Democracy is a weed
By this I mean that democracy is not some sort of hothouse flower that can only survive in an unnaturally unthreatening environment. If that were true there would be no democracies in existence today.
Democracy has flourished in all countries with an Anglo-Saxon culture: the UK, Canada, the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand. It has been more or less transplanted—like a liver transplant that barely avoided rejection—into France, Germany and other continental countries. Japan and—after some adjustment—South Korea have deep-rooted democratic traditions. The Philippines—where I worked for over five years—has a genuine democracy.
And democracy would have survived in South Vietnam, if democracy’s natural enemy—the Democratic Party—hadn’t forced the U.S. to withhold our promised support after we withdrew in 1973.
El Salvador conducted elections with a three-way civil war underway. Nicaragua eventually obtained a chance to vote the Sandinistas out of government; that is, after Reagan finally got around the obstacles thrown up by democracy’s natural enemy—the Democratic Party.
The U.S. has conducted its elections during wartime—even during our Civil War—without fail. And nobody has ever challenged the legitimacy of the 1864 election the way certain pundits predicted the Iraqi election would be challenged.
Democracy is weed that cannot be stamped out whenever the citizens refuse to let it be stamped out. That the Iraqis voted and gave legitimacy—gave consent—to their governors so they can be governed is just another election in a long line of troubled elections.
It is totally within its nature for democracy’s natural enemy—the Democratic Party—to try and forsake the Iraqis when they needed help the most. That is because the Democratic Party has as much to do with democracy as all of those Stalinists countries whose names that begin “The People’s Democratic Republic of [whatever]”.
Both the Democratic Party and those Stalinist countries hijack the word “Democratic” in service of an assault on democracy. Both the Democratic Party and those Stalinist countries serve statist ideologies. Both the Democratic Party and those Stalinist countries driven by leftist, transnationalist ideologies that have histories of attacking undeveloped Democracies in places like South Vietnam, El Salvador, and Iraq.
Fortunately for Classical Liberals, democracy—being a weed—is too robust to usually succumb to attacks from the Democratic Party.
Democracy has flourished in all countries with an Anglo-Saxon culture: the UK, Canada, the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand. It has been more or less transplanted—like a liver transplant that barely avoided rejection—into France, Germany and other continental countries. Japan and—after some adjustment—South Korea have deep-rooted democratic traditions. The Philippines—where I worked for over five years—has a genuine democracy.
And democracy would have survived in South Vietnam, if democracy’s natural enemy—the Democratic Party—hadn’t forced the U.S. to withhold our promised support after we withdrew in 1973.
El Salvador conducted elections with a three-way civil war underway. Nicaragua eventually obtained a chance to vote the Sandinistas out of government; that is, after Reagan finally got around the obstacles thrown up by democracy’s natural enemy—the Democratic Party.
The U.S. has conducted its elections during wartime—even during our Civil War—without fail. And nobody has ever challenged the legitimacy of the 1864 election the way certain pundits predicted the Iraqi election would be challenged.
Democracy is weed that cannot be stamped out whenever the citizens refuse to let it be stamped out. That the Iraqis voted and gave legitimacy—gave consent—to their governors so they can be governed is just another election in a long line of troubled elections.
It is totally within its nature for democracy’s natural enemy—the Democratic Party—to try and forsake the Iraqis when they needed help the most. That is because the Democratic Party has as much to do with democracy as all of those Stalinists countries whose names that begin “The People’s Democratic Republic of [whatever]”.
Both the Democratic Party and those Stalinist countries hijack the word “Democratic” in service of an assault on democracy. Both the Democratic Party and those Stalinist countries serve statist ideologies. Both the Democratic Party and those Stalinist countries driven by leftist, transnationalist ideologies that have histories of attacking undeveloped Democracies in places like South Vietnam, El Salvador, and Iraq.
Fortunately for Classical Liberals, democracy—being a weed—is too robust to usually succumb to attacks from the Democratic Party.
posted by johnh | 8:54 PM
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