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| Abnormals of All Nations, Unite! : On the exceptionality of political liberty |
| 2007-12-17 |
| Hat Tip: Pappy Today, we believe that democracy is the "normal" state of a society. We are probably wrong. The overwhelming weight of evidence should have taught us that organized freedom is just as exceptional today as it was during the time of the Republic of Venice. It appears that the vast majority of societies are suited to producing cheese, shirts or, indeed, books. Very few, however, have been able to produce political liberty. If we were to count the number of countries that have been able to maintain, uninterrupted, a democratic regime for the duration of a lifetime (70 years, let's say), we would have to exclude the vast majority. In effect, only the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, the UK, and Switzerland would fully qualify. Three of the seven states here listed might have become Soviet republics during the Cold War if not for the military might of the United States. Some of the countries that joined the European Union in 2004 and 2007, such as Bulgaria or Slovakia, have no democratic record worth mentioning. Even "respectable" states such as Spain, Greece, or Italy have spent most of their modern history balanced between civil war and authoritarianism. Not to mention that Sweden was virtually a client state of Germany during WW2. Or that Switzerland was probably somewhere on the list if Germany didn't fall sooner or later. I could also quibble about Iceland, which is all of, what, 60,000 people? (And no, I don't have time to look it up). Many countries today classified as "free" or "democratic" fail to satisfy even the most basic criteria of modern democracies. Take Romania, for instance, as of 1 January 2007 a member of the European Union. For the last decade, most of its "legislation" has not passed through Parliament but been issued directly by the executive in the form of "emergency decrees". The prime minister, Tariceanu, leads a PNL-UDMR government supported only by less than 20 per cent of the Parliament. Most if not all elections since 1990 have been widely criticized by both internal and external observers as rigged, including the 2003 referendum for the revision of the constitution. On this occasion, public officials appeared on TV to advertise a raffle with cars and home appliances as prizes for those who bothered to show up and vote "Yes". There are practically no independent newspapers or magazines and certainly no independent television channels. For Romanians, it was a revelation to watch on television in September 2007 a surveillance film that unmistakably showed a current and a former minister accepting bribes. The second part of the film was never aired after the director of the station, an appointee of the Social Democrats, declared the film "unfortunate". In order to block the criminal prosecution, the government issued another decree suspending an article of the constitution referring to the criminal liability of the members of the executive. When the constitutional court recently declared the decree to be unconstitutional, the head of the lower chamber of parliament, who happens to be the prime minister's son-in-law, tried to block the publication of the court's decision. I am beginning to think there's something wrong with the parlaimentary systems and their insistance of maintaining majorities by agreements between party leaders rather than by direct consultation with the people through elections, in particular. But here the author hits the heart of the matter: What is truly worrying is not simply the number of failed democracies. It is rather the extensive misuse of democratic institutions, symbols, and practices. Thus, presidential elections become an opportunity to propel to power an unstable demagogue (Venezuela) and parliamentary elections an opportunity for the business oligarchy to buy political influence (Ukraine). From Thailand to Bolivia, from Russia to the Gaza Strip, democracy everywhere has been perverted beyond recognition; often, demagogues do not even that pretend theirs is the "Western" variant of democracy. Francis Fukuyama's contention that we are witnessing the final triumph of "liberal democracy" sounds increasingly shallow. The perception of the classical authors is probably truer. Free states are precious few, beacons of light in the dark and boundless ocean of despotism. They're basically building airstrips and control towers out of bamboo and hoping we'll send the cargo, or let them sell us the cargo we've nickel-and-dimed the manufacturers of here out of business... and we're dumb enough to, so who's to say they're stupid? |
| Posted by:Abdominal Snowman |
| #5 It just goes to show how unbelievably prescient our founding fathers were to create the kind of government we've inherited. Too bad it's been eroded so badly over the past 100 years. Yet it still functions to the betterment of its citizens far more than any other type of government. It would be even better if we could undo some of the mistakes made by Wilson, FDR, and Lyndon Johnson. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2007-12-17 19:50 |
| #4 FREEREPUBLIC > BRITAIN/UK - USA IS A DEMOCRACY WHICH WE CAN ONLY DREAM OF BEING, or title to that effect. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2007-12-17 18:12 |
| #3 Romania's democracy is the only kind that can endorse the EUSSR with no fear the people might belatedly whole their representatives to account. |
| Posted by: Excalibur 2007-12-17 15:59 |
| #2 Well, once you get right down to it, a lot of communist ideology, leftism, "anti-colonialism," and what have you, is basically an ideological push to make the asiatic despots of "HEAR AND TREMBLINGLY OBEY" fame look like hip revolutionary anti-authoritarians instead of what they really are. |
| Posted by: Abdominal Snowman 2007-12-17 15:33 |
| #1 I've had the same thought more than a few times - most nations in what we'd consider the West are the exception, not the rule, and yet we act as though we expect everyone else to think and act and believe just as we do. As though putting a thug into a suit is going to make him something other than a thug. What really breaks my heart is the way that the thugs and autocrats seem to understand this game so much better than our own leaders and intellectuals, who scamper around pretending that someone like Abbas or Hussein or Kim has as much legitimacy as a leader as someone like Bush or even Brown. And the thugs get all sorts of handouts and play these pretend elections, and then go back and slam the West. And our own "intellectuals" aren't any better; judging from their writings and speeches, they apparently believe that this whole democratic republic thing is evil and overrated. No doubt they'd prefer a thug. |
| Posted by: The Doctor 2007-12-17 14:19 |