Taking A Break From Reality
July 16, 2006
It’s Sunday.
You know the drill . First, set the mood (stare at image for 3 minutes. No blinking).
Then, make that break from reality, under the care and supervision of a licensed professional. That’s right- Carnival of the Insanities, that therapy for the above average, is up.
As the crisis in the Middle East widens and unfolds, it is necessary to understand that the players- and their respective agendas- are separated by more than bullets and missiles.
There is much talk about ‘freedom’ and national ‘autonomy’ and/or sovereignty. Of course, those terms are suject to interpretation.
What is freedom for Israelis is very different than what is freedom for her neighbors.
Hassan Nasrallah, of Hizbollah, believe that the freedom to kidnap and shell Israelis is a Hizbollah ‘right.’ As far as Nasrallah is concerned, Lebanon’s autonomy and sovereignty is subservient to needs and wishes of the Hizbollah.
As Michael Young (editor at the Lebanon Daily Star) said in an interview with a CBS correspondent, what happened in Lebanon was a ‘coup d’etat.’ Hizbollah, he noted, wanted to destabilize and destroy the nascent Lebanese democracy. Of course, he noted, they succeeded.
Real freedom is a comittment to law and order and rights and obligations equally applied to all citizens and all nations.
When nations that are that are led by or are under the influence of tyrants or dictators, attempt to justify those actions, we can rightly assume that justification is false. Tyrants and dictators do not make moral choices, because moral choices can only lead to the demise of the tyranny.
The Arab League, for example, is not an organization that exists to promote the well being of the populations of the Arab world. The Arab Leagues exists only to maintain the status quo and to promote- and protect- the interests of Arab world leaders. There is not a single example of an Arab League program that has benefited anyone other than Arab leaders themselves. No a single educational program, not a single economic development program designed to provide jobs to work starved nations and not a single political or cultural effort to expand democratic processes that would empower the individual (this explains why Lebanon is both admired and reviled in the Arab world. For a very long time, they alone took care of themselves).
The Arab world does not need to change or abandon it’s culture to to benefit from democracy. Arab democracy does ot have to look like American democracy or any other democracy. The real key to democracy is that people believe that rules, laws and the application of justice, equally applied, benefit them. If those people commit to and adhere to those laws, rules and application of justice, and those lives and societies prosper and improve, well, democracy has worked.
Democracy is resisted in the Arab world, not because the culture needs to change (it doesn’t) but rather because democracy has been forced into a competition with fundamentalism- and the fundamentalists are doing everything (including the use of cruel violence) in their power to maintain control. Democracy has been deliberately misrepresented- and yet, in Lebanon, for example, (after the murder of Rafik Hariri by Syrian security services) when given the chance, it became clear that freedom and democracy will blossom.
In the end, democracy does not have to justify itself. The west does not have to convince anyone that as imperfect as it might be, democracy is still the preferred mode of government. Those who refuse to understand or accept that truth, do not deserve freedom. All they have to do is look in their own backyards for a look into what the future holds for them.
“We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.” -John Kennedy
