Quote:
Originally posted by Roguish Lawyer
I will make one comment, which may be a bit of a tangent:
Democracy isn't all that. In our system, the principles of individual rights and limited government are, IMO, much more important than democracy. You can have a completely tyrranical democratic government IMO.
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Mmmm. First of all, I don't think we have a democracy, I think we have a republic. Not that its a bad thing. If we had a true democracy, a porn star could be governor of California.
The question here appears to be can any representative form of government be exported to a place such as Iraq. And I think its an excellent question.
Has it ever worked and then be exported? Where? Are the Iraqis capable of managing the individual responsibility that goes along with choosing leaders, given their past history and current culture?
I'm not sure that totalitarian dictatoship to democratic republic in one step will work. We prepare our citizens from about age 6 to vote. Civics and history classes, open access to the internet where every topic is dicussed in detail, etc. And there are still people that vote for the likes of Howard Dean.
Another question - what's the literacy rate among the majority in Iraq? If they can't read, how are they going to grasp an abstract concept like democracy? A constitution? IMO, the reasons the recent referendum in Colombia were voted down were: Too many complicated points to understand, there were 14 in all. Most of the people in the rural areas can't read at a level sufficient enough to cut through the legalese in a bill written by constitutional lawyers in the capital.
So if the vast majority can't read or understand it, how can it represent them? Isn't it the duty of the leaders to either raise them to the level of sophistication they can understand it as well as the lawyers or to write the bill in language simple enough for the average citizen to understand?
To me, not understanding what one if voting for (through no fault of the voter) is worse than not being allowed to vote.
In order to participate in as complicated a process as governing a nation, I think people have to be prepared, their tool boxes filled with tools as it were. To me, this is one of the greatest failings of the US education system and a disaster waiting to happen in Iraq. One man one vote is a noble idea, but it rarely means one educated man one good vote. For example, a lot of dems now seem to be chossing their candidate on who has the best chance to beat POTUS - not what they stand for, who the best man is, etc. If that's the case in the US, what can we expect in Iraq with all the factors and factions there?
I would say no, in this case. Democracy cannot be exported to Iraq in the near term and maybe never. Perhaps what we should look for is something more repsentative than what they had and be happy with getting them to not sponsor terrorism.