Today’s Topic: The One Reason Democracy Worked In America
During the beginning of the Bush administration’s reign I had succumbed to political debates on a group full of recording engineers, and along with others, we totally lacked respect for the people and concepts for which the newsgroup was founded. To those whom might still read these blogs, I apologize. I already did so on RAP, buuuuuttttt...
It's too bad because some of my best writing was on that board. Perhaps one of these days I’ll go through an extensive Google search and recover some of them.
But the one thing I couldn’t make some people understand is that democracy is something that has to be earned. Democracy cannot be given nor forced.
I spoke at length about thousands of years of culture and the reticence of a people to change their traditions. Democracy only means something to those who want it. Democracy means nothing to people whose lives run in either a clan or a feudal system. Even though we are in the 21st Century, there are more people in the world who place clan higher than regional concerns, and regional concerns higher than national. This is not a recipe for democracy.
Some people tried to yell me down with statements that I was wrong because everybody wants democracy, but we’ve seen that this is not true over the past 5 years.
And we’ve seen it even more in the problems presented by President Musharraf’s total takeover of Pakistan when the possibility of a real democracy was drawing nearer every day.
Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto returned from exile just recently and I turned to my wife and told her that Bhutto would be killed in a month. Within slightly over a week a massive attempt on her life left a lot of people dead and over one hundred injured. Fortunately Prime Minister Bhutto lived to be bombed or shot to death another day.
Whether Musharraf had any compliticy with the attempt on a political opponent is irrelevant for the purpose of this blog, although one only has to look at who would benefit from just such an assassination to point the finger.
No, what the assassination attempt really points to is the fact that most countries who have lived with a feudalistic system aren’t going to go quietly or quickly into a democracy where those in charge automatically lose their power.
And power is the key. Power is the reason that democracy was fought for in America, and why societies who already have an existing major power structure thousands of years old are not good candidates for democracy.
So let’s get started.
First, there will never be a democratic government born from a federal government imposed upon the people by force and personal power. The lesson from Iraq should be the recognition of a failure to foist democracy upon a country that never had democracy. Hell, if you take Iraqi society down to the family unit you’ll find the most basic of systems that only allows one person the power over the family. By both thousands of years as mostly nomadic tribes the family was ruled by the father or elder. In terms of moving slightly up the ladder, power was vested in the most successful of the clan. Some despotic clans certainly followed a leader more incline towards those actions defined by being despotic, but overall clans moved in groups or founded small areas within a village, township or city. The question of having a centralized power structure never enters the mind.
This is why the only federal power recognized is that which is consolidated by the most nefarious of individuals. Not throughout history, but certainly throughout the past 100 years. There are some differences in the last 50 years between Iraq and Iran, but this is not due to the fact that America interfered with both countries somewhere along the way. However the results were virtually identical in the consolidation of power through internal force and intimidation virtually eliminating the possibility of democracy coming from outside force.
Saddam took power by subterfuge and in doing so ordered the assassination of numerous allies and foes alike. On the other hand, Iran had an elected government of which the CIA designed the overthrow, thereby instituting the regime of the Shah. The coalescence of a number of events came about that allowed Ayatollah Komeini to move into a position of power and quickly sublimating a student revolt into an Islamic revolt. Initially students chose to invade the American Embassy with the expressed purpose of exposing the CIA’s actions in perpetrating a coup upon their then newly formed democracy. Unfortunately all the Americans had not left yet, hoping to shred all the information the students were seeking. Their detainment by the students became an international incident because of the Ayatollah’s quick consolidation of power, encapsulating the students revolt and rendering it meaningless. It is interesting that such an Islamic state can base their existence upon a student movement they so quickly discarded. That movement still exists today and is what gives American politicians hope that regime change can work in Iran.
America’s politicians are wrong. The fact that a country could be so easily overcome by a few Islamic Imams means that Iran is no more ready for democracy than are Iraq or Pakistan.
