Ed, you touch on a number of points that are important and should be fleshed out more. I'd like to add to a few points to your post:
One of the things that has been bothering me in recent times is the polarization of the society to such an extent that nobody is listening to anyone anymore and people are just shouting past each other. Just in the past few days I have had to argue that "It is the individual that should be held responsible for the consequences of his decisions and not the collective AND that in a competition between individual rights and the rights of a virtual entity, the individual should win hands down". What is strange is that I've had to argue these points on the Libertarian thread. You'd think that of all factions, libertarians would see the value of individual responsibility most.
Today on the FADG thread, I had to debate with Neocon that making it AGAINST the law to publish safety and consumer satisfaction data on motor vehicles is bad idea. Here I am actually having to convince a "conservative" about the value of information for the operation of free markets!
All this because people just hear something and shelf it under "it poses a threat to the politicians I support" rather than actually hearing what is being said and evaluating it.
It gets even worse as we move on to the real world. I've seen studies that show Americans are moving into neighborhoods where their neighbors think like they do. 30 years ago the percentage of land-slide districts (defined as 2/3 win) was ~20. Today it is almost 80%. If this keeps up, we'll literally have divided nation where one side has no contact with the other or interest in hearing the opposing points.
That was my first point. My other point is about the middle east. I have lived and traveled all over the world, including the ME. Despite what most people think, there is no such thing as a typical ME culture. Middle East is roughly defined as the region between Egypt and Iran. This includes, Arabs, Israelis, Turks, and Iranians. The Turkish language is closer to Japanese than any of their neighboring countries. The Persian language is an Indo-European language and is closer to Czech than Arabic. In fact, the name "Iran" literally translate to "Aryan Land". Israelis have more a European heritage than their closest neighbors, the Palestinians. And the Arabs, well they can't really be considered one nation at all, but do have at least a more or less common language. Now the reason I tell you this is that the people and the cultures in the middle east are as diverse as their languages. Even within the same country there is a lot of different ethnic and cultural differences. Compared to the Middle East, the US is as homogeneous as the milk you have for breakfast.
So it is not accurate to say they don't want democracy.
The oldest "democracy" in the middle east is Iran whose people revolted nearly 150 years ago to overthrow the king and establish the parliament. It is more accurate to say they are wary of foreigners bringing them new governments. Over the past 50 to 100 years the history of the middle east has been the history of western meddling into their internal affairs and western selection of governments for those people, be it the British putting puppet Hashemite in power in Iraq, or US over throwing Mosadiq in Iran.
I am amazed why Americans fail to see how they would feel about an Arab country invading US and trying to cure the US ills of drunk driving and teen pregnancy by implementing their values here. You cannot force values. But if a people are left alone and no one meddles in their affairs, sooner or later they will find a good solution that works for them. |
