The sorrow of the world

A friend once told me that he doesn't keep track of world events because they're so depressing sometimes. Yeah, I know how that feels. The recent news about Burma.
A couple days ago I was heralding a new dawn for democracy in Burma (Myanmar), but now... Now we're seeing the repression in its purest form. And it looks like it will be successful. I'm hoping something will break. I'm hoping maybe one of the military rulers of the country will look into his conscience and see how wrong this is. I'm hoping for a miracle. And I'm praying.
But I'm also carrying sorrow, because as things are looking now, it will be a good while before Burma is free.

Let Freedom ring!

It's rare these days that I have hope for quick rises in democracy. In the 90's there was the sense that we were on the verge of a democratic world, but now, now I hold to the principle that if a government is smart enough, powerful enough (relatively_, and ruthless enough it can squash its democracy movements. And that makes me sad because I love freedom dearly, and I believe that liberty is not something given, not something earned, but a fundamental right of mankind, which you are born with.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

That's why it makes me so happy to see this, a chance for democratic change in Burma (Myanmar). My admiration and prayers go out to those brave monks and all those who join them in their fight (although as this protest march shows, fighting doesn't necessarily mean violence and is often more effective without it) for freedom as well as to Aung San Suu Kyi and all those who have been fighting the good fight for years. I truly hope they can make it.

My principle still stands, but I think the military regime in Burma isn't ruthless enough towards the monks to stop them, nor perhaps, is it strong enough compared to the monks' spiritual authority among the people of Burma.

It is a hope, and for the proud people of Burma and their rich civilization, I will pray.

The fire of the spirit inevitably causes some burns

I think one of the great difficulties of advocating democracies is living with the consequences. Perhaps one of Bush's great failings in his advocacy for democracy, he is never able to accept when things did not end up as he expected. Hamas is the greatest example of this. He immediately isolated it without trying to work out a livable agreement. Now for a general rule this would be forgivable, but Bush was supposed to be the champion of democracy, and an elected government at least deserves a chance if you believe that elections are a right. But perhaps I'm being too harsh, at the time I was only ambivalent about the sanctions, I see now that they were a mistake, but then...

The truth is that democracy is an unstable gamble. Even in success stories like the Estonia, where democracy has taken root and led to stability and growth, there have been some harsh consequences like the terrible treatment and subsequent radicalization of the Russian minority population. Even in the best of circumstances, democratization has been tough, and usually violent. We forget that even ours was pretty violent and had some bad consequences. The Revolutionary War was not a cake-walk and there were plenty of casualties but perhaps even worse was the treatment of loyalists after the war. By some estimates 1/3 of the British loyalists in the US fled the country after the war (that was actually an important factor in the populating of Canada). Afterward the revolution things weren't easy either. We had the several years under the Articles of Confederation where the United States was in a perpetual state of barely organized chaos. Revolt broke out (Shay's rebellion), foreign affairs was a mess (our treaties with the British had several matters unresolved, and our treaties with the Native American nations, many of whom at that time posed a serious threat to the US, were also a mess), in fact just like Iraq there were serious dangers of foreign influence (Spain had serious influence on the Mississippi region and there was danger of it being turned into their zone of influence). We forget all that, because it doesn't fit with the nice image of an organic democracy rising easily and naturally out of our society. That illusion was a great comfort for us and allowed us to justify our fears of other people's democratizing troubles, and justified our intervention to squash their attempts at democracy. It also gave us a false confidence that we need not fear for the health of our democracy, a very dangerous false confidence.

In fact, although without a doubt, non-violent democratizing efforts are generally better than violent ones (Freedom House, an organization dedicated to the ideals of democracy, has done a study showing that nonviolent democratizing makes for more enduring democracies (a great example of this is India's anti-colonial movement, the fact that it was founded on the ideals of nonviolence helped to breed a generation of nonviolent protesters who helped to keep India democratic (for example, many of them helped bring down Indria Gandhi's Emergency, the most dangerous period for India's democracy)), most of the older democracies in the world were founded on violence (the newer ones tend to have learned a little from the past). Take Europe for example, France's stumbling, off-and-on progression to democracy included the brutal reign of terror. Democracy was imported via costly war to Eastern Europe and Germany. Italy's democratizing is such a confusing process that I'm not going to get into it, but it involved some terrible violence including the institution of Fascism and its fall. Greece had to deal with a civil war. Spain and Portugal, eventually became democratic through non-violence, but they are relatively new democracies (1976 and 1974) and their record includes several spectacularly failed and spectacularly violent (especially in the case of Spain) previous tries at democracy. Ireland only got democracy after a long history of oppression and a combination of violent and non-violent efforts. Even England the big show case for gradual democracy only adopted gradual democracy after a Civil War so violent that it caused many philosophers like Hobbes to assume human nature was essentially violent (granted that Civil War led to a Restoration and it was actually only after that you had the Glorious Revolution and the beginnings of democratization, but that was a process started by the English Civil War).

