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26 May 2005

Disgruntled Iraqis

In the Wall Street Journal on 24 May 2005, Bernard Lewis elucidates the very reason that democratic institutions of government cannot be imposed, deus ex machina, on countries without the political traditions of the United States and other liberal regimes. The dangerous fallacy in his argument for the creation of a loyal opposition in the yet-to-be constituted Iraqi government is that confidence in participating in a democracy can grow in a society whose members have no history of sharing a stake in its benefits, or belief that that stake will be rewarding.

In the West, it took centuries of civilization for that belief to prevail. In the East, the history has been shorter, primarily because of rapid economic development, rule of law and relaxed information flows. None of these events has yet occurred in Iraq, or in many other nations of the Middle East.

Mr. Lewis should be well aware how anomalous is the condition of the Middle East. It won’t do any good to excoriate Iraqis for stubbornly resisting a key ingredient of successful democracy. The wealthy powers that disrupted the apple cart there must devote the patience and resources needed to foreshorten the process of building a tradition of loyalty to participatory democracy.

Our Constitution’s 10th Amendment

In the Wall Street Journal on May 24, 2005, Lino A. Graglia, in association with Robert Bork, compliments the Framers of the Constitution for precluding “very few policy choices that legislators, at least as committed to American principles of government as judges, would have occasion to make.” None of the branches of government is more committed to liberty than the people themselves. Indeed without the 10th Amendment, the Constitution would not have been ratified. It reserves the powers not expressly delegated by the Constitution to the federal government to the states or the people.

It is only up to the people themselves, through the amendment process, to further give their elected officials permission to violate their private rights. In a democracy, the judgment of elected legislators must be carefully circumscribed in order to preserve the people’s power. Thus, the role of constitutional law is not to make policy, but precisely to prevent policy from being made by unbridled legislators.

The nine lawyers charged with protecting our democracy from legislation run amok are not directly elected, but must be approved by the same legislators whose actions they keep within the Constitution’s limits. Thank goodness for the minority rights that remain in the Senate to protect us from a Supreme Court dominated by judicators like Mr. Bork, who would dispense with its responsibility for reserving rights to the people not expressly delegated by the Constitution to our government.

07 May 2005

The Climate of Man

Elizabeth Kolbert’s three-part New Yorker article quotes former Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee who claimed “equal per capita rights to global environmental resources” at a climate meeting in New Delhi three years ago. It is not hard to sympathize with the resistance of the Bush Administration to this expression of the “ethos” behind the Kyoto Protocol. Just because developing countries are late to industrialization should not mean they can make the same mistake that industrial nations have made by contributing to global warming.

There are two separate problems here. Anthropogenic CO2 emissions and world poverty must be solved independently. If compensation or transfers to emerging markets are in order, they should not be made at the expense of the world’s environmental health.

The Bush Administration declares its ingenious formulation of “greenhouse gas intensity” as a measure of progress towards solving the human-caused warming of the earth preferable to the absolute scale of pollution. This allows a nation to grow its economy so it “can afford investments and new technology.” Why not devote part of that investment to equilibrating the welfare of emerging markets. Perhaps the added wealth that it would create in those other communities would also engender technologies that helped save the planet.

05 May 2005

The Death of Infants

Is it possible that the death of infants is part of life? Save the Children USA reported in a study mentioned in the Wall Street Journal on 4 May 2005 that one in eight children born in Mali die before its first birthday.

Two of my mother’s siblings died early in their lives, and my mother herself miscarried once. Perhaps I have missed something, but there seem to be fewer early childhood deaths or miscarriages today than even fifty years ago. There certainly are fewer childhood deaths in North America and Western Europe than in Africa. Sex does not become less popular in societies with better health care. Its consequences are better managed.

Abortion and birth control substitute for the natural rein overpopulation that has traditionally been imposed on small and unborn persons by poor nutrition or medical attention. Until certain communities develop viable, thriving economic and social systems, they will probably tend to limit the number of their inhabitants to sustainable levels through high infant deaths compared to the West.

02 May 2005

Little Jack Horner

Thomas Friedman has always reminded me of Little Jack Horner, who pulled a plum from a pie and remarked “What a good boy am I!” Fareed Zakaria’s review of The World is Flat in the May 1, 2005 NYT Book Review aptly recognizes the cleverness of Friedman’s conclusion that information technology has removed barriers to international competition. But he doesn’t shame Tom enough for his insufferability.

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