The Western democratist idiocy

Blinded by our belief in proceduralism, we do not see that when Muslims vote in democratic elections, they are not voting for democracy, they are voting for their interests.

Tim W. writes:

Whenever an election is held in Iraq or Afghanistan the high turnout is always praised. But no mention is made of what the voters are voting for. They aren’t voting for tolerance, pluralism, democracy, or any of the other platitudes advocated by the Bush State Department. Rather, the Sunnis are voting to put themselves in power, the Shia are voting to put themselves in power, and so forth. The turnout is high because no faction wants any other faction to have power, which inevitably means suppression of all other factions, plus control of oil wealth and other perks.

Back in the Sixties, the left would sometimes theorize about what would happen if we had an election in America and everybody came. The belief was that a 100 percent turnout would mean the have-nots would outnumber the haves at the ballot box and would vote to plunder the nation economically, which they saw as a good thing. I don’t know if that’s really what would have happened, but the left saw “democracy” as the proverbial two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner. That’s how most of the world views it outside of Western Civilization, as we’re seeing in Iraq. It should be a warning to everyone about what diversity leads to. Instead, our neocons nurture pipe dreams of a pluralist Middle East where everyone gets along once “democracy” is imposed everywhere.

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October 8

Karen writes from England:

Here is a blog entry from a previous British diplomat who has written about the corruption in the Afghan elections

In Helmand province in the south, where Taliban fighters remain very active, for example, the U.N. estimated that just 38,000 votes were cast while Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission reported 122,376 votes for the top three candidates, including 112,873 for Karzai. In neighboring Kandahar, the U.N. estimated turnout at below 100,000 voters—compared to the commission’s official count of 242,782 votes, 221,436 of them for Karzai.

In fact the turnout was very low and the entire election fraudulent and the UN was complicit with concealing the fraud. Thus there is no democracy in Afghanistan and the stated aims of the war there are a lie. The “elections” have entrenched the established order. Iraq is in all likelihood the same.

Philip M. writes from England:

You wrote:

“Blinded by our belief in proceduralism, we do not see that when Muslims vote in democratic elections, they are not voting for democracy, they are voting for their interests.”

But nobody votes “for democracy” when they vote. Everybody votes for what they consider to be the best interest of themselves or their group. [LA replies: Of course, but my point is that many Westerners, and American neocons in particular, act as though these elections in Muslim lands were endorsements of democracy.] I suppose what you mean by this is that their voting should not be seen as an endorsement of democracy, rather they are merely using the process to grab power and then keep it. There are areas of Europe that are the same—Northern Ireland, for example, where the parties are all sectarian based. And of course the rest of Europe is heading that way.

As Tim says, this should be a warning about where diversity leads. Nor is it just the elections themselves that are poisoned. I was struck watching political debates from Northern Ireland how quickly every debate descended into “well, what about what you did to us back in ‘69’, which of course would be countered with “well, we only did that because of what you did back in ‘63’ and so on. A figure in Northern Ireland coined the excellent term “whataboutery” to describe this process.

It means that all debate becomes bogged down in recrimination and accusations. Questions about the future end up being derailed into arguments about the past. This has long been Northern Ireland’s problem, of course. A country with no common history can have no common destiny, and politics as a tool of progress and problem solving is made useless.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 07, 2009 01:29 PM | Send