Kamchatka -- Gateway to North America!

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I was a little worried last night that some of the stuff I was posting really was a little deep and scary and decided to wait a little before posting anymore.

But when I got up today you all had already gotten into the next major point without me, so I'll contribute a bit more.

"Do you think that democracy will come to Iraq on a B-52? Or on the back of a tank? Or with the armored division?" he said.

The hot issue today raised in the interviews with the Egyptian President and the Arab League Secretary General centres on democracy, or more particularly, the shift in the conception of democracy, both nationally and internationally.

The form of democracy that prevailed in core Western states in much of the post-war period was a form of compensatory democracy, distinguished, at least in part, by a diachronic understanding of democratic governance. Following Enlightenment beliefs that understanding history enabled humankind to better itself, democracy was seen, within the context of a process stretching back into society’s past, as the result of past improvements. Thus, liberal democracy was viewed as a means of continuing improvements into society’s future, part of the progress of civilisation.

This earlier conception of democracy was prepared to at least attempt to ameliorate the inequalities produced by market-society through mechanisms such as social welfare provisions. Democracy was understood to involve ‘social citizenship’, where citizens could expect to be ‘compensated’ by the state in areas where the market was deficient in providing what was necessary.

Since Thatcher and Reagan the discourse of compensatory democracy has gradually been supplanted by one of ‘protective’ democracy that ignores the idea that democracy might involve compensation for market failure, or that democratic citizenship might involve a social-welfare dimension. Rather, “...it is nothing but a logical requirement for the governance of inherently self-interested conflicting individuals who are assumed to be infinite desirers of their own private benefits. Its advocacy is based on the assumption that man is an infinite consumer, that his overriding motivation is to maximise the flow of satisfactions, or utilities, to himself from society, and that a national society is simply a collection of individuals”. Responsible government, even to the extent of responsibility to a democratic electorate, is needed for the protection of individuals and the promotion of the GNP, and for nothing more. (Which is the way it was in the 19th century but lots less people had the vote)

In contrast to the earlier diachronic understanding of democracy, this ‘protective’ view is an unambiguously synchronic one. In this understanding, democracy is reduced to a process that exists in a single moment in time. Protective democracy is characterised by a strict separation of the economic and political spheres, the former responding only to the logic of the market place, and the latter constrained to allowing that logic to proceed without interference.

The main difference, however, is that the earlier general understanding of the need to redress the deficiencies of the market has been taken over by one based on a limited agenda of ‘deficit reduction’ and ‘tax relief’ to be achieved through the inexorable reduction of the welfare state. The serious fault in this limited agenda, the fact that it does not work, became glaringly apparent as many of its chief proponents began admitting to misapprehension, confusion, and outright concern at the uneven and contradictory effects of their program.

“I came to this job committed to restoring the middle class and I did everything I knew to do...We expanded trade frontiers. We have seven million more jobs. We have a record number of millionaires. We have an all time high stock market. We have more new businesses than ever before...and most people are still working harder for lower pay than they were making the day I was sworn in as President”....President Clinton.

The implications of the shift to a protective understanding and practice of democracy extends beyond national and international politics, to the kind of world system emerging. The framing and circumscribing of democratic thought and discourse in terms of the precepts of protective democracy can be seen as an attempt by the developed world’s business and political elites to shore up the hegemonic system that ensures their positions of power and privilege. The centrality of ‘democracy promotion’ is an increasingly conspicuous feature of advanced nation state foreign policy discourse and practice. From political aid to elements of civil society in dependent states, to the monitoring of elections, to calls for respect for liberal human rights norms, core western states have made the extension of ‘protective democracy’ a fundamental pillar of the new world order push.

IOW we seem to believe now that democracy is a package that can be exported and applied to any region of the world regardless of their history, tradition, culture, evolution.

Which of course is summed up by

Further, if the only way to bring democracy to Iraq is to vitiate the democracy of the Security Council, then we are honor-bound to do that too, because democracy, as we define it, is too important to be stopped by a little thing like democracy as they define it.

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Heh. They should sell bumper stickers.

I'm an American. I'm supposed to be ignorant of everyplace else! I'm upholding my national traditions!

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Hmm, not trying the Asia/Africa tests...I already know I"d do very badly. But the states one was easy--but I've BEEN to very nearly all of them. So easier to remember. I think I realized the only two I really don't know are New Hampshire and Vermont--I'm not sure which is which.

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Vermont is on the left.

Ba-dum bum.

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I think the only states I got, beyond Maine and California, were by deduction. 'That's next to Virginia-- it could be West Virginia' or 'Just above South Dakota? Probably North Dakota.' I might do better at counties of England, though.

And I'm thinking about it way too much, aren't I?

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Perfect on SE Asia, perfect on North Africa, NSM on West Africa and South Africa. I got the big countries, but there's so many little ones...

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Vermont is to the west--if you can remember that New Hampshire is an original colony and Vermont isn't, it's pretty easy to keep them straight by thinking of order of settlement.

And, I lived in Vermont for a summer.

One of my college friends confessed to me that he couldn't keep Alabama and Mississippi straight. I sort of understand--they're shaped a lot alike--but I was miffed at the time.

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which really puts this into context,

Rather, the administration sees the invasion as only the first move in a wider effort to reorder the power structure of the entire Middle East. ..."the administration's plan", says Marshall, is "to use U.S. military force, or the threat of it, to reform or topple virtually every regime in the region, from foes like Syria to friends like Egypt, on the theory that it is the undemocratic nature of these regimes that ultimately breeds terrorism."

And I think I'm hatching a theory.

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I wouldn't expect non-Americans to know more than a handful of states, but it did kind of surprise me that a lot of the people I met in England didn't know which coast fairly major cities were on. People would discover I was from Philadelphia, dating someone from Seattle, and ask if they were anywhere near each other.

Fairness forces me to admit that when I got word a few months before my trip that I'd be working in Bristol, I had to look it up on a map. However, if someone had told me it was near Bath, I would've known exactly where to look. Before I lived there, my knowledge of British geography was deeply colored by my leisure reading choices.

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