http://badmoneyadvice.com/2009/07/interesting-polling-numbers.html

“Should you need more reasons to reconsider this whole democracy thing, you can examine the results of a June 2007 survey on the origins of species. When asked their opinion of “Evolution, that is, the idea that human beings developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life” 53% said it was either definitely or probably true. That’s a little low, but at least it is a majority.”

I guess it ultimately goes back to that whole narcissistic need to assume that I as an individual am more important (to me) than the good of the polity or society, and generally a society when acting as a single entity does not have a problem sacrificing the individual, and that scares the shit out of me.

for instance you say “It is probably no surprise that capitalism and liberalism historically developed most vigorously in the United States, with its abundant high-quality land and scarce labor yielding massive per capita surpluses.”

but let us never forget that US capitalism developed precisely by committing genocide against the millions of native people who inhabited this “abundant high-quality land”.

likewise in terms of labor, we can never erase the painful history of enslavement of millions of Africans, whose unpaid labor created much of these “surpluses.”

i recommend Naomi Klein’s book “The Shock Doctrine” which talks about the ways capitalism takes advantage of crises, or even creates them, in order to propagate itself. she talks specifically about Russia and how Yeltsin burning the parliament allowed him to push through painful “liberal” reforms that created far more suffering.

worth reading.

alex
endofcapitalism.com

Of course, one contradiction that still exists, even in all things being equal, is the fact that liberal democracy, as a method of reconciling the need for recognition with the need for individual rights, still fails to reconcile the fact that industrial/specialized societies have some form of social mobility, which allows the desire for recognition to fuse with the desire for power, and its short history on Earth does not yet indicate that liberal democracy can prevent, say, a talented financier from becoming a totalitarian dictator.

I don’t really agree with this. The desire for power mostly is a desire for recognition, and the easiest way to do it is through electoral politics. It will be extremely hard for any one financier to subvert this process because all other social parties will be opposed; thus, this is the great strength of liberal democracy.

The real problems start when liberal democracy starts becoming discredited, e.g. because of some economic failure. If people become disillusioned with it, then that same wily financier (or more likely the person he backs – see the friendship between Hitler and the German tycoons) can become a totalitarian dictator.

I think fervor can be directed in different ways. For instance, there was a great deal of “fervor” under Mao’s Cultural Revolution or Stalin’s purges, but it was directed within. Other nations like Germany and Japan mostly channeled it outside.

Over the course of time, the otherwise noble issue of human rights has been used as a propaganda tool.

A country on better diplomatic terms with the US and UK will likely get better spin. On a BBC telecast of this morning, Georgia is uncritically referred to as a democracy.

Touching on a point raised by Stas, one should be wary of being so quick to blame or laud one person. This relates to a point I made on how a great coach can only do so much to improve a not so talented team and how a talented team can win despite some not so good coaching.

One of the things I like about SO is that Anatoly is not afraid to call himself a hypocrite or acknowledge that there is a lot that is false in his world view. I am the same. I’m a Brit isolationist Social democrat who was born when this ideology went balls up, and have only known neo-conservative, neo-liberal Britain. I know that I might have been pissed off living through the unionised 60s/70s yet still think it would be preferable.

However, it seems when Britain was in my idealised never-experienced golden age, people were far more political and opinionated. America really had Britain by the gonads during the 60s because we still had not paid back Atlee’s loan. LBJ could have pulled the plug on us, yet Wilson did not commit troops to ‘Westernise’ Viet Nam because his government would fall apart and Britain could see civil war.

Yet by contrast Britain is now apparently ready to invade any country the USA tells us to, and the media is full of bullshit about ‘Putin’s Russia’ (isn’t it awful when the Hitler of the moment accepts constitutional power limits? He’s making it look like he isn’t a tyrant) most Brits probably couldn’t find Russia on the map. If I really wanted to destroy and westernise a country, I’d export daytime TV there. It destroyed Britain. Ironically enough, whilst Brits like to see themselves as part of a smaller America, I think due to the climate and their traditional values multiculturalism, America has not been harmed as much by TV.

Anyway, getting off track. My main point is that Britain came to have imperialist ambitions because of apathy rather than because of fervour. The majority of Brits (from what I have read) oppose the ongoing war in Afghanistan, yet are about the elect a PM who wants to clear protestors away from Downing Street (though of course would be the first to self-righteously condemn Chavez for doing something similar). Whilst most Brits care more about Strictly Come Dancing than the tribal politics of Northern Georgia, they are going to elect someone who thinks that Saakashvilli should be rewarded with NATO membership for bombing his own people.

As for Western concepts of Liberty, I think that this is ambiguous. I was recently debating this with a Romanian friend. He was saying that he liked the way that Brits traditionally trusted their police officers, but I think that opened the way for our CCTV/ DNA database/ absurd ID cards that makes Britain one of the least free countries in the West, and makes it ripe for a police state. I think ideal liberty is possible and unattainable, so my ‘ideal’ is more like Greece where smirking politicians in shiny suits are trusted to manage infrastructure projects but treated with contempt and scepticism by the general population.

Gotto get bags packed. Hope this post made some sense.