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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dale Baker who wrote (114513)	7/3/2009 1:36:36 PM
From: cosmicforce	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541791

I agree that we have done better in Latin America, but I think we've missed a number of opportunities. Democracy isn't an intrinsically good thing. That statement doesn't mean I'm a commie. What it means is that "without judgment, deliberation, respect for minority rights and the institutions that assure this" democracy is no different than an angry mob. If we were to have a plebiscite on genital mutilation in much of sub-Saharan Africa, we'd have some outcome similar to Prop 8 in California on gay marriage. My son and I were discussing a correspondence between Voltaire and Catherine the Great. Voltaire called Catherine to task about why she wasn't a supporter of democratic change in her country. She indicated (rightly so IMO, given the times in Russia) that her people were not educated enough to live in a democracy and that she could implement more change faster without creating the risk of demagoguery and plunging into mob rule. Elevating people and making sure they are educated well is a more important task than giving them a democracy IMO. In our own history we can find examples of purchased democracy. Flows of immigrants and their votes assured that folks in Tammany Hall became the seat of government with promises of jobs in exchange for votes. Similarly, in poor countries, democracy ofttimes becomes a straight jacket of dependency upon an oligarchy