h/t Gates of Vienna
...Despite the consistently repeated failure of these expectations, nothing seems to dent the near-religious belief in democracy's spread to the Arab world among Western liberals who insist on projecting their own mentality on others (see Martin Kramer, Ivory Towers on Sand, chap. 4). Thus when protests spread through the Arab world last December, journalists were quick to dub it the "Arab Spring," a harbinger, they enthused, of democracy spreading through the Middle East.
...Unlike the way many Westerners think of it, democracy is not a computer program that you can download into any society and have it work. It's not that everyone has to adopt these traits, just a critical mass of mutually enforcing players. On the contrary, democracy is an astonishingly difficult accomplishment, in the worlds of one of its most perceptive students, Eli Sagan, a miracle. In fact, democracy is in fullretreatthroughout the West
...As an exercise in thought experiment that might help us understand how alien democratic thought is even among the allegedly "modern" players in the "Arab Spring," imagine a Libyan group saying (without being assaulted by raving demonstrators), "if we want democracy, then we should be establishing close relations with the only operative democracy in the region, Israel, and abandoning the conspiratorial scapegoating nonsense that Arab oppressors have been feeding us for decades about how they are our enemy".
#1
Places like Libya aren't benefited by 'democracy', unless sharia, jihad and a caliphate are considered a worthwhile goal. 'Democracy' in places like Libya are launched by the principle of 'one man, one vote, one time only' and soon turn into dictatorship. Consider Iran.
An especially vociferous progressive group calls itself "We Are Wisconsin." Evidently not.
During the recall tumult, unions barely mentioned either their supposed grievance about collective bargaining, or their real fears, which concern money, particularly political money. Teachers unions can no longer bargain to require school districts to purchase teachers' health insurance from the union's preferred provider, which is especially expensive. This is saving millions of dollars and reducing teacher layoffs. Also, unions must hold annual recertification votes.
And teachers unions may no longer automatically deduct dues from members' paychecks. After Colorado in 2001 required public employees unions to have annual votes reauthorizing collection of dues, membership in the Colorado Association of Public Employees declined 70 percent. In 2005, Indiana stopped collecting dues from unionized public employees; in 2011, there are 90 percent fewer dues-paying members. In Utah, the end of automatic dues deductions for political activities in 2001 caused teachers' payments to fall 90 percent. After a similar law passed in 1992 in Washington state, the percentage of teachers making such contributions declined from 82 to 11. Here! Here!
Democrats furiously oppose Walker because public employees unions are transmission belts, conveying money to the Democratic Party. Last year, $11.2 million in union dues was withheld from paychecks of Wisconsin's executive branch employees and $2.6 million from paychecks at the university across the lake. Having spent improvidently on the recall elections, the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the teachers union, is firing 40 percent of its staff.
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Awesome essay. The man is definitely funny and hits all the parts that need to be emphasized this election on the difference between Perry and Obama.
#2
Anyone seen the photo comparisons going around the net of Perry in his pickle suit and helmet as a LT on a climbing aboard a jet fighter at age 22, and Obama with his Panama gangster hat and ciggy at age 22. Quite revealing.
In both Afghanistan and Pakistan, parents don't like their sons being turned into religious fanatics and suicide bombers.
So the 'higher education bubble' has hit Pakistain?
No, this would be the lower education bubble. Madrassahs substitute for primary and secondary education. Admittedly, one reason children are sent to madrassahs is because the jihadis blow up the state schools and kill the state teachers...
[Dawn] There are certain inflexible constants that are applied to the analysis of Pakistain and its governance, one being that Islam is an indelible part to the identity of the people and the functions of the state. However, women are made to be loved, not understood... to organise a nation in such a manner not only limits the ability to develop a constitutional legal framework to guarantee rights but it also harms the spiritual body of the religion as well.
