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

To: LindyBill who wrote (62427)	12/20/2002 6:38:56 AM
From: Dennis O'Bell	Respond to of 281500

Various American voices have been raised these past few months to proclaim enthusiastically that soon all the world ... will embrace an order called « democratic capitalism » The major error in the sentence is the word "soon"... :-) And we barely have to fire the odd shot. Just being Americans will mostly suffice in the long term.

To: LindyBill who wrote (62427)	12/20/2002 7:35:23 AM
From: frankw1900	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Like all ideologues?be they Marxist, socialist, or Wilsonian?democracy worshipers attribute their disasters not to a flawed ideology but a lack of energy. There is something about Buchanan that's always got my juices flowing to such an extent I actually itch to get my fingers around his throat. I think I know why now. The above quote gives his game away. He wants the toys of modernity, its comforts, its protections, but he actually doesn't want modernity. Sort of like bin Laden that way. Not long ago, America stood for freedom. When was our love of freedom replaced by this cult of democracy? What, exactly, is freedom supposed to look like without democracy? No one has had it except through democracy. He then asks, What do we mean by democracy? No rulers, that's what. And then like every pseud of the past five years he quotes Orwell, Orwell said he might be more enthusiastic about democracy if only he could find someone who opposed it. In what context did he say this? Orwell hated totalitarian regimes and despised colonialism and he savaged the tyrants who claimed democracy for their corrupt regimes. What has one-man, one-vote produced in Africa? Virtually all the fifty-odd African states have reverted to tyranny, tribalism, or genocide. Africa was better off under colonial rule. This is outrageously dishonest. The Africans didn't want the colonial rulers. How many of them were the colonialists supposed to kill off to keep ruling? The Congolese were no better off under the Belgians than they are today and to say they were is to validate absolutely one of the most horrible regimes in history. From Algeria to Pakistan, Islamists are winning elections. True. But it's not because of democracy, or because of the people who promote it. Mostly it's due to fall out from cold war policy which was absolutely necessary to protect the modern world. In the process of containing communism the west supported repressive regimes it otherwise would have left to collapse or never have allowed to exist. This gave the islamofascists a chance to get well established. The US has no responsibility with regard to this, according to Buchannan. He's wrong. Just beause some act was unavoidable is no reason to disclaim responsibility for its effects. But Buchannan does and claims the irresponsibilty as a virtue and in itself to be a reason not to take any corrective action. "Sorry folks, you've now got the mullahs and Saddam and they've got the guns and you've got diddly squat but even though we gave them to you, it's your problem now." Ten years of inaction gave the US 9/11.