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03 September 2004

Bush’s Evangelism

On September 2, 2004, President accepted his party’s nomination for reelection with a thinly disguised evangelical appeal to a seemingly enrapt audience. His speech included the following principle:
“The story of America is the story of expanding liberty: an ever-widening circle, constantly growing to reach further and include more. Our nation's founding commitment is still our deepest commitment: In our world, and here at home, we will extend the frontiers of freedom.”

I can understand that in a global community that has shrunk because of the information technology revolution, our own freedom depends on the ability of free men and women around the world to control their own destinies. But should we impose “freedom” by force? Is it not antithetical to freedom that “democracy” be established in repressed societies by the intervention of the world’s superpower?

America, after all, is the fountainhead of the IT revolution. Why can’t it use its skills and tools to teach peoples caught under the oppression of cruel and authoritarian regimes how to recover self-determination? This strategy takes more time to show results than military action; and it doesn’t aggrandize the empires of industrialists and neo-conservatives. Just as important, it may not be achievable within the four-year framework of Presidential politics. But it is more in line with the inhibitive spirit of our founding fathers.

02 September 2004

Does the Unlicensed Sale of Pharmaceuticals Justify War?

How can it be that attempting to establish democratic government in Iraq justified the intervention of the U.S. by force? Reductio ad absurdum, would invasion have been justified in order to eliminate the sale of prescription pharmaceuticals by street vendors? According to The Wall Street Journal of September 2, 2004, the first goal of Iraq’s new Ministry of Health “is to stop unauthorized drug sales.” Maybe the Ministry can also help multinational pharmaceutical companies end unlicensed sales of brand name drugs over the Internet.

It is truly dangerous for consumers to buy prescriptions from unqualified sources. But information is a better weapon than force for generating wise purchasing practices. The same, of course, is true of spreading democracy across the globe.

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