The separation of mosque and state can be a process which is individualised to Pakistain, but a process that must take place for the nation to hasten its constitutional and spiritual development. Many of the readers of this column may dismiss such an idea based on their understanding that the Pak people and their leaders absolutely value Islamic- based governance. However, a poor excuse is better than no excuse at all... the same dependence on religious-based governance and identity existed 200 years prior in the United States. While the case of Asiya Bibi may reveal the frightening religious intolerance embodied in Pakistain, the Salem Witch Trials conducted in the beginning of US saw the death of thousands of women based on Church convictions of "heresy" and "witchcraft".
The founders realised that if religion was their only unifying principle to form the nation, it would divide the State by giving the majority religion rights at the cost of the minority. James Madison, a founding father, once said, "What influence have [religious] establishments had on Civil Society. In some instances they have been sent to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; in many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny..... Rulers who wished to subvert public liberty may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries (partners)."
Yet, the link between religion and politics was strong even to the Great Enlightenment philosophers who advocated for the creation of the secular US democracy. Their belief was that every public official would act out of a duty to the State and the Constitution, but would also be dictated by the religious morals engrained in him. George Washington acknowledged the separation of Church and state but also stated that "religion and morality are indispensable supports" to political prosperity and that "reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
The dichotomous way of looking at governance as either Westernised/ secular or based on medieval Shariah law forgoes these lessons of America's history concerning religious identity. The solely religious unifying element of Pakistain's people has forced the ruling elite and the courts to legitimise all their actions with appeals to faith rather than legal principles. This allows for groups like the Taliban, who challenge the writ of the Pak state, to gain acceptance as part of the Islamic brotherhood and Pakistain's Mohammedan identity.
Thus, one way describe the benefit of a secular and modern state is to understand that the body of Pakistain may undoubtedly be Islamic for some. However, facts are stubborn; statistics are more pliable... just as any human body requires clothing to protect itself from the elements, so does a religious-minded public require secular and tolerant policies that provide protection against the political elements.
Just as when individuals put on clothing to protect themselves, their body remains unchanged, a tolerant secular state does not challenge the beliefs in the heart of Pak Mohammedans. Rather, it provides protection for their faith unfettered by political winds. This protection is especially necessary when facing a harsh environment, which well describes a Pakistain beset with economic crises, a war raging across its border, and its flood of international orcs.
Without recognising that the fallacy of obsessively attempting to create an Islamic state devoid of tolerance, the Pak Islamists are walking through a cold winter night naked, believing they will not catch pneumonia and die. However, Denver is the capital of Colorado... we know that if the body continues to stay in the environment of Pakistain today, it is destined to become sicker and sicker until it meets an unfortunate end. And it would not just symbolise the death of Pakistain, it would be demise of the true components of Islam that compose its body.
The only way for the nation to survive is to cover it with 'clothing' -- in the form of a governance concerned with constitutional freedoms and equality rather than religious chauvinism. However, death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate... such an abrupt alteration to the nation's status quo may cost leaders the support of followers today in exchange for the admiration of the generations to follow. Individuals like Thomas Jefferson may have forged a secular identity for their religiously minded nation, but even he was called an 'infidel' publicly by his competitors and by the England Palladium published in 1800. However, if you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning... giving clothing to the spiritual body of the empire through the development of legal/ constitutional protections will be essential to the long-term success of Pakistain.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/25/2011 00:00 ||
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#1
"Denver is the Capital of Colorado" > D *** NG, I KNEW IT!
Asiya Bibi was a Christian woman recently sentenced to death for blasphemy.
"...the Salem Witch Trials conducted in the beginning of US saw the death of thousands of women based on Church convictions of "heresy" and "witchcraft"."
The total number of executions is not known for sure but was no more than 50 and probably below 30.
Dawn has some of the most poorly written and verbose editorials I've ever read.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
08/25/2011 10:09 Comments ||
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#3
"Dawn has some of the most poorly written and verbose editorials I've ever read."
#4
Dawn's poor writing & verbosity is directly related to whether or not jihadi toes might be stepped on. With no relationship to Islam, their writing has been incisive.
[Dawn] EVER since 2005, when an American think tank Fund for Peace and the magazine Foreign Policy, began publishing the annual 'Failed States Index', the question of whether or not Pakistain is a failed state has often been asked with gleeful expectation or sympathetic apprehension, provoking an angry denial.
