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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.