Redstate

I question how stable a government can be that is not by and for "the people".  I question the wisdom of placing our hopes in one man or a small group of men to seize power, govern justly, and create long term stability in a country that does not enjoy popular elections, and has no legal mechanisms for redress of grievances against this government that is supposed to be providing stability.  If we, ourselves, require checks, balances, and electoral politics to ensure stability and justice, why would a largely ignorant tribal people not?  

I think you want everything to happen at once.  Would we, today, not find the segregation and institutional racism of our past repugnant to our current understanding of freedom and democracy?  Why must these new republics come out of the womb having solved all the huge social problems that it has taken us hundreds of years and bitter civil war to come to grips with and overcome.  It is intrinsic in the nature of a democracy to evolve and adapt where totalitarian forms of government are unable to do so.  Certainly I am not saying that all democracies fail, but looking at the breadth of history they are certainly more stable than even most dynastic, hereditary monarchies.  Certainly this form of government is not perfect (thank God for that), but it allows for peaceful change and reform in a manner that most others do not.  It does not reduce leadership down to a man or a personality, but rather places the written law, and the will of the people above all else.  It is in the ability for the will of the people to grow, change, and then realize that change through written law that is one of the many things that is so special about democracy, and republican democracy in particular, for we all know that true democracy is nothing more than mob rule.  

Your quick recap of the west is well taken.  There is surely no certainty in this endeavor.  I simply ask you, who has come up with a better idea?  Either our values and principals are true for all men, or they are not.  I happen to be a true believer.  I think our ideas and ideals are appealing to even people whose life is based on submission.  Given our ability to help these people change, I am hopeful for the future

Paul, I am going to suggest that if we are going to look at these questions in depth we have to go a lot further back in time than 1400 years to find the roots of what differentiates our culture from that of the Middle East. After all, the Middle East was despotic and Europe was praising freedom (of a sort) way back in the days of Herodotos. In fact rather than talking about Islam and Christendom we might do better to talk about Afro-Asiatic and European-Uralic cultures (with smaller groups included in each-- such as the Basques and Etruscans in the latter and the Sumerians and Persians in the former). Both originated from nomadic tribal cultures that mixed and mingled with settled agricultural people. Yet they very much went their separate ways, and that well before the Parthenon was raised on the Acropolis. Europe of course has had its periodic lapses into despotism (sometimes lasting generations) but the liberty impulse always reasserted itself north of the Mediterranean and east of the Urals. In the Middle East we find but one Semitic people who escaped an addiction to despotism, the Jews, and that due to the historical accident of them losing their own despots to foreign conquest and being compelled to sojourn, however unhappily, for centuries among the Europeans.

that's antithetical to totalitarian Islam, it's capitalism. In its most traditional, historical form, Islam is the most democratic religion on  earth, without priests, structures, hierarchies or intermediaries of any sort. What we see today is its decay. Capitalism is another story.

 Your questions can easily be rearranged to form the following: Can any distinction be made between democracy, capitalism and materialist philosophy? Put another way: Is there any country where the first two are firmly in place that is not dominated by the last? Democracy is the one form of government that ensures that the means of production remain in private hands, and while Islam does not prohibit that it does expressly prohibit both the charging and paying of interest, as Catholicism once did.

 To democratize means to capitalize.  That's an observation, not an accusation. Democratic forms of government will ultimately lead to some sort of co-existence between the religious and the agnostic - also permitted in traditional Islam, enabling capitalist expansion into markets long denied it. The only obstacle is religion, as it once was in the West.

Indeed, it seems to me that a perfectly defensible position for a man to take, that what America desires in the Middle East is not so much democracies as regimes antagonistic to Totalitarian Islam.

 Bingo!

But the President and his defenders have not demonstrated -- and, by and large, have hardly even attempted to demonstrate -- exactly why democracy must be antagonistic to Totalitarian Islam.

 I think you still put too much belief in the rally speeches regarding the war. My own opinion, and I know it's probably blasphemous to suggest this, is that the administration saw an opportunity to flip a Middle Eastern country from anti-American to pro-American. There aren't many opportunities left for the U.S. to accomplish such a feat, anywhere in the world. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait he put their turf up for potential grab - we couldn't do it under 41 because the world would have abandoned or even opposed us - the coalition was there only to eject Iraq from Kuwait and we couldn't make an imminent domestic threat argument. 42 never had a defendable reason either, but such a feat may not have fit his world view anyway.

 43 had 9/11 - and the administration could draw a defendable connection between military action in Iraq and American security in light of enormous civilian casualties from a domestic attack perpetrated by violent Islamic fundamentalists. They could only do this after entering Afghanistan and rolling the Taliban which were overtly harboring the claimants of said attack and therefore were the indisputable first target.

