Democracy And The Modern Left.

Glenn Reynolds, along with several readers and a blogger with a fine sense of history's irony respond to Sylvester Brown of the St. Louis Dispatch (follow the links). Brown has been beating the WMD drum and has been called on his selective memory. This is a losing issue for the Democrats and for liberals at large who care about the direction of the country. As Glenn rightly points out, the US has not imposed democracy, but cleared the way for it to blossom.

I was talking recently to a very smart, worldly, liberal social scientist who was dead set against the Iraq invasion. Even as things get better over there, she still contends that it was wrong to go in. To her credit, she has for the most part dropped the WMD canard (and thanks to Glenn and Google I am armed just in case it comes back up) but what struck me as most interesting, and in many ways troubling, was her remark that democracy wasn't really the best option all the time.

I was taken aback because I always consider democracy the default, although as a pragmatist I acknowledge that there generally must be steps to follow to democratic governance that don't necessarily add up to purists.

My friend illustrates the current thinking of modern leftists and a substantial majority of sociologists and academics. Whereas, in the days of Ferdinand Marcos and Augusto Pinochet the push from the left was for democracy over right-wing dictators, today, in response to a democratic groundswell in former Soviet satellites and Marxist-Stalinist states the position is that we should just mind our own business. Why? Because they are unable (as the right was unable with their own embarrassments) or unwilling to come to terms with their tacit support of leftist dictatorships. But in my view, a dictator is a dictator. And it shouldn't be so hard to acknowledge that someone or "your side" just might have screwed things up.

I was in favor of NATO going into Kosovo. I was an admirer of Sting when he was forbidden to travel to Chile for his promotion of Pinochet's "disappeareds." Today, I'm blogging here with special interest in democratic revolution breaking out around the globe. I feel that at least, I'm supporting the rights of people to rule themselves no matter who they are moving against, right-wing or left-wing. Unfortunately, the modern left has abandoned its principles and values in service to a discredited ideology. That abandonment is illustrated in Mr. Brown's selective memory and the convoluted reasoning for the left's opposition to the Iraq war.

When I talk with my lefty friends about Ukraine and Georgia, Afghanistan and Iraq and now Lebanon, they uncontrollably adopt a look of dismay and discomfort as if they know that what is happening is good, but find themselves constitutionally unable to admit that the US can do anything to promote human rights. The conversation always comes down to the same point: democracy suddenly is not the be-all and end-all because Bush is promoting democracy and that just messes with their heads.

They will cite past support for right-wing dictators, which I freely acknowledge, and bring up Florida and Ohio as examples that the US is a sham democracy and a "dictatorship." The greater irony of freely railing against the "dictator" in DC is lost on them. In true dictatorships, they would just be taken away. In America, they will be given tenure.

It is ironic that the same people who faulted Ronald Reagan for looking past Pinochet fault George Bush for looking straight at Saddam and doing something about it.

Comments

[Mark Rauterkus]

When "democracy" is in such a worn and abused state, here in the US, it is hard to really want to press for it elsewhere. We need to clean up our democratic institutions and ways here. Then, the excitement will return. Heck, three counties in PA have voting machines that were not able to be "certified" to be "accurate." Why be excited about democracy?

I'm in a race now with two others who are spending more than $1-million to get a job that pays $90K or so. How smart is that? How silly have we let the system become. Lobby efforts are wild.

Once we can take back our democracy -- then we can migrate to the next discussion, 'liberty.'

[Daniel]

Mark,

You will not find me holding PA politics up as a shining example. We are just this side of Chicago and South Florida when it comes to political malfeasance. You are right: democracy is worn, especially here in Allegheny county where the Democrats have had a choke hold on government for decades. So your complaint should be with your local officials who have forced government into an ossified one party rule. So here, it is the Democrats who have abused democracy.

[will]

up here in canada we keep hearing about this democracy thing .where can we signup?

[Daniel]

Hey the club is open. I here that they're starting a chapter in Beirut. A lot warmer than Canada.