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

To: skinowski who wrote (93580)	4/15/2003 9:12:05 AM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Will be interesting to see how he goes about examining "individual liberty" as separate - or, differing? - from democracy. I don't know how he does it, skin, since my library copy hasn't arrived yet. But one approach would be to note that democracy, at least as majority rule, doesn't promise individual liberty for minorities, of whatever stripe, religious, ethnic, political, gender, you name it. You need something like a constitution which validates minority rights, you need a judicial system which will enforce them, and you need a political culture which respects them. While all these may best flourish in something called democracies, they are not isomorphic with democracy.

To: skinowski who wrote (93580)	4/15/2003 10:47:38 AM
From: carranza2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Zakaria was on Charlie Rose last night. It is unfortunately delayed a day here in the boonies so much of what follows may be old news to most of you. Zakaria was excellent. Articulate, smart, incisive, etc. A real star. Made a few good points which on reflection should be obvious: 1.- Nations with a tremendous amount of natural resources are cursed because they discourage entrepreunership and breed corruption. He calls them "trust fund states." All of the oil rich states have the lowest growth rates in the world while countries which are resource-poor are generally much more successful. He named a few examples of the successful, of which Israel is the most salient example, to which I would have added 19th century Scotland, present day Finland, and a couple of others. The obvious losers are all of the ME oil states and Russia. 2.- Democracy in Iraq should follow a more or less Madisonian model, with US-style checks and balances in order not to permit the executive branch to take over and start the despotic cycle all over again.