Anti-Imperialism 101 Re: Hitchens quits Nation

Chris Doss itschris13 at hotmail.com
Sat Sep 28 13:52:19 PDT 2002



>
>There's no relativism about democracy from me. I regard it as the besty
>form of government, and I hope everybody chooses it. I just don't think
>that having it gives you the right any sense of the term to impose it on
>others--supposedly. . .
>
>jks
>

I always found the notion of _forcing_ someone to be a democrat rather odd... and there are large numbers of people in the world for whom, frankly, democracy is rather low on their list of priorities (and I don't mean just elites). Most Russians would gladly exchange political democracy for economic well-being, and in fact they tend to equate 'democracy' with "chaos." (The play on words is "dyormokratiya" instead "demokratiya." "Dyorm" means "shit.") Hell, over half the population wants the Dzerzhinsky statue back in front of Lyubyanka.

There are all kinds of societies on which democracy is just not viable. Can a tribal society just switch over to representative democracy? Hard to see how that's possible.

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