Democracy Without Liberty

Yes, you can have democracy without liberty. Germany 1933 also comes to mind (though it wasn't exactly a democracy, but...). But you cannot have liberty without democracy, either. In theory you could, but this would what is called in physics an "unstable system" -- the situation would very easily deviate into tyranny. So although your point is valid, Ed, there is nothing we can do about it except for instituting an Enlightenment-style "enlightened authoritarianism" in both countries, which absolutely won't work in this age. The only chance is that those nations themselves grow up and decide to have liberty, not religious tyranny. We can help them by encouraging and educating their people, but we won't force them to make the transition.

I agree that, ultimately, democracy is necessary if liberty is to last. However, enlightened authoritarianism can be effective and the US had the option of imposing liberty on the Iraqi & Afghani constitutions. Of course, that imposition would have been largely unwelcome and may not have held. However, once we chose the path of nation-building, the imposition of liberty was our obligation. Otherwise, why did we get involved? This is a powerful argument for why we should not have pursued nation building with these countries. They are simply not ready for it.

"But in both cases, with wide public support, the constitutions also allow for the imposition of Sharia, or Islamic law, and that insures that no matter how democratic the governments there will be genuine freedom."

Typo Alert: you mean "... no matter how democratic the governments there will be NO genuine freedom."

For a great read on this topic see Fareed Zakaria's "The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad".

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0007XAW76/sr=8-1/qid=1143063777/ref=p…

that insures that no matter how democratic the governments there will be genuine freedom. <\blockquote>

Small point, I think you meant to type 'will NOT be genuine freedom'.

With all the references to 'spreading democracy' in countless presidential speeches, I wondered what the reaction would be if the voters in Iraq and Afghanistan elected a government that essentially will run the country much like it did before the invasions. Obviously the US wouldn't approve, but it would at least give the Administration a chance to demonstrate if we are truly committed to democracy in those countries even if we don't like whom they elect.

On NPR ATC yesterday they featured a courageous young woman who refused to wear a headscarf in Basra. She was afraid for her safety. People no longer have music at weddings there because of fear, and there is only one store that still sells CD's.

Note the "no longers." People had much more of this kind of personal freedom under Saddam.

Democracy on the March!

I have yet to hear Bush comment on this trial. Has anyone else? You would think a guy who wears his Christianity on his sleeve and claims God wanted him to be president would be up in arms over this.

Otherwise, why did we get involved? This is a powerful argument for why we should not have pursued nation building with these countries. They are simply not ready for it.

Nothing like a good dictatorship to prepare a nation for democracy, eh?

Without toppling Saddam there would be no hope of them learning how to be free. Nobody said nation building is easy. In post-Nazi Germany, there was a developed political culture to fall back on. In Iraq it isn't. There must be a new one. If they have to go through a period of struggle and chaos, so be it. If they have to go through a period of immature religious authoritarianism, so be it. This is still infinitely better than having one man order the whole country around. The role of the West is to put pressure on them to steer them in the right direction. Don't tell me this can't be done. Iraq depends on the US help. This is a motivator which could be used for this purpose. The question is, is the US willing to use it?

Roman-

We imposed not only a democracy on Japan, but also a constitution that included serious protections for liberty. And Japan was no better prepared after centuries of living under an emperor that they considered a living God than the Iraqis are for it. If we're going to go in there and impose a democracy that they have never had, we should at least have also imposed serious protections for liberty. To exchange dictatorial tyranny for democratic tyranny is no advance at all.

Ed,

if the US beat Iraqis in the ground on the WW II scale (hundreds of thousands dead), they'd accept any constitution you would like to impose on them. But this was a "luxury" you could not afford now.

Liberty is never a luxury. If we were just going to put in place a democratic tyranny, we should have stayed home.

Ed, by "luxury" I mean - ironically - killing so many civilians.

Poor people don't care about liberty, they have much more pressing matters, namely surviving the day. I believe it was the slavophiles that offered a strategy to end serfdom in Russia that was rejected by serfs because it didn't include a plan for redistribution of land. They too didn't start to ask for freedom until a middle class began to develop in the early 50s.

What Iraq and Afghanistan, and many other oppressive countries in the world for that matter, need is economic development. Which means we might need to think about taking the next to nil "risk" of giving financial deals to countries who happen to have arab in their title.

This is exactly why we had no business going into Iraq in the first place, aside from the alterior damage it did to our foreign relations. We, in our arrogence assume that every country, every people in the world, want and are ready for democracy. Iran is a "democracy" yet they are also one of the most oppressive nations in the world. The people of Iran take their politics pretty seriously and a huge percentage of the population that is allowed to vote does. The problem lies in the constitution that puts sharia law above secular law.

