Democracy, freedom and people power as lazy shortcut words
by David Atkins
I wonder how everyone who celebrated the people-powered ouster of Morsi via military coup feels about the recent massacre of unarmed pro-Morsi demonstrators by the Egyptian military?
As of this writing, accounts of the death toll are varying wildly, but the basic fact of the massacre is unchanged.
Keep in mind, I have no love lost for the Muslim Brotherhood or the Morsi government. In fact, I despise both and wish them the worst. But I do think it’s important to recognize that they were, in fact, democratically elected in a free and fair election; that it was people-powered protest that requested a military coup to oust said democratically elected government; and that the people-powered coup is now resulting in the killing of unarmed pro-Morsi demonstrators.
The Right tends to have a funny notion that free markets and democracy go hand in hand. They are wrong. The left often has a funny notion that popular protest goes hand in hand with human rights and democracy. That’s also wrong.
What’s important is to recognize the fundamental principles that should govern the relationship of people to one another and to their environment. No race should oppress, much less enslave or murder, another race anywhere on the planet. Women should have the same rights as men, everywhere on the planet, with access to contraception and reproductive choice. Income inequality should not exceed certain thresholds anywhere on the planet. By the same token, government should not suffocate entrepreneurship and innovation of products that benefit consumers. Scientific inquiry should proceed undiminished by superstition, but closely bounded by ethical watchdogs. Protections for climate, environment and endangered species should be applied everywhere on the planet for the benefit of current and future generations.
All modes of governance and all theories of change should be evaluated by how well they achieve those and other similar goals. Democracy, people power, imperialism, and freedom itself are all secondary code words, too often loosely and lazily used as proxies for more fundamental goods.
By their fruits you shall know them. So far, democracy has tended to lead toward expanded human rights and freedoms. It’s a useful tool for achieving those things, but not without its shortcomings–shortcomings that require constitutional liberalism to protect minority rights and other important principles. People power can lead to good or ill, depending on how it is used. The same can be said both of free markets and of government intervention in markets. Too much of either can be a bad thing. Intervention can be a force for good or ill, depending on where it is done and how.
In politics and human affairs, process matters less than results. Good results usually depend on good process, but the benefits of any given process should be judged not on their intrinsic value, but on the results they achieve.
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