So am I justifying violence here. Well, maybe in certain cases, but generally I think non-violent resistance is far superior, especially in these days when governments are powerful enough to quash most violent efforts, except guerilla efforts, which usually disintegrate into terror efforts against civilians and often fizzle out. What I am saying, in a very long fashion, is that we shouldn't be surprised that democratizing can have ill consequences or even violent ones. That doesn't mean, at least I believe it doesn't mean that people should stop trying for democracy. Democracy is a right. I don't like it when people talk about whether people should be given democracy or earn it, it is not something that is achieved or given, it is something people are born with. No, scratch that, they are not born with democracy, but rather something even more fundamental, something more essential and something that is rarely found without democracy, but is sometimes not found in a democracy, people are born with the right to be free. When people "earn" democracy they are simply taking back what is rightfully theirs.

Then what does it all mean? When I recite these things, I can say this is that and that is this, but what does it all mean? I suppose it means that even through violence people should press on. They should keep believing in freedom and strive to achieve it. I suppose this is a note of hope for the people of Iraq, but also the sad recognition that cases like Iraq, perhaps not as bad usually, but still violent and savage, will come in the future as other countries democratize. Yes, the violence can and should be avoided, primarily by using nonviolent protest techniques and avoiding alienating people by excessive nationalistic rhetoric, but still even in the best of cases, sometimes violence will happen, and we can try to prevent it, but it still might happen. Democracy is a crapshoot. Heck, life is a crapshoot. But we still press on.

So anyways, take it to your head, take it to your heart, and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

News and lews (whatever that is)

The news is biased. I understand that. It's inevitable, people are inherently biased, we all see the world through our own perspective. But that doesn't mean the news isn't useful. Especially when it tries to be objective and tries to provide both sides of the story, because then there's probably at least some useful information you can use after you filter out what you regard as "unfair" bias (there's always some degree of what people judge as "fair" or "honest" bias which is pretty much where the reader's biases and the reporter's biases overlap (I'm using bias in a very broad sense, you can be perfectly correct in your opinions but that'll still affect how you report the issue, maybe it'll lead you to tilt your article towards the correct analysis of the issue, that's fine but it's still bias), and if you can get some information you can think about the issues yourself.

Still it's also useful to get other points of view on things and also to read people who share your point of view but take a deeper analysis than you do or perhaps than you are capable of doing so you can expand your opinions. Still that doesn't stop me from getting riled up by stuff I read in the news. Unfortunately, I can rarely remember who exactly I read the information from which leads me to aggregate the opinions into a general positions, more unfortunately, sometimes I aggregate a lot of more sophisticated opinions opposed to me with some rather ridiculous opinions opposed to me (usually cultivated from Wikipedia, wander through the criticism section of various intellectual sections), but occasionally I remember legitimate opposition opinions, or if not legitimate, opposition opinions that were actually popular.

Take for example the idea that because we have no right to dictate to people in the Middle East how to run their governments we should support the current governments there. That makes no sense, because if we can't dictate how they should run their governments than what right do we have to tell them they should have their current governments which are for most part really quite awful. (But I have to say overall I would agree that we cannot invade countries to for our ideals, not because an ideal like democracy for everyone is wrong, but because it would lead to international chaos. (However, if we do invade a country for self-defense, or for defense of an ally, or perhaps to prevent genocide, we have no right to set up any government but democracy.)

Least that's what I think, and that's all that really matters. So take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

The alienable and the unalienable

I've been rather sporadic with my sessions lately, but that comes largely from my decision to cut down on the whining, which forces me to work more on presenting ideas and such, and well, ideas are hard things to articulate and such. They're such slippery rascals when you get down to it, at one point you think you grasp the idea and are ready to put it down on paper, but then oops it's gone and you feel like a complete and utter idiot. But I've got some ideas and even if they're slippery it's a worthwhile endevor I think to pin them down, cut them open, gut them, cook on them and then make them into a nice and tasty curry.

Let's start with an idea of human rights. Human rights has been a pretty popular concept, at least in the '90s when I was growing up. Of course, key matters has been interpretations, limitations and value. And now, especially a popular issue is cultural relevance. But Americans seem to think they are relevant, at least in regards to themselves, at least most of the time. The Bill of Rights is popular and that shows some appreciation of human rights, and nearly all Americans will applaud the sentiment "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." (To my shame, although I could paraphrase it off the top of my head, the exact wording I had to get off the internet, but give me a break, it took me till 7th grade to memorize my parents phone numbers.) But when you think about it that core statement of the Declaration of Independence is very complex and has implications for today.

Part of the complexity comes from key words like "all men (now regarded as men in the figurative sense meaning all mankind, although I'm not sure it would be regarded as such back then (I'm really unsure of this because some of the Founding Fathers were rather feminist in their views of the rights of women))" and "unalienable." Let us compare this to recent criticisms of the war in Iraq as promoting a Western ideal of human rights. This critique impliciting would contradict the idea that the rights apply to all men, and despite the fact that this contradicts some of the loftiest ideals that founded this nation, a lot of people in the United States would be ok in abandoning those words. But the implication that human rights are Western also carries other implications, ones that threaten the word "unalienable."