 Now, this is my logic - if the administration had been interested only in establishing a democracy and creating a shining beacon for the people of other Islamic nations, why not stop in Afghanistan? Why not focus on it, put all the cash and effort on rebuilding there? We were there first, and any insurgency there has been far less of a problem than what we've seen in Iraq. It should have been far easier to create the example there. As far as disarming Iraq of it's WMD (had that been our primary goal), we could have knocked out their weapons capability in the same way many are now proposing we handle Iran - avoid a large scale occupation, don't worry about rebuilding anything, don't even worry about regime-building. Just blow up their toys, mostly by air, and leave.

 My answer to this is that the administration is not so infatuated with democracy-as-the-solution as they let on, and it certainly wasn't the primary goal wrt Iraq. But look, we still have a very good reason to try and implement a democracy. It's no worse than any other regime, and it gives the administration another great selling point when making a case for the war. It would look a lot worse if we'd gone in and took out Saddam but left the same control structure in place, only with a Chalabi-type at the helm. We made a dutiful rebuilding effort that's fallen way short of what Iraq will need to accomplish on their own dime, but again, a completely rebuilt Iraq doesn't factor into the primary goal (a pro-American regime). If a shining beacon of Democracy actually had been the primary goal, then I think we'd be doing much more than we are in terms of reconstruction.

 In the end we will hopefully have what appears to be an engineered democracy with a lot of U.S. influence. Fine! I certainly don't care as long as whoever is empowered to run Iraq remains a stable pro-American ally. Iraqis may never particularly grow fond of us but that's a different problem. Let's at least come away with a pro-American regime that at best enables us to maintain a permanent military presence close to the "middle of the Middle East", and at least becomes a stable (oil rich) trading partner.

 This is somewhat off topic but I'm trying to argue that regardless of whatever the administration tells us they're focused on (democracy for foreigners), I believe their actions indicate a different and frankly more important mission, which is extending American superiority and distancing ourselves as much as possible as the only world superpower. Iraq was a great chance to do that and this administration had some real guts in taking a chance on it.

the President himself -- have made a lot of us nervous by regularly announcing that popular government under Islam, in their vision, will not draw on "our" traditions but will look "very different" from "our" particularly version of democracy.

 In a lot of ways we could say the same about American democracy in the 1800's, between slavery and the lack of women's suffrage. If we were looking back at a different country we'd conclude that their form of democracy must be very different, too. So in that sense a democracy in an Islamic country might also start out with some very un-American cultural ideals in place. But like America in 1800, under a democracy even Islamic people will have a better opportunity to change their system according to changing (one might say, evolving) cultural mores (for the better and worse), and through an iterative process may learn that their vote has consequences and rewards. Without the vote, they have only the ruling dictatorship to make (probably bad) choices for them.

 So to summarize my opinion: democracy remains the best system for enabling positive change by the peopple. But democracy is not the primary goal driving the administration's actions in Iraq.

The West has indeed spend much time developing its democratic institutions. In order to realize the goal that you're talking about though will require a number of things I think.

You mention the Cold War. Obviously the logic of the time was vastly different. One thing to remember though is that a number of the current conflicts are connected to the cause-and-effect chain of the Cold War.

If it is believed as another post points out that democracy is indeed a universal priciple and we are set on creating it. It must be done with honesty. Coutries must not be treated as a means to and end. This in part why there is resentment in the Middle East. The super powers used their countries as its battlefields for their wars.

I'm not sure whether I'm actually disagreeing with your point re: whether an Islamic based democracy will still be a democracy developed under different traditions. The discussion is huge in its dimentions and I think all I can do is offer my thoughts and see whether you think we disagree. :)

I would say that it would be ethonocentric to assume that a democracy developing in an Islamic country will be exactly similar. The US constitution is undoubtedly heavily influenced by Christianity.

There are also societies that as a whole place more emphasis on collective well being (i.e. less individual rights to do well if the family and village aren't doing well). Note, I'm not talking here about Communism I'm talking about cultures. If we were to impose our strict system of individualism upon them, I would call that authoritarian and / or totalitarian of us.

Obviously if I'm going to hold the priciple of "democracy is probably the best system we can find" then there is a limit to what I will tolerate as still under the designation of democracy. As those who respect freedom we are obligated to acknowledge the right of a society to evolve its democracy quite differently from our own.

At what point is it no longer democracy? I don't really have an answer to this, but, I think it is important to give a lot of latitude on this issue.

I will give you an example: those who live in Germany under proportional representation (who don't properly understand the US checks and balances) would rightly come to the conclusion on a superficial investigation that the US is far less democratic then their system.

Yet I imagine that many would find it offensive to be lectured endlessly by them about not being as free (and so on).  One is enerally speaking you are happy with the institutional arrangements of one's country and you try to participate as much as you want to - to shape and improve it.