Another nation that has major problems with their democracy is Russia. Russians as a people believe in a government that has a lot of power over their lives. Thus they are rushing headlong into fascism.

I was talking with my roomate just last night about the fact that Americans are raised to believe in democracy and the American way of life with a near religious fervor. It makes a lot of sense that we would believe that everyone in the world should live the way that we do. I would like to think that eventualy everyone will live the way we should, were we living in a true democracy ourselves rather than this republicratic facsimile of democracy. I would go as far as to say that it would be far more convincing if we did practice what we preach. It would also likely be more palatable if we got the fanaticism out of our democratic evangelism.

I was just going to mention Japan myself. Yes, it was a different situation, in that they were more worn down, but at least as large a difference is that we had our heads somewhere far less rectal than the place they were when we went into Iraq. We dropped the friggin' BOMB on Japan, and we still knew the nation-building was going to take years.

This organic manure of thinking we can waltz in and out in a matter of weeks and everything will be both hunky and dory was such an absurdity I find it hard to believe even the administration believed it.

Matthew: I believe it was the slavophiles that offered a strategy to end serfdom in Russia that was rejected by serfs because it didn't include a plan for redistribution of land. They too didn't start to ask for freedom until a middle class began to develop in the early 50s.

Exactly when were the Russian serfs in a position to accept or reject anything? Ditto for the middle class (I assume you are speaking about XIXth-century "50s", since in 1950 there was virtually no middle class in the USSR). It was all at the Tzar's whim.

Ed: If we were just going to put in place a democratic tyranny, we should have stayed home.

"Democratic tyranny" is the only chance for liberty they have. With Saddam in place there would be zero probability of liberty. Now there is a non-zero probability. Do not expect or demand everything going from bad to good in an instant.

If they have to go through a period of immature religious authoritarianism, so be it. This is still infinitely better than having one man order the whole country around.

Is Iran closer to freedom then, with its mature (or over-ripe?) religious authoritarianism?

And: This is still infinitely better than having one man order the whole country around.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Marshal Pilsudski more or less ordering the whole Poland around in his time? Still we wouldn't say that any other form of government would have been "infinitely better". Or is it all right if the dictator is benevolent?

Roman wrote:

"Democratic tyranny" is the only chance for liberty they have. With Saddam in place there would be zero probability of liberty. Now there is a non-zero probability. Do not expect or demand everything going from bad to good in an instant.

Let me show you a long quote from Bostom's article that may sound eerily familiar:

Iraq is moving steadily forward towards the modern conception of the State, with a single judicial and legislative system, unaffected by considerations of religion or nationality. The Millet system (i.e., the system of Ottoman dhimmitude), still survives but its scope is definitely limited. Even the Assyrian tragedy (a brutal series of murderous pogroms during which Iraqi Kurdish and Arab Muslims killed thousands of Assyrian Christians) of 1933 does not shake our faith in the essential progress that has been made. The Government is endeavoring to carry out faithfully the undertakings it has given, even when these run directly counter to the long cherished provisions of the Shari'a Law. But it is not easy; it cannot be easy in the very nature of the case, for the common people quickly to adjust their minds to the new legal situation, and to eradicate from their outlook the results covering many centuries of a system which implies the superiority of Islam over the non-Moslem minority groups. The legal guarantees of liberty and equality represent the goal towards which country is moving, rather than the expression of the present thoughts and wishes of the population. The movement, however, is in the right direction, and it may yet prove possible for Islam to disentangle religious faith from political status and privilege.

Was that said by a Bush administration official? A supporter of the war in Iraq? Nope. It was said by a British analyst named S.A. Morrison. In 1935, after the last long Western occupation of Iraq. The result, as Bostom points out, was a massacre of Assyrian Christians and a pogrom against Jews in 1941. 70 years later, we're still talking about some alleged progress that has never taken place.

I ask this not out of snarkiness, or trying to prove a point, or posturing, which I get the feeling is what 99% of posts overall are. I ask for the simple reason that I don't know the answer and I'd like to learn something.

So my question regards this statement by Roman:

...you cannot have liberty without democracy.

Is that generally regarded as true?

"Is that generally regarded as true?"

I'm not sure if that's true. I know that you can have 1) economic liberties, property rights, and a well-working capitalist system without democracy. There are many "authoritarian" examples from Asia, and to a lesser extent South America that demonstrate this.

However, these "authoritarian" nations, like Singapore, don't really respect personal liberties like liberal democracies do.

For a long time Hong Kong was free not only economically but also with regard to personal liberties, all the while being a British Colony. (I don't know how to describe Hong Kong now that they've come under China's rule.) But they were a colony of post-Colonial liberal democratic Britain. So even if they weren't directly a liberal democracy, they may have been an "indirect" liberal democracy.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Marshal Pilsudski more or less ordering the whole Poland around in his time?

