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

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (106069)	7/17/2003 3:52:43 PM
From: epicure	Respond to of 281500

If you study the revolution in this country, you will find that in the North, where literacy rates were higher, democratic principles were more zealously held. The South had poor rates of literacy- as did England. England's literacy rates for the period in which the revolution took place were pretty abysmal. Of course that is only a correlation it doesn't prove anything (the South had closer ties to England after all, and a more stratified English-type society)- but we DO know what people in the Northern states were reading- and they were reading about politics and political theory. India is a tough case- because there is so much variety in India. I note how VERY literate their urban population is, though- censusindia.net 81% for urban males. Iraq used to have (or claimed to have) literacy rates of about 80% for men (if I recall correctly) they are under 60% now- and I don't know what their urban literacy rate is. Of course if you remember the amazingly bloody birth of Indian democracy and self rule I'm not sure we want to hold them up as a model for Iraq to follow- although neither do I wish to criticize them. I simply think that if we see partition and blood baths in Iraq our US citizens will think of Iraq as something of a failure. I know that is something of a tangent- but your post got me thinking about the birth of India, and how painful that birth was for many Indians. Since the US is the midwife for the birth of a new nation in Iraq, we will get the blame for the baby, if it turns out to be damaged.