Monday, October 16, 2006
Truth From A Republican President
My good friend in DC, ERA passed along this interesting find:
The timing on sending me this was most apt given the news that the word leaking out of Iraq now is that the Iraq's government into a "strong-man" commission in order to get the sectarian violence under control. Yep, the "j"-word is being used: "junta." That this is not just some "nutty rumour coming out of the British press" is demonstrated in the fact that the Washington Post's David Ignatius devoted his Friday column to reporting on the rumour (which he tried to convince himself as much as anyone that it wasn't true).
So, in order to hold onto a modicum of liberty for Iraq, will democracy have to be sacrificed?
If so, what, then, will be the legacy of the purple fingers?
For that matter will individual Iraqis start wondering from whom they may now indeed be getting the finger?
Technorati Tags: Republicans, George W. Bush, Iraq, Richard Nixon
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. . . .Woodrow Wilson spoke of making the world safe for democracy. Our task today is to make the worldsafe for liberty. Democracy is political, a system devised by human reason. Liberty is personal, a striving of the human spirit. Democracy is a particular form of government,which evolved out of the parliamentary traditions of Western Europe, which was brought here to North America by the Europeans settlers and then developed as our country grew. Liberty is a human condition.
Liberty can survive and even flourish in other systembesides democracies. In this country, thanks to centuries of political evolution, we are fortunate enough to have liberty and democracy. We should not make the mistake of attempting to impose instant democracy on nations not ready for it, and in the process pave the way for destruction of such liberties as they have.
Making the world safe for liberty, then, does not mean establishing democracy everywhere on earth. It does mean making liberty secure where it exists: secure against overt aggression, and also against externallysupported subversion. If we make liberty secure where it exists, then by the force of its example liberty will become the wave of the future. . . . . .”
-- Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980
The timing on sending me this was most apt given the news that the word leaking out of Iraq now is that the Iraq's government into a "strong-man" commission in order to get the sectarian violence under control. Yep, the "j"-word is being used: "junta." That this is not just some "nutty rumour coming out of the British press" is demonstrated in the fact that the Washington Post's David Ignatius devoted his Friday column to reporting on the rumour (which he tried to convince himself as much as anyone that it wasn't true).
So, in order to hold onto a modicum of liberty for Iraq, will democracy have to be sacrificed?
If so, what, then, will be the legacy of the purple fingers?
For that matter will individual Iraqis start wondering from whom they may now indeed be getting the finger?
Technorati Tags: Republicans, George W. Bush, Iraq, Richard Nixon
