New at Reason
Cathy Young wonders if 2007 will bring bad news for human freedom.
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Maybe, maybe not.
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Why should this year be different?
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All your freedom are belongs to us!
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I haven't even read the article yet and I know the answer is going to be resounding "yes."
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On the other hand, it could be no.
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Why the setbacks for freedom, which seemed to be on the rise around the world a decade ago?
Pointing out 3 countries - only 1 of which was a rising democracy 10 years ago - isn't exactly making a point here. Ignoring the rise of freedoms over that same decade in Asia, the Balkans and the Czech Republic is also interesting.
Once again, Cathy wastes a good premise for an article on a short, shallow analysis and a glib summation.
Future readers may understand why. -
If the number of countries surveyed is the measure of objectivity here, maybe you're right. But in the two places that Cathy is (quite understandably) most concerned about -- the US, and the old USSR -- things aren't looking so good.
But to the question:
Why the setbacks for freedom, which seemed to be on the rise around the world a decade ago?
Because nobody, us included these days, groks the root of the problem. If you don't make the Bill of Rights the unalterable central pillar of government, then democracy is just another form of tyrany.
The problem seems to be that if you grant the Bill of Rights its due, then you are giving people permission to think, say, do and live out things that you absolutely disagree with.
Most of us just can't stand the thought. Others, like the Russians, never had such thoughts. -
Once again, Cathy wastes a good premise for an article on a short, shallow analysis and a glib summation.
I've criticized Cathy myself for not bringing things to their conclusions. But this time I have to disagree with you.
This is not a simple question she asks. In the amount of space a news paper opinion column generally allots, I'm not sure it's possible to do anything that wouldn't be open to the "shallow analysis and a glib summation" criticizm. You could easily write books on this subject.
This is one time when I'd say the question better asked, and left unanswered, then never asked at all. -
Good points on both posts, Genghis. I am usually one to defend Cathy and have lately become a critic as she has switched tactics from the "on one hand...and on the other hand" approach to a much shorter snippet that makes no conclusions whatsoever.
I'm particularly interested in your point about the Bill Of Rights. I was thinking just yesterday that if we required all signatories of the U.N. to allow the First Ammendment in their societies, what a wonderful chance for change we might see throughout the world.
I while I understand the practical reasons given for not allowing constitutional protections to non-U.S. citizens, I can't help but think that making us a garantor of those protections for everyone in our influence would radically change our place in the world.
But what do I know...I'm just a crank. -
I wouldn't call Lebanon and Ukraine "false dawns."
Just because they didn't spart the "reverse domino effect" the neocons predicted, doesn't make them failures on their own terms. -
madpad,
I think we're somewhere near the same page. I like Cathy because she usually isn't afraid to ask the hard questions. But she seems to have a little bit of the Agnostic's Disease (i.e. inability to draw final conclusions).
I can't help but think that making us a garantor of those protections for everyone in our influence would radically change our place in the world.
That's an interesting idea that I'm going to think about some more. -
Just because they didn't spart the "reverse domino effect" the neocons predicted, doesn't make them failures on their own terms.
Geez joe, the last thing that was on my mind was neocons. I think they are best treated as Ayn Rand would have -- "I don't think about you."
The Russians and Lebanese nonetheless failed to reach the end zone, though you make a good point.
Achieving individual liberty requires the right combination of many, many different circumstances to all occur in the same place and at about the same time. Otherwise the end product is still born.
Americans have had the end product for so long, I think we generally take it for granted. We don't appreciate just how rare our freedoms are on historical scales. Or how very close we came, on so many occassions, to not having our freedoms after all.
This is an incredibly complex subject, and Cathy is right to hesitate before leaping.
Assuming, for example, that you have a bunch of rulers in a country who have the right ideology necessary for individual liberty -- how do you a) design, and b) implement, a beauracratic system that actually carries out your ideology?
Part of the problem is, that what works depends a lot on context and current conditions. What works for an agrarian society isn't going to work for a high tech industrial society. What works for a population of 25 million, probably won't work for a population 10X that size.
These are not small things. As a design engineer, I have always thought that the design and implementation of effective government institutions is the most complex design job the human race has ever tackled. -
Genghis,
There is no "end zone" for democracy. It's all journey, no destination. The day you think you can define the end of democratization is the day you cease to be a democrat.
When did the United States have the end product? When women got the vote? When the Voting Rights Act passed? After Miranda? In 100 years, Americans will snicker at our tyrannical barbarism, and wonder how people who asserted such high ideals could do X. (I can't even imagine what X is right now. That's the point.)
We are still very close to not having our freedoms - we need to always strive to liberate ourselves, or we become a tyranny. That's the way democracy is. We're never "there." -
Good points joe.
Democracies have been on the verge of doing something really stupid since the day they were born.
I guess, what I was trying to get at, is how you get "on the road" so to speak. Getting even that far seems to be pretty tough.