The people (any people) have to overcome the hurtles, make the scary decisions and thrust themselves upon the sword of fortune for the sake of their goal. In today's world, only those who die for a winning cause get statues. But it's always the masses that raise them up.
The Founding Fathers did not have quite the same problems at home as do these countries with thousands of years of cultural and societal historical precedence.
In the first place, there was a loose association of individual colonies inhabited largely by people from similar backgrounds but of mostly different religious bents. The colonies themselves were payment from England’s monarch of the time for loyalty or promised riches or both. None of the ruling class was present in the colonies, only those people deputized by virtue of their affiliations or speculation of profit.
I like to compare it to what WILL happen if humans go to Mars to live. Ultimately Earth will be of no consequence to the "Martians" and they will develop a system of government that fits their circumstance in their own timeframe. The sheer expense of militarily enforcing Earth's rule will equate to King George's inability to send enough troops in a reasonable time to maintain the status quo. And the best a foreign invader is going to get is to maintain the status quo, whatever that status may be. The fact that this administration would like to explore and then establish a colony on Mars means that there will be a Martian Revolution and Earth will loose. The fact is as plain as the nose on anyone's face. But I digress.
The Founding Fathers realized that they faced an imposed loyalty to an aristocracy across a vast ocean whose only desire was to have empire and extract taxes and riches from the New World. The fact that they could also send the least desirable across the ocean was not lost on them. Pennsylvania was established as a debtor’s colony. Enough said.
Obviously the concept of loyalty to the Crown was enough to maintain the status quo for a generation or so, but ultimately families began to have history in the colonies and real ties to the network of communities. Travel between colonies was prevalent, familial relations established, and as such presented opportunities for people talking and expressing qualms about English rule to become widespread. After all, America in it’s colonial form was essentially self sustaining, protected not by the Crown but by the people, and in the end the idea of autonomy would not be held back.
The only real positives in the establishment of America as a democracy were 1) having a basis in law of a level of democracy as defined in the Magna Carta, and 2) the desire to decide the fate of the colonies without what was then considered outside interference.
A major problem with our history books is that they describe an environment where dissent against the Crown was prevalent amongst the population. Nothing could be further from the truth. The average person held no particular desire to fight for their freedom from the Crown during the years prior to the beginning of the American Revolution. In fact, at the beginning of the war Revolutionary forces were roughly equal to the minimal British garrisoned troops.
Yet the ideas spread bolstered by the news of the struggle for American autonomy, and soon many came to support the effort.
A hard fought war supported by France in a largely a monetary and passive assistance ended up giving the Founding Fathers a clean slate to work with in building the government of the United States of America. Democracy didn’t spring into existence, it was earned day by day for 13 years, specifying from the Declaration of Independence until final ratification of the new Constitution. Democracy was earned by the sweat and tears and blood and intellect of a people set in their resolve to establish a government where their voices would be heard.
Had the colonists been of a more cohesive group either in religion or philosophy in the initial stages of establishing the colonies, the American Revolution may well have been postponed for another 50 years, if ever. However, the likelihood was pretty small because the newest generations of colonist had never really known England or truly been a part of a monarchy. Like the future Mars colonists will cut their ties with Earth, America cut it’s ties with England because an absentee landlord will never understand your problems and they still want the full rent. Even this may be fine, but once they do nothing to alleviate the problems and raise the rent, what can you expect?
Iraq is currently under the domination of a landlord who keeps raising the rent without fixing any of the problems. How not that the people descend to such a level each person could not reach alone? How not that a 1500 year old war between Sunni and Shi'ite would erupt when no government was there to contain them?
Iraq may well earn it’s democracy if that is what the Iraqi people really want, but they will do it by expelling American troops from their soil so that they may make the decisions needed, not the hand picked American puppets.
So if America really wants to spread democracy around the world then the government needs to learn the value of a people’s society and culture. The only thing that happens at the end of a gun is death, not democracy and certainly not freedom.
It is not possible to kill enough Iraqi people to make them accept democracy, and those of other countries who have the power without democracy will never give it up to become democratic.
12:24:01 PM 
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