09 March 2005
President Bush’s Freedom Speech
President Bush gave a provocative speech at the National Defense University yesterday. The missionaries of democracy around him are pretty smart to take credit for the natural consequences of the unstoppable spread of information technology in one of the most repressed regions of the world. Even Islamic regimentation of those societies has not been able to prevent the opening of minds to the satisfactions of material progress.
Poverty imposes the same repression on societies in Central Asia and Africa, where "democracy" is still not catching on. President Bush did not propose a resolution of this problem in his speech.
A second issue that he did not address is how to cope with the disorder that is caused by the release of individual freedoms in heretofore repressed societies. We really don't have a choice but to prepare for these political consequences of the information revolution. They are inevitable. Perhaps the neo-cons should be applauded for delivering the kick in the pants that unleashed political change in the Middle East. Nevertheless, we must plan for and commit to helping those societies maintain order, and to helping any others where repression is removed as a result of IT-inspired revolution. A strategy must be found to soften the landing of societies that suddenly adopt participatory government. Without it, liberal democracies will continue to suffer from terrorist reaction to the changes that they make on the social order in the rest of the world.
President Bush gave a provocative speech at the National Defense University yesterday. The missionaries of democracy around him are pretty smart to take credit for the natural consequences of the unstoppable spread of information technology in one of the most repressed regions of the world. Even Islamic regimentation of those societies has not been able to prevent the opening of minds to the satisfactions of material progress.
Poverty imposes the same repression on societies in Central Asia and Africa, where "democracy" is still not catching on. President Bush did not propose a resolution of this problem in his speech.
A second issue that he did not address is how to cope with the disorder that is caused by the release of individual freedoms in heretofore repressed societies. We really don't have a choice but to prepare for these political consequences of the information revolution. They are inevitable. Perhaps the neo-cons should be applauded for delivering the kick in the pants that unleashed political change in the Middle East. Nevertheless, we must plan for and commit to helping those societies maintain order, and to helping any others where repression is removed as a result of IT-inspired revolution. A strategy must be found to soften the landing of societies that suddenly adopt participatory government. Without it, liberal democracies will continue to suffer from terrorist reaction to the changes that they make on the social order in the rest of the world.
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