Afghanistan said publication of the caricatures would give ammunition to those seeking to disrupt international relations.

"Any insult to the Holy Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) is an insult to more than 1 billion Muslims and an act like this must never be allowed to be repeated," Afghan President Hamid Karzai said in a statement.

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=uri
:2006-02-02T173822Z_01_L02622515_RTRUKOC_0_US-RELIGION-DENMARK-CARTOONS.xml
&pageNumber=1&summit=

Though, I do believe that most of the European kingdoms had thriving capitalist societies under the more or less despotic rule of their kings and queens.  I don't think anyone can deny that capitalism is essential to the transition away from feudalism.  The Mullatocracies certainly reflect a form of feudalism complete with slaves and vassals.  The aggressive introduction of capitalism and the benefits it brings certainly must weaken their hold on the people.  Whether this leads directly to democracy in all cases is uncertain, Installing the democracy before capitalism has taken hold may be even more uncertain.  In any event those are great points!  

Democracy with egalitarianism. The two are not unrelated, but it's a mistake to state that Islam is democratic because it does not have a formal religious hierarchy. Democracy also implies popular sovereignity (in terms of a religion, any religion, it's hard to know how that applies) and it implies an attachment to the concept of general human rights, and the latter is sorely lacking in Islam.

I guess I am going to take you on Paul.

"demonstrate -- exactly why democracy must be antagonistic to Totalitarian Islam."

Well it is clear that a democracy is not totalitarian, but that is a semantic argument. What starts as a democracy can certainly devolve as you have argued.

And I think you make a good point that our western Freedom meme, which is a creedal aspect of democracy, does seem to be in drastic conflict with the Submission meme deriving from political Islam (my attempt to exclude Sufi and some other sects).

It isn't realistic to talk about democracy without including certain foundational values. You have identified cultural ones. I find it useful to think of them in Huntington's creedal terms (HT to TheSophist) "The American Creed is the unique creation of a dissenting Protestant culture. . . . Out of this culture the early settlers formulated the American Creed with its principles of liberty, equality, individualism, human rights, representative government, and private property."

For the sake of semantic clarity, I suggest that the term democracy is a bit of a gloss. While our current policy is to foster 'representative governments', those govs can certainly devolve into Totalitarian (anti-representative) govs. when the people don't share other aspects of our creed, especially liberty.

However, I do believe that liberty is a universal value that our ancestors were fortunate enough to discover and protect through our democratic form of government. Much of our civilizational success is attributed to this truth and confirms this truth. Therefore I am confident that it will overcome, either by willful assimilation or else by the triumph of the superior civilization. Therefore, I believe it is incumbent on us to attempt to spread this meme peacefully with the confidence that when people are faced with a choice, this meme will triumph over the conflicting ones. The history of American immigration provides evidence of this. And if and where it doesn't triumph, the world is not big enough for civilizations who differ over this fundamental value to co-exist. There will be war and one side will emerge victorious.

Regarding your question. Who really has the burden of proof? What is the status quo? Is it up to you to prove that the spread of freedom and democracy can never take root in the Middle East because Islam's values are hostile to it? Is it up to you to prove that we should isolate ourselves as much as possible from adherents to that religion? Or is up to me to prove that we should engage and project our most fundamental values because they have universal worth and appeal that lead to voluntary assimilation? And if not, then we will boldly meet that challenge of those who wish to destroy them.

It is difficult to talk about this in the abstract, so let's take Hamas. Some are characterizing their electoral success as an example of a failure of our policy. Time will tell, but my intuition is that it moves the ball significantly forward. For one, there are many in Palestine that are accustomed to a non-totalitarian, non-sharia government; many that will not embrace submission over liberty. For two, now Hamas has to govern or else become an anti-data-point for 'Islam is the answer.' For three, they cannot govern without economic help from the West and Israel, and they cannot get that help as long as they pursue their Islamist anti-Israel agenda. For four, pursuit of their past policies would be internationally recognized as war between two governments, a major clarification. As a representative government, the people will exercise a say in this policy, one which will possibly bring them misery (failure to govern) and/or defeat. In sum, there are NEW, powerful forces for change on Hamas, due to their participation in the representational government. The military force for change has not been lost either, but arguably it will be strengthened if it comes back to that. For peace between Israel and Palestine, Hamas has to either be integrated or eliminated. The elections, in my current judgement, appear to move that ball forward.

One wild card is the possibility that enemy Middle Eastern regimes will fund and supply them. Even that would be clarifying in terms of identifying our enemies and defining the scope of future conflict in the case of war between Palestine and Israel. Would the 'free' Palestinian people allow their government to pursue the course of divorce from the West and War? Or would Hamas become discredited?

It fits my two alternatives either way, sooner better than later.

