Monday, December 1, 2008
Here's an indicator that democracy -- that is, the trappings of voting only -- by itself, is insufficient. It takes time to build a free society with a free exchange of ideas that can lay the groundwork for a healthy democracy to flourish. Without that, you just have the same manipulative ideas being pushed by a different set of demagogues. In some societies it may take longer than others: Egypt's Jew Haters Deserve Ostracism in the West - More proof the prejudice has nothing to do with Israel. After pointing out that the "liberal" Egyptian parties are shot through with the same Jew hatred the rest of Egyptian society is shot through with (we get the leaders we deserve, after all), author Amr Bargisi writes:
...These examples are especially notable because they have nothing to do with Israel or Zionism. They expose the falsehood -- popular with prominent scholars like John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, authors of last year's best-selling book "The Israel Lobby" -- that hatred of Jews is not one of the great motivating factors in the Arab world's overall objections to Israel.
But these examples also raise a serious question about what passes for liberalism in the Arab world. Why bother listening to these voices on matters of economics -- much less politics, democracy or human rights -- if they also propagate hateful conspiracy theories?
There's another question: Over the past eight years, the United States has invested huge resources in attempting to bring democracy to the Middle East. But it's not clear whether that project will succeed as long as America's natural allies in the region remain themselves so profoundly irrational and illiberal.
What can be done? Here's a modest suggestion. The Egyptian state and the country's newspapers go out of their way to make a leper of any author who expresses even remote sympathy with Israel. Perhaps Western institutions could adopt a similar practice, refusing to invite to their various functions any editors who allow their pages to become Jew-hatred platforms. The cold shoulder alone might get these lunch-eaters to change their tune.
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, p.44
These sentiments from a Cairo-based writer? He's a brave man. And his suggestion is a good one; I doubt it will be adopted, but I wish it would.
As for voting: voting is a tool, and, as such, it can be used for good or for bad. It happens to be a tool that's closely associated with Western democracies, and with republics for that matter -- but Saddam's Iraq used it too, as did Hafez al-Assad, Mubarak, Peron, and many other so-called "presidents".
And, as a clever man once pointed out, it's not undemocratic, in theory, for 51% of the population to vote that the losing 49% be put to death. What prevents that from happening is the structure of government and of society.
That, by the way, might be an interesting distinction between people who insist on voter IDs and the like, and those who are horrified by the idea. The latter, I'd suggest, want to make sure that everyone votes; the former believe that it's not just the voting, but the structure of the society in which one votes, that matters.
respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline