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The most telling feature of Daniel Fosters response to my article on Donald Trumps Warsaw speech is that, while he dislikes my definition of the West, he never offers one of his own. I argued that, in the United States today, the best predictor of whether a country is considered Western is whether it is primarily white and primarily Christian. (With Protestant and Catholic countries considered more Western than Orthodox ones, and Israel tossed in to buttress the Judeo part of Judeo-Christian.) I noted that non-white or non-Christian countries arent generally considered Western even when they are further west geographically than Christian, white ones (Morocco v. Poland, Haiti v. France, Egypt v. Australia). And that non-white, non-Christian countries arent generally considered Western even when they are economically developed (Japan) or robustly democratic (India).

Foster responds that Morocco was jostled about by Spanish and French empires for a few hundred years and that Western ideals were kind of a big thing in the Haiti of Toussaint Louverture and that Japan enjoys the sponsorship of a demure American empire and that Indias in the frigging British Commonwealth. Sure. Countries that Americans today consider Western and countries that they consider non-Western have interacted for a long time, and shaped each other in profound ways. So have white and black Americans. Yet Americans still distinguish between the two.

Foster is trying to have it both ways. He says that India, Morocco, Japan, Haiti, Egypt, and many other non-white, non-Christian places are right well tangled up in the West. Notice the slippery language. Are they Western or not? Saying no would require Foster to explain what excludes them from the club. Saying yes would render the term meaningless. Yes, India is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. (Its not called the British Commonwealth anymore.) So are frigging Nigeria and Papua New Guinea. If being influenced by (and influencing) the West makes you part of the West, then the West is everything.

Like other critics of my piece, Foster wants to associate the West with principles like democracy, freedom, tolerance, and equality. Thus, he says the Haitian revolution was fought for Western ideals. But if the real test of a countrys Westernness is its governments fidelity to liberal democratic ideals, then Japan, Botswana, and India are three of the most Western countries on Earth, Spain didnt become Western until it embraced democracy in 1975, and Hungarys slide towards authoritarianism means it is significantly less Western than it was a few years ago. Almost no one, including Foster, uses the term that way. And for good reason. If Western is synonymous with democratic or free, then you dont need the term at all.

What Foster is actually doing is linking these ideals to a particular religious (Judeo-Christian) identity. (Other conservativesPat Buchanan and Ann Coulter, for instanceexplicitly link them to a racial identity as well. And in America today, Muslim virtually functions as a racial category anyway. The Tsarnaev brothers, of Boston bombing fame, literally hailed from the Caucuses yet were not described as white.) Foster gives it away with this line: The West is the only civilization that blushes. Really? Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Arabian, and African civilizations have no traditions of self-criticism or shame? Its telling that Foster sees the Haitian revolution simply as a struggle for Western ideals. Of course, African, Asian, Middle Eastern, and American revolutionaries turned the ideals of their oppressors against them. But they also drew on non-Western, pre-colonial traditions. During the struggle against apartheid, Bishop Desmond Tutu popularized the term Ubuntu, a Bantu word meaning common humanity. In his 2005 book, The Argumentative Indian, Nobel Prize Winner Amartya Sen argues that Indian liberal democracy owes its robustness in part to the legacies of a Buddhist emperor of India, Ashoka, who, in the third century BCE laid down what are perhaps the oldest rules for conducting debates and disputations and to a Muslim Indian emperor, Akbar, who in the 16th century, when the Inquisition was in full swing, outlined principles of religious toleration.

Near the heart of the immigration debate in America and Europe today is the question of whether non-white, non-Christian immigrants will embrace values like tolerance, reason, and womens rights. Conservatives tend to be more pessimistic. Liberalsremembering that, in many countries, such principles were once considered alien to Catholics and Jewsare more optimistic. Thats fine.

The problem is when conservatives ask not whether immigrants will embrace democratic or liberal values, but rather Western values. In so doing, theyre conflating the universal and the particular. Theyre implying that being Muslim itself is incompatible with good citizenship. Foster himself may not believe that. But if he thinks its a marginal viewdivorced from mainstream conservatism in America todayhes nuts. According to a 2015 Public Religion Research Institute poll, three-quarters of Republicans say Islam is incompatible with American values.