Another wild card is that other Western countries will cave in and support them regardless. I consider this to be the threat of the multi-culturalism meme, which is an insidious self-destructive threat from within our midst, and exists no matter what policy we foreign policy we pursue.

You seem to argue for starving them to death via a siege accomplished by isolating ourselves from them as much as possible. It defies my intuition, so I don't see how you can sustain that position simply demanding that we prove ours.

One of the arguments I always get when people question, "Why Iraq", is that there are plenty of totalitarian governments that enslave their people.  They point to evil to justify doing nothing.  They say the problem regimes of the world are so many that America can not possibly hope to do anything about them.  That logic is faulty in the extreme.  When you have many problems you do not ignore them all, you prioritize them and get to work.    

I think you are on to something, but I would not take it to the Machiavellian extreme that you do.  We invaded Iraq because a totalitarian despot gave us a reason to invade and overthrow his brutal regime.  I have never like the reasons we have been given be they 17 resolutions from a corrupt and powerless organization made up of our enemies, to pursuing dangerous weapons we know that he had.  The best reason was and remains to free 25,000,000 people from horrible oppression and slavery.  That is all the reason I need to roust me to action.  

We cannot say that this nation is vested with any kind of covenant, our founding documents hold any weight, or our success is at all because of our freedom if we are the kind of men who can watch a rape in progress, cross the street, and avert our eyes.  That is not who I am, and I do not believe that is who our country is.  I am proud of what we have done because of the morality of it, certainly in history's ignorant past we have done terrible things, but we have evolved (see my earlier post) into a country we can all be proud of, and the greatest reason to be proud is that we act.  We do not watch the rape, but move to defend the victim, and protect the innocent.  That is who I believe we are, and those are the men I served next to.  I NEVER want to become a nation that points to evil to justify evil, and if those are the people who hate their country, then it is really themselves that they hate, and well they should.      

"If we were to impose our strict system of individualism upon them, I would call that authoritarian and / or totalitarian of us."

Strictly speaking, individualism and totalitarianism seem to be too diametrically opposed to be fused into any line of logic.  By its very nature, the individualism of democracy, even if forced on a people who have been taught to think like a colony of ants, vaults the individual to the central position in terms of rights and ability to influence government, thereby negating any opportunity for government to influence the manner in which he lives his life and pursues his happiness.  It is clear from the aftermath of WWII that we imposed individualism on the most extreme totalitarian collectives at the point of a sword, and in the case of Germany were still fighting Nazi stalwarts into the `50s!  It was very ugly for very long time, and looking back on it I cannot see how we could have done it any better.      

If the "peoples" government, democratically elected, screws up and the people all starve or all have to be killed, they voted for. Majority rules.

of all of his statements and actions apparently does not really understand either.

... must never be allowed to be repeated

in at least as much as Sufism and the Sunis beliefs seem perfectly compatible with democracy.  It is only the Shea who seem to believe absolute rule passes along Mohamed's bloodline.  I know it does not seem that way in Iraq right now (we seem to be primarily fighting Sunnis), but ideologically we have much more in common with them than the Sheaites.   Women may not have rights and courses for redress of grievances in Islam, but men certainly do, and it was not that long ago that our views were considerably closer to theirs.  You can look at Sharia Law, and say it does not value human rights, but it was not that long ago that our ancestors were also stoning adulterers.  In fact, I see many parallels between the western past and were the Islamic peoples are today.  Saying that freedom and democracy are not compatible because they are so far behind me simply strikes me as arrogant and impatient.    

be more specific about how "general human rights are sorely lacking in Islam", very specific, in fact, as that is a remarkable statement. I don't think it is at all a mistake to state that Islam is the most democratic of religions, or was, I should say - equality and fraternity were the essential social features of the early religion, both are essential features of democracy in terms of human relations, which is what concerns me.

as I can understand why my original was misunderstood. You are correct in pointing out the flaw of the logic I used. While I don't disagree with you. I should have chose my words more carefully. What you refer to though is the ideal. I was trying to draw the destinction between the ideal and what is sometimes claimed to be freedom.

The destinction that I was trying to draw is this:

My understanding is that in some societies the well being of the community is more highly valued then say - the rights of an individual to makes heaps of money through say buying up all the land and using its resources. I personally would be very concerned if this shift of morale emphasis undermined human rights and justice. If this decision was arrived at through democracy, however, it would be a mistake for me to conclude that these people were not free. It would be totalitarian of us to decide that since said country was not following percisely our economic and social model that we should intervene and impose our legal and economic system upon it. What I'm saying is that it is important not to confuse a system differing from ours as not-free.

I would be careful before describing certain societies as ants (unless that is we're talking about Nazis, Stalin, the Khamer Rouge, etc.). Perhaps I'm agreeing with Bush that these democracies may be possible and may look different from what we're used to.

