For the past year or three, I've been trying to convey an idea to my friends who are in favor of the Administration's agenda and, more generally, favor a relationship with the trappings of our democracy bordering on religious fervor (I won't name names, but you know who you are, and if you're unsure whether you know that you're one of them, you probably are). I've just read an essay by a Mr. Charles Featherstone at LewRockwell.com that finally crystalized the incoherent feelings and frustrations that I could never clearly articulate as a legitimate argument. He's written this essay about the experience of totalitarian regimes, in what ways they are different, and in what ways those difference REALLY matter. Here's an excerpt, but please read the whole thing.
But more to the point, we say to ourselves: "no one would ever choose tyranny, would they? Impossible!" We are convinced all tyrannies are impositions of which people yearn to be relieved. How could anyone ever support or endorse a dictator? How could anyone ever vote for a tyrant? No, tyranny is an imposition from either the outside or the inside, a parasite that grasps hold of the state and society and sucks it dry. We think of Nazi-occupied Europe, or the satellite nations of the Warsaw Pact, or even of much of the world (especially the Arab bits of it), bereft of American democracy and DC-style managerial and administrative government.
We have reduced liberty to a matter of "what kind of government a people has" and freedom to "can they vote for their leaders?" It is as if being free has no other meaning than casting a secret ballot in a "contested" election every now and again for people who claim to represent you (and probably do, legally or constitutionally, though probably not ideologically or in any other meaningful way). "Are you free?" is really "who's your leader?"
And, of course, this has implications for the legitimacy of establishing democracy, in Iraq or anywhere, by any means necessary, as the Adminstration demands:
How a people govern themselves is as much a reflection of their culture, their spoken and unspoken assumptions and aspirations about themselves and the world, as it their ideologies and institutions. They may not cast secret ballots for political parties of little or no real distinction, but there is usually some process by which people address those who "rule" or "govern" them and hold them accountable. In fact, it has been my experience that the less formal the process, the more responsive those "rulers" are and the more likely people are to be satisfied with the outcome.
Even government imposed from the outside, by an occupying power or conqueror, as it becomes part of the culture of a people, and as more of them become involved in that government, becomes -- to an extent -- self-government. After all, isn't this exactly what Team Bush is busy trying to do in Iraq, make Iraqis adopt and accept an imposed government and slowly embrace it as their own? It's a process that's not much different than what the Soviet Union did in Eastern Europe following the end of the Second World War. It will probably last about as long, too. (I give our Iraqi satellite government no more than five years from the "formal withdrawal," which may or may not be a real and complete withdrawal, before it is toppled, likely in a coup d'état.)
OK, I refuse to steal his entire article, so please go over there and read it!
UPDATE: An interesting follow-up to Mr. Featherstone's article on the LewRockwell.com blog from a person who's actually experienced a totalitarian regime:
I've lived and worked in a totalitarian dictatorship and trust me, for the vast majority of people - it ain't much different than here. With one exception - in the totalitarian dictatorship when one was stopped by traffic police, people had no compulsion about arguing with the cop, sometimes in a dignified manner, sometimes in a less than dignified manner. No one ever felt that arguing with a traffic cop would result in anything other than blowing off some steam. I sincerely believe in the totalitarian dictatorship; the regime would have never even contemplated subjecting its citizens to the TSA. Friends of mine who grew up in other totalitarian dictatorships also describe similar levels of non-control. We have all come to the same conclusion - Americans are the most docile people in the world, willing to believe anything told to them by a corrupt leadership.
It reminds me of the old saying that Soviet single party elections were freer than American ones because at least their citizens knew their vote didn't matter.
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