Donald Trump is not a to-be-sure paragraph. On the subject of Islam and the West, he reflects what most American conservatives believe. And defending his speech without acknowledging its context, as Fosters magazine, National Review, did is willfully nave. When Trump talked in Poland about defending our civilization from threats from the south and east, he was not talking entirely, or even mostly, about defending liberal democracy. How could he have been? He fawns over authoritarian leaders. He attacks judges for their ethnicity and tweets images of himself physically attacking a man with CNNs logo superimposed on his face. No president in modern American history has cherished liberal democracy less.

Trump arrived in Poland as the man who, during the campaign, said, Islam hates us, and called for banning Muslim immigration. And he gave his speech about the survival of the West in a country whose government is itself undermining liberal democracy (without the gentlest chiding from Trump), and will not admit a single Muslim refugee.

In contemporary political discourse, defending liberal democracy and defending the West are very different things. In fact, from Trump to Marine Le Pen to the leaders of Poland and Hungary, many of the people most loudly defending the latter represent the greatest threat to the former. Its reminiscent of Gandhis famous line: Asked What do you think of western civilization? he answered, I think it would be a good idea.

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Defending Liberal Democracy is Not the Same as Defending 'the ... - The Atlantic

July 3 marked the 169th anniversary of the United States Virgin Islands Emancipation Day. In 1848, 15 years before President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, enslaved Virgin Islanders under Danish rule organized and executed their own armed rebellion and won their freedom from chattel slavery. Those people of the Virgin Islands and Haiti executed the only successful violent overthrows by those enslaved in the Western Hemisphere.

Virgin Islanders then spent a decade as citizens without a country, and now, alongside fellow territorial residents, hold no electoral votes and have no voting representation in Congress. Disenfranchisement in territories was originally a temporary step on the path toward statehood, but it has become a means to maintain the doctrine established by the Plessy v. Ferguson-era Supreme Court of separate and unequal status for the overseas territories. A federal appeals court decision, the Obama administration brief in Tuaua v. United States in 2015 and Congresss unwillingness to grant equal treatment requests made by territorial representatives all uphold that unequal status.

As a consequence of this disparate treatment, the Virgin Islands does not receive the same proportion of support in federal dollars as do states for school funding, roads and healthcare. The federal government matches 14 cents to every dollar of territorial funds but 30 cents to every dollar of other state funds.

In 1917, Virgin Islanders came to Washington to petition for not only citizenship, but also the responsibilities thereof, demanding to be included in the draft, committing our sons to defend this country. This tradition of patriotism continues today, with Virgin Islanders giving the ultimate sacrifice in military conflicts at three times the national average. These brave service members fight for a commander in chief they do not elect and protect the ideals of a nation that are not fully extended to them and their families.

Our territorial status is eerily similar to the status of the original 13 colonies. The colonists we commemorate every year revolted and wrote the Declaration of Independence because they were controlled by a government in which they held no representation. Today, territorial residents face the same treatment. How can we herald the actions of our Founding Fathers while simultaneously depriving fellow Americans of the same rights those Founding Fathers fought so hard to achieve? Just as the colonists, we are subjected to the laws of an un-representational government. But just as the colonists, we will not stop fighting for the same representation that every other great American enjoys. A people who have made great contributions to this country including Alexander Hamilton, Denmark Vessey, and Tim Duncan still do not have equal citizenship. Democracy is not complete.

Plaskett represents the United States Virgin Islands at-large district in the United States House of Representatives. Plaskett currently serves on the House Committee on Agriculture and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Plaskett is the ranking member on the Oversight Subcommittee on the Interior, Energy, and Environment.

The views expressed by this author are their own and are not the views of The Hill.

Originally posted here:
The ironic state of freedom without democracy - The Hill (blog)

From Richard Nixon slowly backing his way into resignation for a botched burglary to Bill OReilly denying charges of sexual harassment while losing sponsors and, eventually, his job at Fox News, the consequences of failing to confront the truth have proven to be debilitating. Whatever ones agenda may have been before beginning a cover-up, its achievement will certainly be sidetracked by the time and effort required by the evasive action.

This same danger exists for the Chicken Littles now crying about the sky of representative democracy falling because the state legislative and budgetary process has failed to enact the will of the people as expressed in several citizen-initiated referendums passed in November. Why bother to vote, they cry, if the Legislature and governor can simply ignore the peoples wishes as expressed in an election?

