{"id":2756,"date":"2002-12-30T14:25:33","date_gmt":"2002-12-30T14:25:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/staging.armedliberal.com\/?p=513"},"modified":"2002-12-30T14:25:33","modified_gmt":"2002-12-30T14:25:33","slug":"democracy-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=2756","title":{"rendered":"DEMOCRACY"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m working on a longer post about democracy (and the fact that we aren’t one, thankfully) and its history as a political concept in the West. but that’s going to take a while. and in the meantime I keep hearing people on both the Right and the Left say that the problems in the Third World stem from \u0091a lack of democracy\u0092, and that many problems, including the problems of Arab-Israeli conflict in the Middle East cannot be solved until the United States gets out of the way and \u0091supports democracy\u0092.
\nPeople keep using that word, but I do not think they really know what that word means\u0085
\nLook, democracy isn\u0092t like Vitamin D tablets, which we can airdrop into poor countries where rickets is prevalent. It\u0092s not a consumer product we can package up and export in shipping containers. Soldiers with guns and bombs can\u0092t enforce or create democracy. People who suggest that they can are simply ignorant of two or three thousand years of political history.
\nThe history of First World efforts to \u0091give things\u0092 to the Third World is fraught with examples where we\u0092ve taken something, plunked it down, and wondered why it didn\u0092t work.
\nWe might as well take a million Ducati 998 racing motorcycles and airdrop them into Afghanistan. They\u0092re fast and sexy, but out of the million, half a million won\u0092t be running in a year, and less than 10% in the year after that. It\u0092s not because the Afghans are mechanically ignorant; they are brilliant at improvising ad-hoc machining to make parts for, for example, guns. They self-manufacture clones of AK-47\u0092s and other weapons in artisan\u0092s shops.
\nBut to keep something as complex as a Ducati running implies a number of things; it implies a public infrastructure of smooth roads, synthetic oil, and premium gasoline. It implies a network of artisans trained in maintaining electronic fuel injection and desmodromic valve trains. It implies a supply of parts, from tires, which only last about 3,000 miles, to spark plugs, wires, bodywork, brake pads, etc. etc. etc.
\nThe product that we see\u0085the motorcycle\u0085is the visible peak of a complicated pyramid of relationships, skills, and assets.
\nAnd an industrial product such as a motorcycle is vastly less complex than the social, cultural, economic, and political systems necessary to stably and peacefully share political power among the citizens of a nation. You have, first of all, to have the concept of citizenship, which implies a concept of nation.
\nLook, this isn\u0092t some racist \u0091the wogs aren\u0092t ready for self-rule\u0092 position. Nor is it a \u0091the revolutionary vanguard must guide the lumpenproletariat\u0092 one. But I\u0092m frustrated at the shallowness of the commentators who casually toss off the notion that a Healthy Dose of Democracy will cure whatever ails folks. Democracy doesn\u0092t come in doses, and while I\u0092m positive that non-Western forms of democracy can bloom and thrive, I\u0092m also sure that they won\u0092t be created by fiat.
\nThis is an important issue, because within U.S. politics, the temptation to simply assume that we can help create foreign democracies where there are none of the cultural or political precursors is a \u0091cargo cult\u0092 that we must get beyond.
\nSo can we find another panacea?? Or better still, can we start thinking a bit harder about this and come up with something that might actually work?
\nBetter still, go read the The Federalist Papers<\/A> and then talk casually about how simple it is to ‘create democracy’…
\nUPDATE:<\/b> I swear<\/u> I hadn’t looked at OxBlog<\/a>, where David is apparently taking a contrary position. I’ll read him and follow his links when I get a chance, and we’ll see if he can change my mind. I’m dubious…
\n(fixed typos)
\n(Updated)<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m working on a longer post about democracy (and the fact that we aren’t one, thankfully) and its history as a political concept in the West. but that’s going to take a while. and in the meantime I keep hearing people on both the Right and the Left say that the problems in the Third […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2756"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2756\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}