Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site psc70.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!harvard!talcott!panda!genrad!decvax!dartvax!psc70!tos From: tos@psc70.UUCP (Dr.Schlesinger) Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Re: More Thoughts On America-Bashing Message-ID: <146@psc70.UUCP> Date: Tue, 13-Aug-85 07:20:57 EDT Article-I.D.: psc70.146 Posted: Tue Aug 13 07:20:57 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 15-Aug-85 21:08:37 EDT References: <421@iham1.UUCP> <499@qantel.UUCP>, <10956@rochester.UUCP> Organization: Plymouth State College, Plymouth, NH Lines: 33 The analogy of lack of democracy to empty belly falls rather short of common sense and logic; were it to stand, we'd have to assume that all living creatures of all species need "democracy" because they do after all need full bellies. What Americans find difficult to grasp is that democracy, despite the rather defective civics books, wasn't created by the constitution just 200 years ago, and doesn't depend on a "system" just being instituted. It is the very gradual cultural product of the hundreds of years of Western traditions brought here by the settlers which then culminated in the Constitution and even then, most importantly, in the interpretations, such as the rather recent 14th Amendment!!!, placed on that document in the ensuing years. While it may well be true that most human beings would prefer some form of participatory government, i.e. a say i how decisions about their lives and their society are made, it is in my view also, just ethnocentric hubris and selfserving to our interest to wish to "bring" to others our particular ways and definitions of participatory government. In fact, just because we happend to be rather fat and content with it after our 200 years, doesn't mean by a long shot that the last word is in about how well ours really does work for us!! It has not been severely tested... when it was, we fought the bloodiest and most brutal war in the 19th Century on the surface of the earth, from 1861-1865 and settled the matter by brute conquest! It then took another 100 years to more or less enforce the other major decision of that war besides secession, i.e. equal rights for blacks. Our "democracy" involves extreme forms of individualism and of resulting alienation from society which are very repugnant to the cultures of many peoples around the world. We call Japan a "democracy" for very superficial "system" reasons, butany careul reading will show that the cultural base, the understandings of how behavior is limited and what "free speech" and "dissent" mean, are totally different from ours.