Because it sounds better than "i told you so"

This administration is pretty stupid. I like seeing so called "Highly Educated" people look stupid. At some point you have to have common sense. This Prez lacks that.

I didnt realize that the US president decided who the Egyptian president was. Thanks for the info.

He shouldn't but he sure spent an awful lot of time telling us how great a regime change would be, and money making it happen, then telling how it would stabilize the middle east. And we were all called "crazy" for saying that the Muslim Brotherhood are religious zealot wackos. Who was right and who was crazy?

For better or worse, the US supports democracy. I do too.

Democracy is merely mob rule. I do support a representative republic similar to ours (not that ours is perfect, just that it seems to be the least bad). However, I think its pretty obvious that once the mob ruled in Egypt, the guys who took control immediately eliminated any legitimate ability for the populace to have a say, mob or otherwise. I guess the other option is that the largest part of Egyptians really do want to wipe Israel off the map and do it with our weapons.

There's no such thing as a pure democracy in the world today. It's completely unfeasible. Egypt is a representative democracy just as the US is. Of course, they will have growing pains just as any newly instituted democracy has had.

We can gripe about a country ran by uneducated religous zealots; but remember, that's what Europe says about us. I still say it's simply moral for the people to have a choice, instead of a president for life/single party government.

While I don't know the details of the political turmoil in Egypt, from a cursory glance it appears that the current administration hasn't committed to any policy ideaology wholesale. For instance, after an unfortunate stance against Isreal, they backed off because of international pressure. It seems like their still trying to triangulate between Shia, International and (secular) administrative interests; all the while testing the limits of their power.

Insert quotes about democracy being messy and being merely the best of bad alternatives.

Honestly, if you believe this you should take a closer look at our foreign policy. There is plenty of well written material on this topic originating from all domestic political persuasions.

We do of course support 'democracy' when convenient and expedient.



Yep. It is not by accident that the elites and media in this country constantly refer to "democracy" in public discourse, especially in reference to ourselves and values. They are all obviously educated enough to know the difference. But there is nothing more fickle that the mob, and pure democracies with simple majority rule are the easiest political construct to corrupt. All it takes is a media campaign - whether it is terrorism, financial collapse, school massacres... to convince the mob that giving up 4th/5th amendment rights, handing trillions to corrupt cronies, giving up 2nd amendment rights... etc...

The mob is by definition irrational, a little scare, a little fear.. people will hand over their rights and absolve the powerful of accountability. You would think that noone would ever, ever trust a politician or talking head that spoke in terms of "democracy", or called us one.



In regards to Israel, I think the deal was that the Egyptian military would stay in our pocket. The new regime could do what it wanted domestically, but the military still has the ability to veto foreign policy.

On that topic though, I think we spent far too much time worrying about Israel when we have such drastic problems at home. We are currently having a hard time protecting our own rights.

Also, we let our cultural hate of anyone wearing a turban to cloud our vision. Our blanket support of the Israeli govt has allowed them to get away with acting like cads.

Any red blooded American that was suddenly by some magic transformed into a Palestinian and forced to live under the occupation conditions would be grabbing their rifle as well.

Of course this does not excuse the behavior of some Arab groups. George Washington never once ordered the taking of British children hostage or ordered the bombings of schools or ordered the beheading of civilians to instil fear. They are all fucked up over there, and we would be better to not involve ourselves at all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ex2hj5rLN48

I'll help you learn about George Washington.

"I didnt realize that the US president decided who the Egyptian president was. Thanks for the info. "

Sarcasm will get you nowhere. Especially against other masters of Sarcasm :D


If you think we have zero involvement in foreign governments and who gets to play the "in charge" guy / gal during any given time period, then you're deluded. We may not advertise it on the front page of CNN, but I assure you, we meddle in everything :D


Then again, the same thing can be said of foreign governments regarding the US as well. The more foreign countries purchase / buy US corporations, the more say so they have ( in the form of lobbying types ) in the makeup of our own laws and elected officials.

We like to install folks who play friendly with US interests. Once they cease being useful, we simply remove them and install another.

This doesn't work with all countries, of course, since some of them understand the game we play pretty well. But for the little guys who are still have ambitions of becoming a world power, it's pretty much the daily routine.

Is Democracy hate really a thing on the right now? I'm having trouble believing that I need to defend the constitution to constitution defenders, or extol the virtues of political liberty to Libertarians.



This was a nice topic of conversation when our founding fathers were creating a new government. Today, we have dozens of stable democracies far removed from mob rule. This thread in particular was created because of an act of political violence against a mob. That is the very definition of not being mob rule. Also, let us not pretend that facist/dictators(whatever) don't use public sentiment/propaganda just as much, if not more, than modern democracies.



I'm well aware of our grand history of supporting banana republics against popular revolutions. This has changed recently; most noticeably with George W. The US now supports messy democracy over stable dictatorships. If you truly believe that all men are created equal and have the right to self governence, than this is the only proper conclusion.

Spot on about the last point.

Turkey, its the difference between a Democracy and a Republic - where a "Democracy" as such is rule grounded in "will of majority" and a Constitutional Republic is grounded in Natural Rights and while the govt generally reflects the will of the populace is still restrained from infringing on, and charged with protecting said rights.

In a "Democracy" as such the only rights you have are the rights that are "most popular" on a given day. A Constitutional Republic is a different story.

