27 January 2011
Better Engagement than Proselytization
America is the leading example of the effects of immigration on the form of government. The brave souls who abandon their homelands in search of economic, political, or religious freedom by starting over their lives in a new land, challenging their comfort as much when it was unexplored as when it now is intellectually unbounded and unrestrained, possess a common instinct for individual achievement that is often missing from those they have left behind. That explains why the democratic form of government has so well suited America.
Of course, the idea of democracy was invented and developed in other societies long before America’s revolution, and continues to characterize the governments of prosperous and educated societies throughout the world. However, certain societies have cultural histories of acquiescence to social elites that are even older than the invention of democracy over two millennia ago in Greece. Certainly, China’s culture is one of them.
For that reason, Elliott Abrams’ prescription of “Less ‘Engagement,’ More Democracy” in the January 23, 2011, New York Times for the President’s future foreign policy would extend a mistaken strategy that led the U.S. into Iraq. It no longer takes physical displacement for adventurous individuals to give vent to their independent spirits—the information revolution has made that possible within the borders of their native lands (cf. India). However, preaching the adoption of the democratic form of government that has served us so well to the nationals of other culturally different countries (in Asia or Africa, for instance) can lead to civil strife and human suffering.
The Chinese leadership has learned that entrepreneurship and intellectual freedom can be compatible with an authoritarian system of government as long as everyone plays by certain rules of behavior. If it is the rules of behavior that one objects to in his country, then physical displacement to a society that operates on a democratic model may still be required for that individual’s personal freedom. But those rules may not be a burden for the overwhelming majority of people in that culture; and there’s a lot for the rest of us to gain by ‘engaging’ with them that we would forfeit, or even destroy, by trying to convert them into frustrated political activists.
America is the leading example of the effects of immigration on the form of government. The brave souls who abandon their homelands in search of economic, political, or religious freedom by starting over their lives in a new land, challenging their comfort as much when it was unexplored as when it now is intellectually unbounded and unrestrained, possess a common instinct for individual achievement that is often missing from those they have left behind. That explains why the democratic form of government has so well suited America.
Of course, the idea of democracy was invented and developed in other societies long before America’s revolution, and continues to characterize the governments of prosperous and educated societies throughout the world. However, certain societies have cultural histories of acquiescence to social elites that are even older than the invention of democracy over two millennia ago in Greece. Certainly, China’s culture is one of them.
For that reason, Elliott Abrams’ prescription of “Less ‘Engagement,’ More Democracy” in the January 23, 2011, New York Times for the President’s future foreign policy would extend a mistaken strategy that led the U.S. into Iraq. It no longer takes physical displacement for adventurous individuals to give vent to their independent spirits—the information revolution has made that possible within the borders of their native lands (cf. India). However, preaching the adoption of the democratic form of government that has served us so well to the nationals of other culturally different countries (in Asia or Africa, for instance) can lead to civil strife and human suffering.
The Chinese leadership has learned that entrepreneurship and intellectual freedom can be compatible with an authoritarian system of government as long as everyone plays by certain rules of behavior. If it is the rules of behavior that one objects to in his country, then physical displacement to a society that operates on a democratic model may still be required for that individual’s personal freedom. But those rules may not be a burden for the overwhelming majority of people in that culture; and there’s a lot for the rest of us to gain by ‘engaging’ with them that we would forfeit, or even destroy, by trying to convert them into frustrated political activists.
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