[Assam] From St. Louis Post Dispatch

[Chan Mahanta]

Jonah Goldberg is a die-hard HAWK, who was an unashamed fan of 
Bush-Cheney's Iraq invasion, which I am certain ( from reading his 
columns now and then over the years)  had a lot to do with his 
concerns for Israel's interests, sometimes well camouflaged, 
sometimes overt. Of late he has found religion, and has asked some 
highly pertinent questions, like in the piece below. Highlighting 
mine.

But he still doers not quite get it. In spite of the pertinent ( 
albeit obvious)  questions he raises here, he has not given up 
spinning, as one can see in the closing paragraph.

Can anyone guess why I call it spinning?

And do netters see how the questions he raises apply to the 
desi-demokrasy and its fans ?

cm

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http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/columnists.nsf/jonahgoldberg/story/99ADCFC1C9E9DA738625731F00019A07?OpenDocument



The first order of business is ... order
By Jonah Goldberg

07/23/2007

"My biggest hope for Iraq is that, when you find yourself in a 
courtroom in Iraq, it will be about what you did and not who you 
are," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said on PBS's "NewsHour" this week.

Well, it's about four years late but nonetheless encouraging to hear 
prominent supporters of the Iraq project (the phrase "Iraq war" 
really doesn't do the trick) getting their talking points right.

Americans are great at talking about how wonderful democracy is. The 
right to vote is taught as a sacrament from grade school up. 
Politicians can talk a mile a minute about how wonderful elections 
are for much the same reason salesmen at a Ford dealership can talk a 
blue streak about how great Fords are: It's their livelihood. Spend 
your career trolling for votes and you're apt to be able to explain 
why votes are the most important thing in the world.

But Americans don't believe, not really, that voting is the most 
important thing in the world. For starters, if they believed such 
nonsense, they'd vote more.
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No, Americans like exercising plenty of other rights more than their 
right to vote. The right to speak your mind, own property, associate 
with whomever you like, be compensated for the fruits of your labor: 
these and other rights are plainly more dear to Americans than the 
right to pull a lever every two or four years. Obviously, Americans 
would care if anyone proposed taking away their right to vote. But as 
a matter of common sense, voting is less important to us than those 
rights and liberties that make our God-given right to pursue 
happiness possible. Ultimately, voting is a means to an end, not an 
end in itself.

Lest we forget, democracy shorn of these other rights is no less 
tyrannical than dictatorial rule. "An elective despotism was not the 
government we fought for," Thomas Jefferson wrote in "Notes on the 
State of Virginia." He recognized that parliaments and congresses do 
not a free country make: "173 despots would surely be as oppressive 
as one. Let those who doubt it turn their eyes on the republic of 
Venice."

In one sense, I don't blame the Bush administration for making 
elections in Iraq an early priority. There really is no universally 
recognized symbol of liberation from tyranny other than free 
elections. And I celebrated alongside everyone else at the sight of 
those purple thumbs. But without the foundations of a liberal order - 
rule of law, fair courts, property rights, relatively uncorrupt civil 
service - democratic elections are an exercise in futility. Indeed, 
they're terrifying to minorities like the Sunnis because they seemed 
a harbinger of oppression at the hands of the long-oppressed Shiites.

When looting beset Baghdad in 2003, then-Secretary of Defense Don 
Rumsfeld shrugged "freedom is untidy," as if rioting is part and 
parcel of democracy (a view shared by some on the hard left in 
America, by the way). That was the height of nonsense and sent 
exactly the wrong message. Rioting and looting scares those democracy 
needs most: the hard-working entrepreneurial middle class. 
Historically, democracy arrives when the bourgeoisie gets big and 
strong enough to demand honest government. The very poor often like 
demagogues (just look at Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez), and the very 
rich don't care much about fighting against corruption or for 
accountable government because in unfree societies they tend to 
profit from both.

It's the small businessman, the shopkeeper or tradesman, who wants to 
feel secure in his property and contracts. He wants to know, as 
Lindsey Graham says, that he can get a fair shake from a judge. If, 
down the road, he gets to vote for his preferred politician, that's 
wonderful. But it's not the first priority.

In Iraq, security isn't merely the most important thing, it's the 
only thing. Without security, nothing else is possible. "The good 
society is marked by a high degree of order, justice and freedom," 
Russell Kirk wrote in "The Roots of American Order." "Among these, 
order has primacy: For justice cannot be enforced until a tolerable 
civil social order is attained, nor can freedom be anything better 
than violence until order gives us laws."

Which is why Democratic talk about how "political solutions" are more 
necessary than military ones and President Bush's ornate rhetoric 
about the "universality of freedom" are so irrelevant, even 
counterproductive. The Arab world doesn't have a great grasp of what 
democracy is, but it does have a keen sense of justice and order. One 
significant reason we're having such trouble selling Iraqis on the 
former is that they were really in the market for the latter.

E-mail: JonahsColumn at aol.com.
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