{"id":1135,"date":"2006-02-26T15:41:39","date_gmt":"2006-02-26T15:41:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1135"},"modified":"2006-02-26T15:41:39","modified_gmt":"2006-02-26T15:41:39","slug":"paved_with_good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1135","title":{"rendered":"Paved With Good Intentions"},"content":{"rendered":"

The news<\/A> coming<\/A> out of Iraq<\/A> does not bode well for this Administration’s vision of a democratic Middle East.  As much as I believe in the concept of promoting democracy and human rights in every country around the world, I can’t help thinking that we’ve inadvertently given authoritarian regimes another justification for resisting political reform and liberalization.  They can simply say to their people, “Look at what freedom and democracy has given the people of Iraq.  Nothing but blood and tears.  Is that what you want for yourselves?  For your families?”<\/DIV>
 <\/DIV>
Time and again, the West makes the mistake of believing in the Instant Soup theory of spreading democracy.  Take one totalitarian society, add some occupying soldiers, an election or two, a constitution, stir, and voila, you’ve got yourself a free and open society.  But as our president might say, democracy is hard work.  We may not want to admit it, but democracy runs contrary to some basic human impulses.  For millennia, authoritarianism was the overwhelmingly predominant style of government on the planet.  The Romans, Greeks, and some Native American peoples experimented with limited forms of democracy, but ninety percent of human history is a narrative of the brutal and bloody exercise of power of a select few over the masses.  <\/DIV>
 <\/DIV>
Democracy does not grow in the wild.  It’s a hothouse flower that requires careful cultivation and constant tending.  And we have been pathetically clumsy in our attempts to grow democracy in other countries.  <\/DIV><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The news coming out of Iraq does not bode well for this Administration’s vision of a democratic Middle East.  As much as I believe in the concept of promoting democracy and human rights in every country around the world, I can’t help thinking that we’ve inadvertently given authoritarian regimes another justification for resisting political reform […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-ij","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1135\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}