Democracy and Freedom

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In the thread "Where is the US Economy Headed" Ragman and Okie are having a spirited discussion regarding Iraq, and America's role in the World. Instead of joining in there, I thought I would start a new thread regarding the universality of freedom and democracy.

In the book "The Case for Democracy" Natan Sharansky makes a spirited case that all peoples desire freedom and democracy. However, I ask you to also consider French economic historian Fernand Braudel. On page 250 of "Memory and the Mediterranean" is described what happened culturally in the Middle East after the seventh century Muslim conquest:

"after ten centuries, at one stroke of the Arab scimitar, everything collapsed overnight: Greek language and thought, western patterns of living, everything went up in smoke. On this territory, a thousand years of history were as if they had never been. They had not been sufficient for the west to put down the slightest roots in this oriental soil. The Greek language and social customs had been no more than a layer. a poorly fitting mask. All the Greek cities which had been founded and grown up, from the banks of the Nile to the Hindu Kush, any real or apparent implantation of Greek art and philosophy, all of it had gone with the wind".

What do you think? Is there a universal human desire for freedom and democracy, or are the cultural differences simply too great? Are the arguments that it was never really believed that democracy could take hold in Japan after 1945, so likewise it can also take root elsewhere valid? Or are we squandering our money and the lives of our soldiers in a hopeless quest around the world?

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Here's a very sketchy brief note..so my apology in advance: Comparing Iraq and Afghanistan to post WWII Japan is an ill fit or do you disagree?

It might be said after being conquered that Japan's 'national personality characteristics' after WWII was to emulate USA and Western culture.

Current history of Iraq is (and was) hardly a cohesive nation and the same can be said for AAfghanistan.

I think the Western nations' concept of what makes up a nation (much less what is a democracy) is far different than what exists in Iraq, Iran or Afghanistan.

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Ragman - of course the culture in Japan in 1945 was completely different to the cultures in present day Iraq and Afghanistan. I think the point Sharansky was trying to make was that the culture of Japan in 1945 was also very different from western culture at that point, and yet our concepts of freedom and democracy were able to take hold there. And if these concepts can take hold in one very different culture, then why not in another very different culture?

I do not have an axe to grind in this issue. I honestly do not know the answer. But here is a related question - if it is unreasonable to expect the culture of an entire nation to change, then is it equally unreasonable to expect individual people to change their culture? If an Iraqi were to immigrate to the United States, would you expect him to accept the concepts of freedom and democracy? Is the willingness to immigrate an indication of the willingness to accept the culture of the nation one is immigrating to? And if it is unreasonable to expect an immigrant to accept much of the culture of the host country, then why should the host country accept that immigrant?

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Jim wrote:

Ragman - of course the culture in Japan in 1945 was completely different to the cultures in present day Iraq and Afghanistan.

As was even more the Mediterranean area in Philip II's times, to which Braudel refers.

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Walter - Braudel (in the posted passage) was referring to the 1000 years beginning with the Greek conquest of the Middle East by Alexander the Great (the beginning of western culture in the area) and ending with the Muslim conquest in the seventh century AD (the end of western domination in the area).

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oops - I'd thought you were referring to his La Méditerranée et le Monde Méditerranéen a l'époque de Philippe

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Walter - I've wanted to read that for some time now, but just haven't had the time.

A friend gave me Braudel's "A History of Civilizations" for Christmas - it's next in the queue.

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To be honest: I didn't read all of it - only quoted a bit for an exam work (ages ago) :wink:

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Re: Democracy and Freedom

Jim wrote:

"after ten centuries, at one stroke of the Arab scimitar, everything collapsed overnight: Greek language and thought, western patterns of living, everything went up in smoke.

Yes and no.

The Moslem conquerors didn't want to learn Greek, the language of their newly conquered subjects. This meant that Moslems couldn't manage their new territories. For this reason they retained the existing Byzantine bureaucrats. The bureaucrats continued to use Greek in order to manage society and then learned Arabic to communicate with their new Moslem masters. It was least a generation before Arabic supplanted Greek in the former Byzantine regions of the Islamic empire.

Furthermore, when the Moslems finally conquered Byzantium and invaded the Balkan Peninsula, the Greek speakers there continued to use Greek. Arabic never replaced Greek in the Balkans the way it had in North Africa and the Holy Land. Modern day Greeks can read the New Testament in its original Koine Greek form. I gather that the English of the King James Bible and modern day speakers is more dissimilar than modern Greek and Koine are.

Historians generally credit the Moslems with preserving Greco-Roman knowledge by translating Greek documents into Arabic which were acquired by crusaders who transferred this Greco-Roman knowledge to Western Europe, thus laying the intellectual foundation for the Renaissance. Considering that the Byzantines never gave up Greek, it is likely that the crusaders could have gotten the same information from the Byzantines rather than the Moslems.

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What do you think? Is there a universal human desire for freedom and democracy, or are the cultural differences simply too great?

The only people that are inherently suitable for democracy are the British and Americans. Since Americans fought their Revolution (against a Hunnish King, as Winston Churchill once pointed out) the French have had a kingdom, 2 revolutions, 3 empires and 5 republics while the Italians get a new government almost every year, the Germans have launched 5 wars of aggression and willfully elected both communists and National Socialists to public office and the Russians seem to be clamoring for a return to Soviet tyranny.

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Are the arguments that it was never really believed that democracy could take hold in Japan after 1945, so likewise it can also take root elsewhere valid?

Japan is a democracy by virtue of the atomic bomb, a constitution written by an American and 60 years of military occupation. Germany was militarily devastated, subjected to military occupation and they still doesn't have freedom of speech comparable to what the British and Americans have.