Perhaps someone can weave this back to the topic of discussion because I fear I've gotten a bit off topic and started reflecting on the benefits of the democratic system. Again I think we're actually agreeing, though perhaps I'll have to clarify some more terms and learn to write more articulately. :P

Interesting response. My one thought is that you are driving a very polar wedge between civilizations. My intent is not to argue away the vast differences between.

Although the analogy isn't perfect consider the schism. While I'm not really that knowledgable of this time in history, I imagine that at the time it must have seemed that only one of the Eastern or Westerns churches survive (and the other was heretical). Those who know more about this are free to point out the error of this analogy. I only point to the fact that both Churches changed (for the better) and now things are somewhat peacable. :)

I find your analysis good. I hope and think that you're correct - that it is a good development.

to say that Islam is anarchic. Democracies after all do recognize the need for authority and leadership and indeed in ancient times Christian congregations elected their bishops and could dismiss them too. By contrast in Islam  either a Caliph is in charge (an absolute ruler) or absent a caliph, no one is in charge at all, which means that anyone, from saint to scoundrel, can annoint himself a grand high poobah provided he is adept at finding followers to do his bidding. This is democracy only in the negative sense that our Founding Fathers criticized as mob rule by means of demagoguery.

I don't wish to drive a wedge. I do wish to correctly analyze our situation. I am happy if both civilizations can survive but I am not willing to give up on any of these: liberty, equality, individualism, human rights, representative government, and private property. I suspect you aren't either. We have fought wars in the past over these and if they are threatened we need to be prepared to do so in the future. No wedge, just how it is.

It is clear that these principles are being threatened from some quarters, namely the religious ideology subscribed to by bin Laden. "Experts estimate that 10-15% of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims currently share the militant fundamentalist views that underlie Osama bin Laden's radical vision... which translates into roughly 120-180 million Muslim extremists, worldwide."

If 85-90% of muslims accept our creedal values as fundamental, preeminent, and not in conflict with their values, no matter how differnt those values are from our own, then I expect we will live as good neighbors and perhaps grow more similar over time. If not, something has got to give. I am not a relativsit. I believe in our fundamental values, that they are good for our children and for future humanity.

The current flap over the Danish cartoons is illustrative of the conflict between our fundamental idea of liberty and the fundamental idea of subimission to the Prophet. Even moderate muslims indicate that these cartoons are not merely offensive but strike at something in the core of their value system. While we can all understand that sensitivities are violated by these cartoons, we, and even the liberal Europeans who would not join us on the concept of the War on Terrorism, understand that the principle of liberty preempts submission to the Prophet. The threats of violence, the boycotts, the withdrawl of diplomats, the threat of moderates to turn against us in our struggle with the radicals, are not going to make us give in. (maybe the bed-wetters will). We have fought wars for our liberty. It really is what is at stake. We need a collective realization of that. We have no wish to fight, but it should be known we will fight for this.

How about sightless and dreary "realism"?  While I agree with two major thrusts of your argument (man, how we love those combat metaphors!) - that the West may be best served by stepping back from an interventionist approach to the Middle East and that Islam provides a shared focal point for opposition to US policy in the Middle East  -  your writings seem both to be overly defeatist and to exaggerate the degree to which opposition to US policy is driven by Islam, as opposed to other understandable motives.  I share your concerns but think you are pointing with much too broad of a brush, and reflect too much a natural but counterproductive dynamic to perceive and argue as a participant in a bilateral struggle.

Allow me to make a few points:

First, the election of Hamas may very well turn out to be a positive development, for the reasons various commentators have noted at Haaretz:  http://www.redstate.com/comments/2006/1/30/0394/48872/24#24 and

http://www.redstate.com/comments/2006/1/29/173529/943/55#55.  These reasons are peculiar to Hamas, the Palestinians and the Israelis, but it seems we have long backed the wrong horse, which was cynical and corrupt, leaving Hamas both to actually provide social services and to act as a spoiler.  Time will tell how much they will continue to act as immoderate spoilers now that their hands are officially on thereins of government.

Second, religion has always served as a cultural rallying point when groups or cultures clash, but they have traditionally also served to provide a unifying role as societies enlarged and become more inclusive.  What we are seeing now are the limits of different religions to unite man as the world becomes more globalized.  We may never be able to fully resolve the differences between religions, but can't conflicts be abated not only be stepping back, but also by solution to focus on writing software that allows greater global economic integration (open markets and shared rules) that can run above the differences between underlying religious platforms?

On this point I completely share your view that we need to carefully assess both the positive and negative  roles play that religions play in our societies.

