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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: carranza2 who wrote (12161)	11/30/2001 8:02:10 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Carranza, I'm not overenamored with democracy, which is basically mob rule by another name. Okay, I agree that argument can be made that countries are not ready for democracy without the claim being a racist one. But there usually is a racist component to the 'them' not as good as 'us' arguments. It's just good old tribalism at work, which has been with us ever since our mammalian ancestors went social. Humans are only part way out of that zoo and we fail to escape it most of the time. But leaving that racist red herring aside, I'm not convinced that it takes much at all to be ready for democracy. It's almost instinctive, being a simplistic numbers game and "there are more of them than us" being an easy concept to understand. The USA, New Zealand and other modern countries have moved from being democracies to being smothering nanny-states rather than free societies. The important points about mutual self-defence, private property and contractual protection are quite easily introduced. There's no need for the health, welfare and education stuff for democracy and freedom to flower - on the contrary, those Big Government aspects are taking us away from freedom back towards communism and state dictat; softly, softly so that people in the USA, here and elsewhere are not even aware of what they are getting themselves into. The development and freedom come after the democracy and as a consequence of it, rather than before it. Before it, there is no personal freedom, property rights are minimal and personal security is limited. On Singapore and caning, they don't have much graffiti or crime. I don't see anything wrong with punishing misbehaviour right up to Daisy Cutting crowds of criminals [as the USA is doing right now in Afghanistan]. I think a lot of those Taleban people would rather have the caning. Maybe if spitting on the pavement and throwing cigarette butts around the place was punished, then the USA [and especially NZ, where crims get wet bus ticket punishments] would nip a few problems in the bud before they got out of hand. We need LESS freedom, not more, for criminals. In what way should Singapore not be held up as a shining example of democracy? Mqurice PS: I wondered whether the 'racist' word would get you out of the woodwork! Naughty Mq!!