Is Democracy the Answer?
Reader comment on item: Defending and Advancing Freedom

Submitted by Reuben Horne (Australia), Nov 6, 2005 at 06:56

Dr Pipes,
Others who have not agreed with me in the past have touted George W Bush as a compassionate conservative to a mostly blind and left wing media mentally poisoned audience and I see much of that here - GW Bush under attack from those who have no solutions and would cause only greater problems with their philosophies of retreat and surrender. Nonetheless some of the things they say touch upon pertinent truths.

Democracy has acted as a catapult upon which we have shot many of our paradigms (both technological and cultural) ahead in the west. However we have maintained it under circumstances that have been deletoriously negative with unlegislated restictions on race and religion that have operated even within the shining jewel of democracy (America).

How much easier would it be then for muslims even within the paradigm of a democracy to maintain their destructive and violent prejudices against other religions or beliefs. Or to use Democracy's technical flexibility to create even more potent weapons both technical and political to assail our borders and our very selves. Turkey after its internal democratisation moved to commit massacres such as the Armenian genocide that other Islamic powers would struggle (at least in recent times) to live up to if bent against the aforementioned in a perverse comparative atrocity contest.

Attack the cancer at its source. Irresposible and unmerited violent expansion at the expense of all can occur within the context of a democracy - and has been used ultimately to supplant democracy. Look at the ineptitude of the French in answering the multicultural catastrophe they have brought into existence through their own stupidity. It is darkly humorous after their PC digs at G W Bush through a recent ressurrected Asterix cartoon in which the Americans were portrayed as Mickey Mouse resembling invaders in Iraq (I wonder what the invaders in their own country will be drawn like in 20 odd years - possibly not at all since they may very well be running the place).

I can recall the confident words of a Muslim immigrant referring to her own philosophy's ability to convert whatever paradigm it encounters to suit its own purposes in reaffirming the belief that the western country she had migrated to would be "her" own within a few decades. "Her" own but not "my" own.

In short adding a democracy to the Middle East may just be adding another weapon to an inevitable enemies arsenal. My own solution: instead of engagement - isolation, instead of aid - starvation and instead of dialogue - time out. Give Islam a few decades or even centuries on its own to contemplate itself and see what conclusions it reaches - we might be surprised. Already the Pakistanis are on track to a few hard truths: they dance in the streets when we are bombed and killed and yet now have misgivings when they don't recieve enough aid in the light of their earthquake. All they need to establish is a connection between the two and they will have centuries more insight into their actions relative to any other Islamic country.

Cordially,
Reuben Horne.

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