Third, I share your position that steps towards disengagement are helpful, at least to detach emotionally from the Hobbesian trap that has been developing (and that I suspect informs your views).  However, if such steps are not coupled with efforts to bridge differences, then ultimately they will fail since they continue to treat Islam as an enemy and are not true to the ideals and disciplined problem-solving efforts that have brought us so far from a failed confederation of 13 colonies, from a divided a racist nation in the time since the Civil War, and from a Western world torn by WWI and WWII.

Fourth, by disengaging from Islam (or trying to protect our society from a rising tide of illegal immigrants), we cannot become a walled fortress.  It may be a medium term tactic but is no solution to the global problems that we face with the rest of the world.  We need more involvement and more US leadership, not less.  But we cannot jam our views down the throats of the rest of the world, and cannot solve all problems that concern us alone.  We must actively seek and work with others.

But we should remember that the Western world represents the vast bulk of the global economy and, despite our numerous flaws, present great attractions to the rest of the world.  We should be confident, not defeatist, in welcoming others to join us.  If we remain strong and chose not to play confrontational, zero-sum games, they will come.

 I don't mean to characterize the administration as a group bent on taking over the world one country at a time. We certainly aren't going to annex Iraq.

 And I empathize with those who are oppressed. But I think Iraq presented itself as an opportunity to turn a country in our favor, and additionally do a bit of "humanitarian good" at the same time. Now it's my opinion that the former was the administration's priority and not the latter, no matter what they're saying publicly, but this was an action that could achieve both. Perhaps we're not doing as well on the latter as we'd hoped to - it will be a better situation in time, we hope.

 But to be honest, if we did in fact go into Iraq with the primary objective to bring freedom and liberty to the people there, and American security and future prosperity were mere secondary motivations...  then I'd be very dissappointed. I want every person in the world to live free. But as long as this remains a world of many nations, then our people are more important than any others, and our leadership better act accordingly!

Well it is clear that a democracy is not totalitarian, but that is a semantic argument. What starts as a democracy can certainly devolve as you have argued. . . . It isn't realistic to talk about democracy without including certain foundational values.

Why not? Democracy has an objective definition despite all the accretions that our parlance has added to it. It means that form of government where the people rule. If the people become persuaded that an Islamist form of government is what they want, democracy has empowered our enemies

As many have rightly said, time will tell with the Hamas victory, but right now what we have is a very salient example of democracy empowering Muslim totalitarians. Hamas was already talking about inflicting the jiyza on Palestinian Christians before the election -- and since no one pays any attention to those Christians anyway, the totalitarian features of this regime many be gradual and poorly-reported. And as you point out, the multiculturalism of the West will likely capitulate to this over time.

However, I do believe that liberty is a universal value that our ancestors were fortunate enough to discover and protect through our democratic form of government.

It seems pretty clear to me that an enormous number of Muslims regard obedience to Allah as emphatically superseding liberty. It seems pretty clear to me that the religious impulse in man is rather stronger, outside of some sections of the West, than the yearning to be free. How do we reconcile this with the universal desire for liberty you assert?

Re: It seems pretty clear to me that an enormous number of Muslims regard obedience to Allah as emphatically superseding liberty.

Most sincere Christians would also argue that obedeience to God comes before personal liberty, or indeed (and I have seen this from Catholics especially) that the only real liberty is obedience to God.

Why not?

Yes, and if a majority of people, in a country in which democratic institutions have been set up, decide they want a Totalitarian Islamic government, that is what they will get. A government where an elected legislature doesn't make the laws because they already have been given the laws from Allah, Sharia. I just don't think we can talk about a Totalitarian Democracy; oxymoron. I think you were right to describe it as a 'poorly-planted' democracy that devolved into Totalitarianism. I am reluctant to call Iran's gov a democracy, because the ruling Mullahs trump the people with the Allah-hot-line. As we have seen, dissenters don't have a political avenue to bring about change, even though anecdotal evidence says they want to. So the discussion is again about revolution to throw off the totalitarian powers, not political, electoral processes where the people rule.

I think your original piece linked democracy to our cultural values. I link it to our creedal values and perhaps take the link one degree further; without most of them it is not just a non-recommendable democracy but no democracy at all. A representative legislature may craft laws different from ours (but Sharia is not arrived at in that way). A democracy may be more socialistic, less individualistic. So in that way one form of democracy may look different than another. But when what starts as representational form of government devolves into a totalitarian one, when it does not respect liberty and human rights, it is no longer a democracy no matter how it came about.

In Palestine, the election has empowered our enemies. It is not yet clear if it will devolve into totalitarianism. But it is  now clear that we confront them as a nation of the people, and gov freely chosen by the people. We can't call it completely totalitarian as long as the people retain the power to throw them out through the political process. If Hamas doesn't change and the people back them (bets?), then the people are our enemies too. Etc...the Clarification-leads-toward-resolution-one-way-or-the-other Argument.

How do we reconcile this (religious impulse: submission) with the universal desire for liberty you assert?

