Solid Matt post on how democracy actually spreads [now gone from the internet]. The one thing I'd add is that part of the motivation behind actually invading Iraq, rather than just letting democracy run its course over the decades, was a desire to act in big dramatic explosion-involving ways after 9/11. When you add in confusion among benighted segments of the electorate about whether Saddam was responsible for 9/11, you've got a recipe for the dumb, violent, ineffective form of democracy-promotion.
Monday, October 10, 2005
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You know how much I love arguments comparing things to poker and concavity for outcomes. : )
I think one important thing liberals could be doing is publicizing how much government and international institutions actually work. For various narrative reasons, it's so easy to focus on entropy and decay, brueaucracy and hopelessness - when from LBJ's GS to UNICEF to developing democracy a lot of good work is getting done... there's just still a long way to go.
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