If you have been following along with The Middle Class Forum you know I believe that a federated democracy abstracts wisdom better than a party democracy. A federated democracy produced the wisdom that crafted our Constitution. Unfortunately, a party democracy was formed not long after.
Let us pretend there is a stronger and wealthier country in the world than us that has a federated democracy. Would I welcome being invaded by that enlightened country? Hell, no! Even though I believe in the form of democracy that country would bring, for much the same reason I believe in self-determination. I would resist foreign invaders no matter how noble their intent. The only people who would not feel the same way in this country either: 1) do not value democracy and self-determination enough or 2) value some type of material gain more. Imagine how that feeling would be all the stronger if you did not believe in the foreign country’s politics to begin with. The folks who immediately embraced use as we invaded Iraq would be the people that valued some personal material gain through their connections to us over self-determination.
Neoconservatives are willing to spread democracy by imposing democracy if necessary. That is a cynical belief. If the country you invade to impose a foreign political system welcomes you with flowers, as neoconservatives claimed would happen in Iraq, that means the people you wish to bring American democracy to are not even ready for self-determination. The fact that we were not welcomed with flowers actually was a positive indicator that Iraqis have a libertarian impulse (I’m not referring to the impulse for greed puppet libertarians have).
Neoconservatism is not really a new political ideologue. Our habit of propping up banana republics in the early twentieth century was a form of neoconservatism. The same alleged goals of increased security and morality were touted. This was even more cynical in that we often replaced real democracies with fake ones for the sake of Dole, United Fruit and other business corporations. It was also cynical in the way that the newspapers of this country portrayed the people of developing countries such as the Phillipines as inferior and in need of our paternal guidance. This same paternal attitude has surfaced in regards to the Middle East.
We once invaded a foreign country called Vietnam and left before the country surrendered. There are still some that considered leaving without their submission a mistake. These critics must not have learned that Vietnam adopted a capitalist system not long after we left. Sure, we might have stayed longer so we could have gotten both a capitalist system and total submission from Vietnam, but that would be sacrificing more lives for a cynical objective.
Vietnam did what autonomous civilizations tended to do before the rise of western colonialism. As long as information flowed freely, which happened along with active commerce, and as long as a civilization had autonomy, they would take ideas from other civilizations for their own use. Vietnam’s self-determined conversion to capitalism was not unusual from a historical perspective, only from a modern perspective of developed countries imposing what is good for developing countries whether or not they are ready or receptive.
There are no patents on ideas such as democracy and capitalism, though no doubt business corporations would wish to acquire these patents for profitable ends if they could. If commerce occurs without exploitation, allowing the free and ample flow of information, and self-determination exists, groups of people will borrow, copy, or steal from others to improve their own lives. To think otherwise is to cynically conclude that modern humans do not have the wits to adapt that our prehistoric ancestors had.
Neoconservatives are infested with precisely that type of cynicism, one of many hangovers from our western colonialism heritage. These days they are busy spinning how our surge worked. This reminds me of when we first invaded. A neoconservative friend of mine claimed that things were going well. I told him to wait a year before making any conclusions. I’m not sure for what objective the surge worked–as long as no leaders admit that oil is one of our objectives I’ll always be a bit, well, cynical. If the objective is democracy, however, we will have to wait at least ten years before making any conclusions and, ultimately, the surge will have had little to do with it.