I agree with your observation and assessment of the conflict. I wish more people did, but so many of us have become complacent in our notions of open-minded pluralism that we fail to recognize that the fundamental values that permit our generous attitude are the very ones at stake. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of liberty proves that it is universal value. The strength of civilizations which adopt it overcomes the strength of civilizations which don't. Observe its effect on the USSR and now China. Muslims and other immigrants that come to this country learn to value it for the peace and prosperity it brings them.

Then something like the Danish cartoon flap comes along and it exposes the unreconciled (perhaps suppressed) conflict between the liberty meme and the submission meme. Good. Our interaction has exposed and clarified a root conflict that is a latent or hidden cause of our symptomatic conflicts. Now people are confronted with a rational choice. In our environment of free dialogue, liberty will win some hearts and minds.  And because submission attacks liberty the conflict will escalate beyond rational. Because I believe that liberty is universal, those who choose against are going to face the consequences: failure. It is universal in that where the 'desire' for liberty does not triumph, the effectiveness of liberty will. We extend the rational approach as far as we can. After that there is only harsh reality of zero-sum conflict.

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On the points you raise in your response, I yield you much ground. Our perception of the situation seems shared. I have assumed that you believe that the liberty meme is objectively superior to the submission meme; that you are no multiculturalist with a relativistic approach to our creedal values; with the idea that this is just about the survival of our culture with no stake in universal values - a sort of hegemonic multiculturalism as opposed to an accommodating one.

If my assumptions are correct, our dialogue should narrow in on what to do about the fundamental conflict that we recognize. Do we confront the hostile creed head on or do we finesse it as an intractable situation? How good of a hand are we holding? In bridge, you finesse only when you have to because it poses a risk that you might lose the trick. Are we like bridge partners trying to settle on our bid; and you think me over-confident while I think you are lacking in it?

 Islamic societies survived and prospered for hundreds of years, but they began to stagnate and fail when the expansion through conquest and submission meme that fed their prosperity was stifled. The Ottoman Turks, facing the gradual decline and collapse, chose western democracy. Middle Eastern Muslims have been struggling with the meaning of this demise, for the Allah's blessing of dominance on Muslim societies, now absent, was always the best confirmation of the truth of Islam. Revivalists argue that returning to the Islamic fundamentals will bring back success and triumph over the non-submitters (us) through the consequent blessings of Allah. You and I are pretty clear that no such miracle is going to happen.

I don't think that we can successfully wall off our two civilizations in a sort of unsteady truce where we can both live in our own irreconcilable and intractable ways; not really feasible and not productive. My intuition is that continued interaction between our cultures is going hasten the resolution of differences. Many of these interactions will be non-zero sum conflicts with assimilating effects. When the interactions expose creedal conflict though, we are headed for non-zero sum territory. We should not give in and they will have to get used to that or become hostile, in which case we should play the non-zero sum game. Liberty, not submission is our posterity. History is littered with the civilizational failures of the submission meme. Confidence, the conflict must eventually be settled and liberty is the right side to be on.

To Aleks (and you?) on comment #23 I say that you have confused the situation. The Islamic submission meme is not just personal but political/social. The Catholic who obeys God does so as a free and individual choice while respecting, not restricting, the liberty of others (except as a constituent in a representative democracy). The submission meme motivates the devotee to act as Allah's agent, to exert the preeminence of Allah's will over members of the society, whether they choose to believe in or not. As we see in the danish cartoon flap, the freedom of thought and expression of others must (is expected to) give way, submit, to Allah and his Prophet Muhammad. On the other hand, I as a Christian believer, consider liberty, the right to self-determination, inviolate. I don't punish people for not believing or blaspheming even though it offends me and I believe it offends my god. Within the church, we may withhold our fellowship from them in order to communicate our concern for that bad choice, but we respect that the freedom of choice is a starting point for all of us. And our religious values inform our laws only through a representative legislative process.

Re:  The Islamic submission meme is not just personal but political/social.

I had thought about mentioning this distinction and I agree it's not trivial. To some extent this contrast is however a fairly recent one. Shari'a did not originally apply to everyone, just to Muslims (Jews and Christians under the Caliphate and later the Sultanate lived according to their own laws, provided they gave no offense to Islam and were politically loyal to the Muslim ruler). Also, Christendom had a rather long fling with moral totalitarianism too, notably in the Middle Ages when sexual deviancy and blasphemy were punishable by death and even the minute details of dress were regulated by law. However Christendom also found its morality laws generally and widely flouted (Prohibition being the last and most purely American example) and often enough even flouted by churchmen. So again we come back to a bedrock cultural question, which isn ot of recent origin: why it is that in the European cultural region people were never willing to accept this sort of hyper-legalization of morality while it was meekly tolerated in Islamic lands and now seems to be going to far extremes?

