Excellent -if tangental- responses, but fundamentally...
I'm feeling stretched pretty thin. Based upon my post yesterday, I've been defending my ideas here, here, here and most recently here. And we've certainly gotten into all kinds of discussion ranging from waging the dog to murder. One thing that keeps coming up with gurufrisbee and r.johnson is this idea that America "must recognize that [democracy is the best form of government] are the views or ideals we hold, and the rest of the world may not hold the same views."I guess I'm confused. Is the argument against intervention that living under a dictatorship is better than living in a democracy?
I'm not and haven't ever argued for an American system of democracy. If Iraq wants to be more British or Israeli or Swiss I don't care. I assume they will formulate some sort of Constitutional Theocracy that will be a synthesis of Western Democracies and Middle-Eastern culture.
Let's boil the question down even further...Is it better to live in a society where its citizens have no say in how they are ruled or a society where its citizens have the final say in how they are ruled?
That is the fundamental question. I believe the only possible answer is the latter. If you respond with, "it depends..." our conversation will go nowhere because we have different values and no matter of debate is going to convince me that living in a dictatorship is equal to or better than a democracy in any situation.
posted by Expat Teacher @ 12:18 PM