I think we forget part of the complexity of the Declaration of Independence because everyone, especially Americans and to a lesser but still very large extent Europeans, have selective memories regarding history. We like to think that human rights are an integral part of Western culture, unseperable from it, something so key to Western culture that it can be traced to its oldest roots. We like to quote the Greeks and Romans in this regard, and we pick and choose a few other writers here and there. But like I said this is selective, very, very selective. Europe was never historically renown for human rights. Those good old Greeks relied on a massive system of slavery, even those much lauded Athenians. The Romans, well, the Romans, I like the Romans I really do, I like their culture, I like their contributions to law, literature, etc., I love their language and I want to be best buds with Cicero (it will happen, the time machine is in the works), but they are not a good example of human rights. Let's look at their foreign policy. Over the course of their republic and empire they conquered a massive amount of land and did so incredibly brutally. The conquest of Gaul is said to have killed a million and left a million slaves. The completely annihilated Carthagian civilization, despite the fact that after the Third Punic War Carthage was already crippled by the peace treaties of the two previous wars. The crushing of the Jewish rebellion by Titus in AD 70 killed probably a million Jews, maybe more, exiled most of the rest and destroyed the center of Jewish cultural life, the Temple. Let's get to the domestic policy. Massive, massive, massive slavery. Persecution of Christians (not as much as legend says, but still signifcant) and after the Romans became Christians perecution of other religions. Murder of political dissetents. Exile of offensive writers (poor Ovid). They didn't treat women or children very good either. Romans are very cool but not very nice. Those are the roots of Western Civilization, from there it just gets better right? Wrong. Midevil ages, oppression of serfs, persecution of heritics and non-Christians (yeah, Jews rule the world, that's why they've gotten the shaft consistantly for 2,000 years), brutal warfare (Christian Europe was renown for the brutality of its warfare), etc., etc. I'm taking up too much space with this section, so let me wrap up.

The Modern Era: Holocaust!!! Westerners committed the Holocaust!!! How can you say Western has human rights at its center when Westerners the Holocaust!!!

Other problems of the modern era caused by the Western world: Fascism, Communism, Imperialism, oppression of minorities, forced migration of minorities, oppression of dissetents, etc., etc.

Yeah, Western culture is not inherintly human rights centered, but I've discussed mostly European examples, maybe you can say human rights is at the center of American culture, well... I love the United States, I am a patriot through and through, when we said the pledge of allegience in class, I meant it, but I'm not a blind man and I am a historian. The United States has done some very, very bad, bad things. It has supported horrific regimes (Pol Pot was given US aid, as was Saddam Hussein (which was a mistake, turning against him in our opinion is not hypocracy, it is the correction of that mistake (although the Iraq War was not right though, but Saddam Hussein was still a horrible, horrible, horrible man, and much of the violence happening now has its roots in what he did)). And at home we've got slavery, decimation of Native Americans, discrimination (up till the '60s it still was crippling and there are still problems today although I think we've had a lot of progress), denial of women's rights, etc.

The human rights enshrined by the declaration of independence are not inherintly Western, because the West has historically ignored and abused human rights to horrific effect. It's not good, it's just not good. Human rights are popular now, but they weren't in the past, and who knows what the future may bring. Combine that with the idea that human rights are cultural and we get a very disturbing result. Cultures change, and since human rights in the West isn't inherint, then say culture changes so America doesn't value human rights anymore, say we don't even like the Bill of Rights (that has not happened yet, despite what some doom sayers have said, but there are some worrying signs that if trends continue it could happen later), well then we don't need human rights any more.

If human rights only matter if the culture supports it, then they are not inalienable. If we say we should only support human rights in a nation if their culture supports human rights, then in the future we might have to give up the fight for human rights in America. The same goes for democracy. Now don't get me wrong. I am not advocating invasion of every country that doesn't support human rights or democracy. I believe in a law between nations that states you do not use armed aggression to change other nations domestic policies. The only justifications for war are self-defense (not pre-emption, thank you very much neo-cons) and defense of another country (we should sometimes ignore this, but I'll get into my feelings on when to declare war in a later session). But I believe in organizations like Amnesty International, Freedom House, etc., private organizations that fight for human rights through organizations and such. I believe in using diplomatic, and when useful (key word) economic pressure (however, this is often useless and then becomes detrimental to innocents, but at times it is useful, see South Africa) to help change human rights. I understand that the way the world is we sometimes can't change human rights in a country and still need to work with it, but whenever we are able to do so we should challenge countries on human rights (I know this is inconsistent, but if we were being consistent we could never do anything on human rights because some human rights violators are too powerful and too vital for us to take on in a big fashion, although we can take on them in a small fashion with periodic rebukes and such). It doesn't matter what country it is, what culture that country has, whether its Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist or any other (and there are other religions), human rights still matter and should still be fought for (if not by foreign militaries, except in cases where you're already going to war with a country, in which case you should try to change the government, although you can't always if the country's too strong). Why? Because human beings are beautiful and should not be abused. Because, well, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." (thank you cut and paste.)

Well that's all I have to say on the matter, for now at least. So take it your head, take it to your heart, and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!