENT
Dear Loyal Readers (and other people with the patience to read what follows):
I'm cutting this discussion short in order to address other pressing matters. The other day I wrote a column about something or other. In it I made reference to the fact that I was in a bit of a dispute with our Dear Leader, Rich Il Lowry (who spends his days in his drab olive one-suit, his hair pointed straight-up, eraser-head style, switching back and forth between talking to his crullers and cackling at his own jokes until he works himself into bulimic spasms).
I also noted in that column that my disagreement with Rich (I think it was about the cruller masters in Paris) took place in The Corner. Interestingly, quite a few readers wrote me to say that they don't read The Corner. This caused a bewildered expression to cross my face, very similar to the one which crossed Otter's face in Animal House when he was told he wasn't that great. "Don't read The Corner?" I said to myself. Cosmo the Wonderdog stared at me with an almost equally quizzical look, as if I'd put broccoli in his food bowl.
Anyway, it occurred to me that this might be true of many of you. That's fine, I suppose. The Corner is our most popular feature, but it doesn't have to be everyone's cup of tea, especially if you don't drink tea or, say, if you're a crack addict. I wouldn't even bring it up were it not for the fact that The Corner has changed the way I write this column. If you go back and look at the early Goldberg Files, they were often in "blog" format (this was before having your own blog was the Internet equivalent of having a driver's license). Often, I'd post short observations about various topics, like, "the toilet paper at my supermarket is hard to reach."
Oh wait, that's not what I meant by a "short observation." But I think you get what I mean.
Also, another common feature of my pre-Corner columns was that they featured lots of "announcements" — or just plain announcements since those quotation marks are entirely "gratuitous." Even more often, odd little statements like that one about the quotation marks would be offered by my couch, who used to take a much more active role around here (he's since been promoted to "couch-at-large"). I'd announce when I'd written something in another venue or found an amusing website somewhere. I'd let people know if I was going to be on TV (I'm on Late Edition every Sunday at 2:30 on CNN). Or I'd keep you in the loop if I'd eaten an entire box of Ring Dings. You know, important stuff.
But, now, with The Corner around, I tend to put all of that sort of thing in there. I think this may be one reason quite a few readers think that the G-File has gotten much more serious over the last year or so. Another factor on that score may be that times are a bit more serious these days. When "hanging chad" wasn't just the name of a necrophiliac gay porn movie, it was easier to make jokes about current events. 9/11 and war are a bit more serious. Though I've tried to keep my sense of humor.
Anyway, it occurred to me that if loyal readers of this column weren't reading The Corner they might not be up to speed on everything that's been going on with me. For instance, if you didn't hangout over there in recent days you might not know that I recently had an op-ed in the LA Times about the French or that I had one in the Wall Street Journal about the Columbia disaster or that I debated Nick Gillespie about the alleged conflict between war and freedom. You might not be up to speed that Rich Lowry put me on a Vegan diet and he may not realize I'm the one who keeps Fed-Exing him horse manure. You might not know that my Dad wants to shrink people. You may have missed the nasty e-mail generated by my column about Joe McCarthy last week. Let's see, what else might you be in the dark about? You might not have heard the news that I think Khalid Mohammed, the al Qaeda operative, looks like both the famed porn star Ron "the hedgehog" Jeremy and the Khavalsh Klavash guy from The Simpsons. You wouldn't even know that you're the man now dog.
And — oh yeah — you might not even know that I have a daughter. Her name is Lucy Tighe Goldberg and she was born in the wee hours of February 11. So far, early indications are that she takes after her mother in that she's beautiful, smart, and assertive; after her father insofar as she's round, gassy, and loud; and after her adoptive brother Cosmo, in that her sense of entitlement is boundless and everyone who lays eyes on her thinks the best of her.
Now, you might wonder why someone willing to write columns about his hernia operation wouldn't mention the birth of his beautiful daughter. Well, first of all, Kathryn did mention Lucy's arrival in The Corner and so I've received a gajillion wonderful e-mails from readers about it. And I am planning on starting a 1970s retro-fusion band called "The Explosive Pants Project: Featuring Lucy." But, why haven't I written about her? Well, because as most first-time parents probably know, this is a mysterious and wondrous — and sleep-deprived — time. My general instinct is to avoid Dave Barryesque pearls of wisdom about my family since pretty much every TV show I've ever watched "jumped the shark" once a baby was introduced to the show. But, most of all, I just haven't figured out what to say yet. So stay tuned. Read The Corner. Send diapers.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.