But, as we shall see, the glee, the apprehension and the anger could be held back for another day, that is, until it is understood what the index is all about. To begin from the beginning, since the introduction by the World Bank of the development index and ranking to indicate where a country stood on the scoreboard of economic development, there has been a proliferation of indices to satisfy the appetite of the curious for all sorts of statistical packages and rankings. One such statistical game is the 'Failed States Index'.
The index has 177 states arranged in order of the degree of failure judged on the basis of 12 indicators, each assessed on a scale of one to 10. The maximum possible score is 120, indicating total failure in respect of all the indicators, while the minimum score would be zero, indicating no failure at all in respect of any of the 12 indicators. In the list for 2011, Somalia with a score of 113.4 is at the top as the most failed state, while Finland with a score of 19.7 is the least failed state, better than, for example, the US with a score of 34.8.
The index appears quite credible so long as one is talking about countries like Somalia, Sudan, Zim-bob-we, Afghanistan or Iraq, that are among the top 10, but the moment we shift the focus to countries like La Belle France, Germany, Japan or the US, the whole exercise becomes rather dubious. Germany, for example, with a score of 33.9 out of 120, would be a failed state to the extent of 28.25 per cent. This doesn't make much sense if 'failed state' means a state that has failed or is likely to fail to preserve, defend, or justify its separate existence, as the title of the Index would suggest and as was the case with the former USSR and Yugoslavia.
The index would make sense if it is seen as scorecard of the degree of failure by 177 states to respond to such challenges to governance as demographic pressure, group grievance, uneven development, human rights ...which are usually entirely different from personal liberty... and economic decline included as indicators on the Index.
The whole idea of 'failed states' is, therefore, a bit misleading because the authors of the Index have succumbed to the temptation of choosing a sensationalised and attention-grabbing title that has caused much apprehension, acrimony and uncertainty in a large part of the world. The correct title would have been 'Failed Governance Index' rather than 'Failed States Index'. Pakistain with a score of 102.3 out of 120 would, then, indicate failure of governance to the extent of 85 per cent.
Under the given state of governance, we can hardly dispute that.
So, whatever the think tanks and magazines may say or imply, Pakistain is not going to disappear or fade out of sight. It is strong enough not to be trifled with by external or internal forces of disruption. Even Somalia, the most failed of the failed states is still there, and not even its pirates can be trifled with. But that's no reason for us to call it a day and go to sleep. Let me offer another list of indicators to show how formidable the challenges have become during the last two decades. Here is a brief overview.
-- The physical lifelines of our land, the vast network of irrigation, power, rail and road are becoming more and more dysfunctional at an alarming rate. We don't seem to be able to stop the decay of what we have or replace what we have lost.
-- The pillars of administrative structure of the districts, the policies, the judiciary and the civil bureaucracy are in a mess due to corruption, inefficiency and politicisation. They can neither protect the innocent nor punish the guilty.
-- The foundation of a modern welfare state, schools, colleges and hospitals, are in a state of neglect, starved of resources, and manned by frustrated, underpaid and incompetent staff. They can neither teach the young, nor cure the sick.
-- The ethnic, sectarian and linguistic constituents of society are at loggerheads with each other, like hostile tribes barricaded within their little fiefdoms. They can neither create a rainbow of colours, nor a mosaic of harmony out of this diversity.
To sum up: Pakistain is surely not a failed state, but it certainly is a state of failed governance where good hardly ever happens, and evil doesn't cease to happen. As if paralysed by some unknown disease we behave, as the late US diplomat George Kennan said in another context, "helplessly, almost involuntarily, like victims of some sort of hypnosis, like men in a dream, like lemmings heading for the sea".
Posted by: Fred ||
08/25/2011 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
An especially vociferous progressive group calls itself "We Are Wisconsin." Evidently not.
EVER since 2005, when an American think tank Fund for Peace and the magazine Foreign Policy, began publishing the annual 'Failed States Index', the question of whether or not Pakistain is a failed state has often been asked with gleeful expectation or sympathetic apprehension, provoking an angry denial.
By John Bolton
