Philosophy
As Bush attempts to negotiate a Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq that includes what amount to permanent bases and immunity from prosecution for US troops and contractors, one realizes that even the person who spent so much time trying to trumpet the idea of a free and sovereign democratic Iraq doesn't buy it.
One of the interesting ironies is that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was the result of neo-conservative thinking largely shaped by Francis Fukuyama, who in his book The End of History, argues a neo-Hegelian line in which there is an end state to history, a state towards which all countries are moving. It is American-style corporate capitalist free-market representative democracy. All nations strive for it and if only loosed from their shackles would instantaneously begin to create it. This is why the neo-cons were so certain that we would be greeted as liberators and Democracy would be on the march right in. "Shock and awe" would cut the head off the snake and a democratic Iraq would spontaneously appear. (Dozen of democracies spontaneously appear each year, it's just not widely reported.)
Of course it didn't quite work. Thus Bush negotiating a SOFA while more likely needing time on the couch.
This idea that there are no other prerequisites for a democratic government than release from tyrannical rule stands in distinction to earlier conservative writing. Jeanne Kirkpatrick, in her famous article "Dictators and Double-Standards" argues that it is ok to try to assassinate, undermine, and overthrow left-wing evil, murderous dictators, but to prop up, aid, and supply arms to right-wing evil, murderous dictators because the right-wingers are not apt "to alter significantly the distribution of goods, status, or power" and this means that they are more likely to give rise, ultimately, to democratic societies. In other words, right-wing tyrants will create the preconditions for democracy, but left-wing tyrants won't.
That one didn't quite pan out either, of course, but the paleo-conservative picture at least considers that there is certain social, political, and intellectual infrastructure that must be in place for democracy to come about, to flourish, and to be maintained. Surely, whatever those preconditions are, they are not in fact aided by right-wing death squads. But what are they?
What about free speech? Scott argues that this is overrated as a condition.
Would Burma be on its way to democracy if the junta was ousted tomorrow? They have a popularly supported party and a charismatic leader, but is that enough? Is it like India just after partition? Could one argue that they are different because the British left the notion of a functioning independent judiciary?
Does there have to be a lack of ethnic/tribal/sectarian tensions? What needs to be present in a nation for democracy to take root?
- The End Of The Combat Mission And A Failed Experiment
Last night, the President, as he campaigned to do, declared an end to the combat mission in Iraq. I heard it reported on several news outlets that the reason for the invasion had been "to find weapons of mass destruction which were never discovered."...
- Growing Democracy
A couple of insightful quotations: Helmut at phronesisaical quotes Habermas, The universal validity claim which binds the West to its 'basic political values,' that is, to the procedure of democratic self-determination and the vocabulary of human...
- Neo-conservative Post-mortem
There were many failed ideologically-driven grand political experiments in the 20th century. Neo-conservatism is the first of the new century. A project that I would love to see taking place amongst some of the smarter minds on the blogosphere is a working...
- Democracy, (oligarchy), Tyranny And The Economy
Kyler M. Robinson The tyrannical man in the United States can be found everywhere. It lives in all of us, our desires that drive us past reason and logic, relying on the craving and eros. The desires of the tyrannical man seemingly mix with the...
- Bush The Democratic, Bush The Tyrannical
The discussion of the tyrannical man is the focus of Book IX of as Socrates and his young friends analyze how the son of a democratic man evolves into a tyrant. This situation is one that, like all other anecdotes and stories told by these philosophers,...
Philosophy
What Are the Necessary Conditions For Democracy?
As Bush attempts to negotiate a Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq that includes what amount to permanent bases and immunity from prosecution for US troops and contractors, one realizes that even the person who spent so much time trying to trumpet the idea of a free and sovereign democratic Iraq doesn't buy it.
One of the interesting ironies is that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was the result of neo-conservative thinking largely shaped by Francis Fukuyama, who in his book The End of History, argues a neo-Hegelian line in which there is an end state to history, a state towards which all countries are moving. It is American-style corporate capitalist free-market representative democracy. All nations strive for it and if only loosed from their shackles would instantaneously begin to create it. This is why the neo-cons were so certain that we would be greeted as liberators and Democracy would be on the march right in. "Shock and awe" would cut the head off the snake and a democratic Iraq would spontaneously appear. (Dozen of democracies spontaneously appear each year, it's just not widely reported.)
Of course it didn't quite work. Thus Bush negotiating a SOFA while more likely needing time on the couch.
This idea that there are no other prerequisites for a democratic government than release from tyrannical rule stands in distinction to earlier conservative writing. Jeanne Kirkpatrick, in her famous article "Dictators and Double-Standards" argues that it is ok to try to assassinate, undermine, and overthrow left-wing evil, murderous dictators, but to prop up, aid, and supply arms to right-wing evil, murderous dictators because the right-wingers are not apt "to alter significantly the distribution of goods, status, or power" and this means that they are more likely to give rise, ultimately, to democratic societies. In other words, right-wing tyrants will create the preconditions for democracy, but left-wing tyrants won't.
That one didn't quite pan out either, of course, but the paleo-conservative picture at least considers that there is certain social, political, and intellectual infrastructure that must be in place for democracy to come about, to flourish, and to be maintained. Surely, whatever those preconditions are, they are not in fact aided by right-wing death squads. But what are they?
What about free speech? Scott argues that this is overrated as a condition.
Would Burma be on its way to democracy if the junta was ousted tomorrow? They have a popularly supported party and a charismatic leader, but is that enough? Is it like India just after partition? Could one argue that they are different because the British left the notion of a functioning independent judiciary?
Does there have to be a lack of ethnic/tribal/sectarian tensions? What needs to be present in a nation for democracy to take root?
- The End Of The Combat Mission And A Failed Experiment
Last night, the President, as he campaigned to do, declared an end to the combat mission in Iraq. I heard it reported on several news outlets that the reason for the invasion had been "to find weapons of mass destruction which were never discovered."...
- Growing Democracy
A couple of insightful quotations: Helmut at phronesisaical quotes Habermas, The universal validity claim which binds the West to its 'basic political values,' that is, to the procedure of democratic self-determination and the vocabulary of human...
- Neo-conservative Post-mortem
There were many failed ideologically-driven grand political experiments in the 20th century. Neo-conservatism is the first of the new century. A project that I would love to see taking place amongst some of the smarter minds on the blogosphere is a working...
- Democracy, (oligarchy), Tyranny And The Economy
Kyler M. Robinson The tyrannical man in the United States can be found everywhere. It lives in all of us, our desires that drive us past reason and logic, relying on the craving and eros. The desires of the tyrannical man seemingly mix with the...
- Bush The Democratic, Bush The Tyrannical
The discussion of the tyrannical man is the focus of Book IX of as Socrates and his young friends analyze how the son of a democratic man evolves into a tyrant. This situation is one that, like all other anecdotes and stories told by these philosophers,...