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Or are we squandering our money and the lives of our soldiers in a hopeless quest around the world?

As Japan shows, it is possible to impose democracy on some people, but Americans don't have the political will to use the overwhelming force that is needed to democratize someplace like Iraq.

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Re: Democracy and Freedom

flaja wrote:

The only people that are inherently suitable for democracy are the British and Americans.

The Swiss are delighted to live in a democracy since August 1, 1291.

But obviously not suitable to it in your opinion.

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Ragman wrote:

It might be said after being conquered that Japan's 'national personality characteristics' after WWII was to emulate USA and Western culture.

The Japanese had already been doing this before they bombed Pearl Harbor. Admiral Yamamoto, the man who planed the Pearl Harbor attack, had been educated at either Yale or Harvard.

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Current history of Iraq is (and was) hardly a cohesive nation and the same can be said for AAfghanistan.

The only people now in the Middle East to ever have a history of being a cohesive nation are the Jews, Persians, Egyptians and to a lesser extent the Arabs. Countries like Jordan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia (and I think Syria) are all pretty much European constructs created by Britain and France after the Ottoman Turkish Empire was dissolved following Turkey's defeat in World War I. The Jews had a country in the ancient world (Kingdom of Judah). The Egyptians had a country in the ancient world as did the Persians. The Turks were invaders who came from Asia about a thousand years ago. The Arabs never really had a country due to their nomadic existence. The Syrians and Iraqis have shared Mesopotamian origins, but neither have ever had any kind of sustained national identity (city states/Old Babylonian Empire/Assyrian Empire/Neo-Babylonian Empire/Persian Empire/Alexander the Great/Roman Empire/Byzantine Empire/Arabic Empire/Turkish Empire). The Palestinians have never existed as a distinct ethnic or national group (Yassir Arafat was actually Egyptian). And apart from the Jews, everybody in this region has more or less shared a common Islamic/Arabic culture since Mohammad first went on the rampage even though some of these people have managed to retain tribal identities that make voluntary geo-political unity possible.

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Jim wrote:

Is the willingness to immigrate an indication of the willingness to accept the culture of the nation one is immigrating to?

Is this why so many Mexican immigrants don't speak English?

Historically speaking very few immigrants have come to the U.S. for political, as opposed to economic, reasons.

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Jim wrote:

Walter - Braudel (in the posted passage) was referring to the 1000 years beginning with the Greek conquest of the Middle East by Alexander the Great (the beginning of western culture in the area) and ending with the Muslim conquest in the seventh century AD (the end of western domination in the area).

Alexander the Great's empire didn't outlive him. Alexander played the conqueror for only a very short period of time and he didn't care much for administrative work needed to manage his empire. When he died without having any heirs his empire was divided among his 4 top generals. These generals and their successors took to fighting with each other before they all either self-destructed or were taken over by Rome. The Hellenization of the Mediterranean basin likely had begun long before Alexander's time since his empire was so short-lived.

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I don't have any new ideas to post here - just wanted to thank everyone who has weighed in.

I wish I had a warm fuzzy fealing inside that the bosses in Washington D.C. had at least this much discussion on the subject before invading Iraq.

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Jim wrote:

I wish I had a warm fuzzy fealing inside that the bosses in Washington D.C. had at least this much discussion on the subject before invading Iraq.

I wouldn't be so sure. If you visit the web site of the Project for a New American Century you'll see in their archives that they have been urging the invasion of Iraq since 1997, and bringing democracy and freedom to the middle east is not high on their list of priorities (if it appears at all, and i don't recall it). It appears that having military bases in southwest Asia was their prime goal. You'll also see that founding members include the luminaries of this regime--Dick Cheney, Richard Perle, Rummy, Wolfowitz, just to name a few.

Of course, i realize that you're being sarcastic.

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This is the funniest post on A2K this year...

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The only people that are inherently suitable for democracy are the British and Americans.

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Setanta wrote:

Jim wrote:
I wish I had a warm fuzzy fealing inside that the bosses in Washington D.C. had at least this much discussion on the subject before invading Iraq.

I wouldn't be so sure. If you visit the web site of the Project for a New American Century you'll see in their archives that they have been urging the invasion of Iraq since 1997, and bringing democracy and freedom to the middle east is not high on their list of priorities (if it appears at all, and i don't recall it). It appears that having military bases in southwest Asia was their prime goal. You'll also see that founding members include the luminaries of this regime--Dick Cheney, Richard Perle, Rummy, Wolfowitz, just to name a few.

Of course, i realize that you're being sarcastic.

But setanta - did the discussion that happened amongst the "bosses" have two sides? My take is that the only thing that was discussed was not whether or not to invade but how to get it done, and post haste.

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I wouldn't argue against that position, Snood.

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ebrown_p wrote:

This is the funniest post on A2K this year...

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The only people that are inherently suitable for democracy are the British and Americans.

That one cracked me up, too. The Greeks invented the word, but they were just screwin' around, they didn't actually believe in democracy. And as anyone can plainly see, the French are no good at it either. Take Chirac for example. The French people opposed the invasion of Iraq, so Chirac told Bush to piss off. If he had been a true democrat, he would have realized that more Americans were in favor of the invasion than French were opposed to it, and he would have rolled over for the Shrub.

Don't even get me started on the Germans . . .

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You called me ....

I mean, when the Swiss started their democracy, at least the gun nuts should like: it all began with a shooting competition.
Okay, not really a gun, and he missed the boy but ... well, that should bring them quite close to the category of inherently suitables. And 1291 (though 1499 de facto).

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