I can go part of the way with you Aleks but IMO you are glossing over the history with a snapshot. Referring back to Black: The History of Islamic Political Thought; I find that during the golden age period within the Ottoman period "There also was a remarkable religious diversity, and a degree of religious toleration not found in Christian Europe...Jewish and Christian religious authorities were given jurisdiction over their own people... Such ethnic and credal diversity was a continuation of the 'tribal' policy of the first Ottomans (and indeed the first Muslims), under which outsiders could acquire membership and its advantages. Qualified toleration for other monotheists was rooted in Islamic tradition...The greatest innovation of the Ottoman state was the development of non-religious law (kanun)...The most distinctive feature of the Ottoman system was the way in which it integrated kanun and Sharia...this was unique in Islamic history." But this renaissance period came to an end in the 16th century when the Ottomans began suffering defeats in their excursions to the West. "Ottoman political culture centered upon the images of Holy War and the Sultan as the sword of Islam. The Ottoman economy, the sense of collective purpose and social cohesion itself depended on continual conquest and expansion."

This decline resulted in debate and discussion over the cause. "Others saw neglect of the religion as the primary cause of decline and therefore wanted the polity to become more strictly Islamic. In fact the most common response to the decline was to demand cranking-up of religious observance...Non-Islamic features were in fact steadily extruded from public life. The Levy was discontinued. Non-religious schools were converted in madrases. Members of the ulama attacked kanun for provisions which were contrary to the Shari'a, or for its very existence: the Shari'a alone suffices." This marks the return to "the traditional Legal view that non-Muslims (I add the qualification: monotheists) should be given protection on payment of jizya, but no political role; and that anyone who abandoned Islam was liable to the death penalty."

Sharia did not arrive in whole cloth. It took nearly two hundred years for the Sunni tradition to sort it out of the Quran, hadiths and sunna. The first Umayadds had more secularist tendencies than the later Abbasids. The Shite tradition developed separately. And many Christian enclaves, in Egypt for example, were able to get along. Yet many Western scholars of Islamic law conclude along with more recent traditionalists like al Mawdudi that "the basis of the Islamic attitude toward unbelievers is the law of war; they must be either converted or subjugated or killed (excepting women, children and slaves); the third alternative, in general occurs only if the first two are refused. As an exception, the Arab pagans are given the choice only between conversion to Islam or death. Apart from this, prisoners of war are either made slaves or killed or left alive as free dhimmis or exchanged for Muslim prisoners of war." (Schacht). Dhimmi status is achieved on surrender, the submission meme, and is marked by a lessor status than that accorded to the Muslim. One only need to look into the life of the Prophet to see the roots of this meme. Note the stories of the poets put to death for writing poems that insulted Muhammad: Asma, and  Abu Afak, and Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf. Martin Lings writes of Ka'b: "The Prophet knew well that most of them were hostile to Islam as Ka'b had been, and which was a great disappointment he had come to accept this. But it was vital to show them that if hostile thoughts were tolerable, hostile action was not. "If he had remained as others of like opinion remain," he said, "he would not have been killed by guile. But he did us injury and wrote poetry against us; and none of you shall do this but he shall be put to the sword."" (Which the Bani Nadir eventually were).

The way some post-Constantine church leaders dealt with those they deemed heretical troubles me. The middle age church leaders up to the inquisition seem to me to be acting quite out of character with Christianity as I understand it. John Calvin and co.'s practice of governance troubles me along the lines you mention. At any rate, I think liberty is a universal truth that our forefathers did zero in on and it seems quite compatible with the requirements put upon us by the New Testament.

In the end, interpretation is quite bound up in our understanding of religion. I don't wish to cut off any avenues available to Muslims in that respect. I do want to understand what the prevailing interpretations are and contrast them to the truths that our Western culture is built upon so we see where the conflict lies, what the resolution might involve and where we draw the line on accommodation. I wish to remain hopeful that we can assimilate and coexist while at the same time recognizing that there are aspects which we will fight to the utmost to preserve. The current strength of the submission meme is more relevant from that point of view than its varying strengths as a religious thread in Islamic history.

I may have overextended my position about democracy in my prior post, by talking about it in strictly ideal terms whereas in practical terms it never starts off perfect but evolves to become either more or less consistent with idealizations. I have heard it suggested that middle eastern terrorism is at least in part a revolutionary response to totalitarian governments; a response triggered by the lack of avenue provided in a representational government. Hamas in government will be very interesting to watch as a test of that point of view. I do yet hold out hope that as Muslims come to experience the successes of representational government (an opportunity they have largely been denied by Middle Eastern strong man governments), they may be persuaded to the ascendancy of our creedal values. But I fear the conjunction of terrorism with religiously motivated jihad as something that cannot be cured by democratic institutions. It suggests the need for amputation.