To some extent, yes. He didn't have unlimited powers like Saddam and he wasn't a brutal sadist like Saddam. In fact, he was a very wise man. I stand corrected: I should've said "is infinitely better than having a brutal sadist ordering the whole country around".

Ed: 70 years later, we're still talking about some alleged progress that has never taken place.

Nice quote. However, we are 70 years older AND the democracy has become far more popular than in the old times. Please remember, that 70 years ago women did not have the right to vote in many Western countries...

Or should we rather decide that Islam is utterly and hopelessly incompatible with democracy and liberty? Turkey is a counterexample.

Roman wrote:

Nice quote. However, we are 70 years older AND the democracy has become far more popular than in the old times. Please remember, that 70 years ago women did not have the right to vote in many Western countries...

It doesn't matter what we in teh West think; it matters what the people in Iraq think. The dominant ideology there hasn't changed at all in 70 years.

Or should we rather decide that Islam is utterly and hopelessly incompatible with democracy and liberty?

We should certainly recognize that radical Islam is utterly and hopelessly incompatible with liberty (not necessarily democracy, as is being demonstrated currently in Iraq). But again, democracy and liberty are not the same thing and are often in conflict. Tyrannical laws can be passed by a democratic government just as easily as they can be decreed by a dictator. As long as the people of Iraq choose to impose sharia law, there is no freedom there - and it doesn't matter if 99% of Iraqis want sharia to be imposed.

Ericnh stated "I have yet to hear Bush comment on this trial. Has anyone else? You would think a guy who wears his Christianity on his sleeve and claims God wanted him to be president would be up in arms over this"

He mentioned it yesterday in his speech in West Virginia. Something about working with the Afghan government to ensure freedom, etc. Based upon some MSM reports that the Afghans are looking for a way out of the situation, and thus have explored the "he might not be sane" angle, it appears there may be some back channel pressure coming from the Bush administration.

Regarding the Sistani anit-gay comments, Juan Cole did a pretty thorough examination on Sunday, explaining the various Sistani fatwas on the subject, as well as an analysis of the Islamic historical perspectives.

Democracy as the epitome of good government is largely a romantic fallacy. You can't exactly classify it as good or evil in the sense you can't classficy a gun as being good or evil. It is a tool of government, much like a dictatorship is and can be benevolent or malevolent depending on the level of enlightenment. The advantage of a dictatorship government is that you only need 1 enlightened being to rule in order to have a significant level of liberty; whereas in a democracy, you need more than 50% of the population to be enlightened. Hence why it is so easy to compare a democracy to 2 wolves and 1 sheep voting on what(who)'s for dinner.

The realization of (individual) liberty is a sign of enlightenment and I venture it is not something that can be forced upon a people through conquest. It is something that must be realized by a people through the sacrifice of blood and the lives of many generations and those that do not come to the realization of liberty are doomed to have their civilization implode eventually, contrary to whatever you may have heard postulated by Tocqueville. Equality is perhaps the cornerstone of democracy, not liberty, for a people may be content in a democracy where they are equal to their fellow man in whichever level of liberty is granted - whether it be freedom or slavery.

But again, democracy and liberty are not the same thing and are often in conflict.

The degree of it depends on what you mean by democracy. Democracy means to me open and fair elections, with each party able to promote this agenda. This means unrestricted freedom of speech, freedom of economical activity, respect for private property -- i.e. liberty. If any of this is missing, the government will use the deficit of freedom to stifle opposition, and you don't have democratical elections.

.. democracy means to me ALSO open and fair elections...

Roman-

You're inventing a new definition of democracy. Democracy simply means that control of the government rests, directly or indirectly, with the citizens of the country. If a majority of the people vote to ban property rights, for example, they can do so. Our system is not a pure democracy, it is a democracy with built-in protections for liberty. The founders did this quite intentionally because they knew that pure democracy would lead to tyranny just as surely as a monarchy would. They built in multiple layers of barriers to protect liberty from democracy.

The problem is that liberty is not a light switch; it's not either on or off. So imposing liberty will necessarily mean imposing your concept of liberty, your hierarchy of which liberties are most important, which would be an extreme violation of the right to self determination. You used Japan as an example, but Japan discriminates against all non ethnically pure Japanese. Including hundreds of thousands of Koreans who have lived in Japan their entire lives because their parents and grandparents were brought over for slave labor; yet they are not given citizenship rights. So the question would always be which liberties are protected and which are not. Would you ensure the freedom and equality for religion but not sexual orientation? Economic liberties are an even more troubling matter when it comes to imposition.