Congratulations from the United States of America to all our freedom loving brothers and sisters in Egypt and Yemen and Jordan and Oman and Tunisia and Libya and Iran and Bahrain and Morocco and Algeria and maybe someday soon Saudi Arabia for standing up to your dictatorial overlords and clutching at the guano covered branches of freedom. Jolly good. You've made majority rule fashionable again. Democracy is now the new black.
We are all totally psyched how you've dragged yourselves kicking and screaming from the dark ages into the middle 19th Century. You may be excited to hear about some other upgrades we've made in areas such as in transportation, communications and hygiene. It's all there in your orientation packet. Watch some MTV. Ignore Jersey Shore. No, they're not real.
We got to warn you though, self-rule isn't all a bed of roses. It has a thorny learning curve. Rubs tough on beginners. You might want to spend some time wading out towards the deep end wearing your feudal water wings before jumping straight into the parliamentary pool.
The thing is, don't expect the world to change overnight. England's been dancing with democratization since 1265 and they're still curtseying to the Queen. Usually what happens is you lose one tyrannical despot only to gain another. You could avoid a particular mistake we made and find someone who can spell despot.
Elections are tricky things. Make sure it's The People deciding the outcome and not nine old folks wearing black robes. Here's a hint: anybody gets 95% of the vote, reboot. You might be surprised to find the people most likely to run for political office often turn out to be criminally insane. Maybe you should pass a law restricting that. Kind of wish we had. Rule of thumb: anybody who can be elected, shouldn't be.
Something else to keep in mind: democracy for one, means democracy for all. It's a take it or leave it enterprise. All men are created equal. And women. None of this wife- walking- five- paces- behind- her- husband- while- dressed- as- a- grieving- beekeeper stuff. Same with Sunnis and Shiites and Sasquatches. One person. One vote. Hey, we all put our robes on one leg at a time. Or two. Whatever.
Start small. Too many choices can result in inaction. An example: sometimes you just want a package of sunflower seeds. You don't want the Low Sodium Dill Pickle flavor. But Safeway is all out of Original flavor because they allotted equal shelf space to the Low Sodium Dill Pickle flavor. Which nobody wants. They can have it, if they wanted. But they don't. Well, same deal with liberty. So, there you are. Hope that clears that up.
All we're trying to say is good luck with the whole democracy thing. Treat it like a new car, always driving as if 100 eggs are hatching inside of it at all times. Because they are. Bring it in for a tune- up every 10,000 miles and don't forget to change the oil. (shouldn't be a problem) Remember to downshift headed uphill, it tends to veer to the left on the straightaways and try not to crack it up because who knows, maybe we here in America might want to give it another test drive ourselves someday.
San Francisco based political satirist Will Durst writes sometimes. Like this.
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The respect, however, these mideast countries have for Obama should be more noted and widely respected. I heard crowds in Egypt, Tunisia, etc. saying "Yes we can." Republicans seem to admire and want to reward the crowd of people yearning to be free, even joining with some Democrats in wanting us to strafe, bomb, shoot down fixed wing planes but allow helicopters and watch a brutal leader squash them anyway, or not.
So far, the opposition is holding its own, moving and maneuvering. No decisive battles, and yet tactical victories for both sides. Quick, Arab leaders' consensus. Libyans will need to bob and weave while learning to box, both before and after they depose the Colonel.
His reply: "I think it would be a good idea". :)
All of ours
Thanks
Something's not right with that last part, don't you think?
Mike Westlake
www.thewestlakereport.com
And we were quite different in the immediate aftermath of WWII
In all fairness.
We have no stated aim in afganistan and are fighting a losing 'war' -
Like trying to eradicate the mob by bombing Chicago.
More complicated and fare different
http://movieclips.com/pByx-terms-of-endearment-movie-beach-ride/
please tell us what to do about it. That's one we haven't figured out yet.
And maybe, if you let yourself learn some facts that the media seems unwilling to mention for some reason, you could improve the article by taking a country where the 'pro-democracy protesters' are trying to overturn majority rule out of your list of ones where the protesters actually are trying to put in place majority rules governance.
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/feb10/IranElection_Feb10_rpt.pdf
http://www.ipinst.org/images/pdfs/cr_iran_2010_survey_frequency_questionnaire.pdf
and mass extinction of species. Including ourselves.
“self-rule isn't all a bed of roses”
But then our hybrid democracy does tend to smell less sweet. Like there’s something rotten in the State of.
“England's been dancing with democratization since 1265”
And yet government of the people, by the people, for the people is still sitting in a corner. Like a wallflower waiting for the waltzing to end.
“find someone who can spell despot”
D(emocracy), E(ludes) S(imple), P(eople), O(ver), T(ime).
“Something else to keep in mind: democracy for one, means democracy for all”.
So if they tell you “we are all in this together”. Get it in writing, that what they mean is mandating polices.
“Treat it like a new car, always driving”
defensively. As if all politicians were out to kill you. Because some of them are.
silly fun with nuggets of wisdom
well the magna carta offered some sort of a 'contract' between the govenor & the governed.
The 1215 Charter required King John of England to proclaim certain liberties, and accept that his will was not arbitrary, for example by explicitly accepting that no "freeman" (in the sense of non-serf) could be punished except through the law of the land, a right which is still in existence today.
and so forth
well it was a start
and an auspicous one
Semper fi
:)
Not soon enough, maybe we can test drive it when democracy is antiquated.