There is a popular phrase (often attributed to Franklin, but not provably AFAIK):

A Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.

A Constitutional Republic is when a well armed sheep contests the vote.

It basically boils down to this: do you have rights as a human, irrespective of their current popularity? Of course as a practical matter, there are methods to change a Constitution via super-majorities.

My point is simply that the high threshold involved in changing Govt's relationship with your rights is quite intentional.

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As far as "Dozens of Stable Democracies removed from mob rule" I would say a couple things:

First, that stability is not necessarily the best metric.

Second, whether they are removed from mob rule is also quite open to debate.

Really, there is a huge discussion that could be had here.

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As for our current involvement with tyrants vs populace... it has not changed as much as you seem to think. Go google up Bahrain for example. Or the countries in Pipelinistan we have relations with. In some cases we have good reasons, in others... I would personally say much less so.

I don't know if we're debating semantics or if the hate for the democratic party is such that we can no longer admit the US is a democracy.



A republic, constitutional or otherwise, without the democratic part (democratic republic or representative democracy), is a country ran by an unelected legislature. China is a constitutional republic. The bananna republics I mentioned were ran by wealthy landowners where the citizens had zero say in their government. The idea of a republic started in Rome where the Senate were appointed by status (a combination of wealth, heredity and accomplishments). This notoriously caused a lot of problems because they were completely oblivious to the needs of the citizens of a growing empire. The House of Lords in Britian, unelected representitives, is exactly why we had a revolution in the first place.

A true democracry, which keeps being brought up without definition, is a country that doesn't have a legislature. All laws, treaties, and administrative appointments are drafted and ratified by the public. This has never been in consideration because the logistics for anything larger than a city-state is bat-shit crazy.

This isn't a philosophical debate of the interests of the masses vs. the interests of the individual. This is concrete bureaucratic organization.


Then what is? GDP, happiness, freedom? These countries work, and they work well.


I would firmly argue that the West Europe, East Asia, South America, Oceanic democracies are far removed from mob rule.


Is a great example. Previously, the US would rush in defense of the monarchy. The US was very careful not to support them this time around.


I'm not naive enough to suggest we don't have shady dealings with shady governments, especially in indo-asia. Just, that in the case of a democratic revolution, the US now either supports the revolution either through action (Egypt) or inaction (Bahrain). To brush off this apparrant policy change as merely lip-service goes against both recent events and our conviction that citizens should have a say in their governence.

I would not say semantics, but rather an important concept that many people intentionally misuse in the public sphere - and by extension many people unintentionally misuse.

The differentiation between your ability to maintain freedom of speech - or any other right - if 50.1% of voters decide it is an unneeded freedom and govt can infringe it VS 75% of voters combined with 75% of regional legislatures is quite an important differentiation.

The talking heads like to talk a lot about "the will of the people". Great lengths are gone to to try and establish in the public mind that

1) The "majority" feel X should be done
2) That the fact that a "majority" wills it, means it is just

Partisan politics have nothing to do with this, the GOP under Bush was every bit as guilty as the Dems under Obama.

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I would dispute that many of those countries work "well" , and liberty would certainly be the metric I would use. Its a complex issue though ill-suited to either one of us trying to break down into one liners.

I think you will find plenty of examples of mob rule in the areas you mentioned. Plenty of cases where the govt does whatever it wants, especially if you are a minority. That minority can mean different things , depending on the actual instance you are referring to - political, ethnic, geographic.

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Bahrains revolts were forcibly suppressed by the Saudis using our weapons, with our satellite photos and intel. Heck, the Sauds themselves are a case study. In Libya we sent planes and drones. In Bahrain our regional enforcer marched in to support the regime. Now, seeing as we have military facilities present I can see why we would act the way we did. But it does not change the fact that our espoused principles and our actions do not match.

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I think a case could be made that US behavior has changed to a degree. Though I think an equally strong case could be made that we have a long ways to go.

I think I get where you're coming from. We're confusing Democracy, a form of elected government, to democracy, short hand for majority rule.

I would suggests that Democracy =/= democracy. Having a Democracy does not preclude special voting requirements as we can see in our amendment voting requirements. Another example is run-off voting preformed in some countries. Further, as many constitutions are cribbed from ours, I'd speculate that special voting requirements are a somewhat common thing.

No Democracy that I know of solely relies on democracy. But just as we shouldn't automatically accept majority opinion, nor should we discard it.

If we accept liberty as a metric, we can only conclude that western Democracies are far more free than the alternatives. I do agree, however, that this subject is outside the scope of the forums.

The Saudi's aren't our regional enforcer; we're their's. The Saudi's have had us by our curlies for longer than my lifetime. The fact that the US made no overt support for the Bahrainian Monarchy, despite the Saudi's very special interest for us to do so, speaks volumes to me.



That's fair, as long as we can agree that supporting Democracy, not necessarily democracy, is a good thing.

I do too. Sometimes it means bad guys win the elections.

As to blaming Brotherhood on Obama -

I don't see any evidence of anyone in the Obama talking up the Muslim Brotherhood. What they did do was support the democratic process. Just like with Iraq, you cant take it back just because you don't like the choice the people made. That is the danger of democracy.

But Daye, my sarcasm skills are surging!

Chuckle.

Alas, it's not a skill that's very useful in today's society :D
Though, useful in limited circumstances.

Ask my wife. My sarcasm is how she gets out of having to sleep with me.