Because democracy is complicated, and we shouldnt give up on it so easily. And, more importantly, as Abraham Lincoln said, democracy is an ongoing experiment. It is not simply an elaborate game with clearly defined rules that periodically announce the beginning of a competition and inexorably count the scores and declare winners and losers. It is, rather, an organic, evolving social enterprise.

Those who cite election results they find unsatisfactory as reasons to stop participating in the system are giving up on it. Also, complaining about election results is rather like trying to cover up a lie it is essentially trying to fool oneself, trying to evade the truth rather than face it.

Last November, a plurality of Maine voters approved citizen initiatives to legalize recreational use of marijuana (49.5 percent) and to add a surcharge to the state income tax for some taxpayers and dedicate the resultant revenue to K-12 education (49.7 percent). A bare majority (50.3 percent) approved a system of ranked-choice voting, and a clear majority (54.5 percent) approved an initiative to raise the state minimum wage. None of these initiatives came close to winning a majority of the full number of Maine people eligible to vote in November.

Yes, you may say, but those people chose not to participate in the election process. True, but does that make their will irrelevant to the programs that state elections create and change? Hardly. Especially when these same nonvoters drive the roads, send their children to school, seek publicly provided health or social services or respond to public opinion surveys. Their will, however expressed, is part of the messy, organically evolving society our democratic institutions must struggle to understand if they are to survive.

Democratic institutions exist for all of the people all of the time, whether or not they participate. Indeed, our democracys single greatest achievement has been the continued growth over the centuries of the extension of democratic rights to people from whom they were once withheld.

In addition, these citizen initiatives came to the ballot in large part because their most highly motivated supporters became frustrated with the failure of their elected representatives to enact their proposals through the traditional method of proposing and submitting a bill, subjecting it to public hearings as well as majority votes by both houses of the Legislature and approval by the governor. Should these same supporters be indignant that over a third of the Legislature still disagrees with some or all of the initiatives they proposed? Hardly.

The citizen initiative and approval by elected representatives are alternative methods for expressing the will of the people. As such, the rise and fall of one or the other method as a preferred avenue for certain groups of the people may create incentives and disincentives for their political actions. However, to conclude that one particular election result destroys the reason for participating in the process in the future is to give up on democracy too easily.

Are legislators going to say, Why bother to show up for committee meetings and votes when the people are just going to overrule me anyway? Perhaps a few the increasing acrimony of all political activity is clearly making public service as an elected official less desirable. However, such a conclusion would be an equally distressing sign of civic-minded people giving up on democracy.

In short, supporters of citizen initiatives who thought they won in November and that they lost this month would be wrong to walk away saying, I give up on this democracy stuff; its all rigged.

That response is understandable. But, like the temptation to cover up a mistake, it would be dishonest. It would be lacking in the courage required to face the truth that, despite the election results, they had not convinced a sufficient number of participants in our ongoing experiment in governance to succeed. And that realization success is not measured by winning any particular election is the stuff on which our dreams of democracy are ultimately built.

Charles Lawton, Ph.D., is a consulting economist. He can be contacted at:

[emailprotected]

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Charles Lawton: Don't give up on democracy just because it's complicated - Press Herald

Its the casualness with which theyre saying it that is truly disturbing. Im beginning to think that Brexit may never happen, said Vince Cable on Sunday morning TV, with expert nonchalance, as if he were predicting rain. He echoed Newsnights Nicholas Watt, who a few days earlier informed viewers that there is talk in some quarters that Brexit may not actually happen. Leaving the EU? I think that is very much open to question now, said Lord Heseltine last month, with imperious indifference. He could have been asking a minion to pass the butter.

They say it matter-of-factly, sometimes a little gleefully. As if it wouldnt be a disgrace, a black-mark-against-the-nation disgrace, if Brexit were not to happen. As if failing to act on the wishes of 17.4 million people the most populous democratic demand in the history of this nation wouldnt represent one of the worst snubs to the democratic ideal in the modern era. This is the bottom line: if Brexit doesnt happen, then Britains claim to be a democratic nation will be called into question. Our democracy will be compromised, perhaps beyond repair.

That politicians can breezily flirt with the idea of reneging on the wishes of 17.4 million people tells us what a dire state the democratic ideal is in a year on from the referendum. A year of legal challenges by filthy-rich businesspeople and chattering-class rage against low information voters has left not just Brexit beaten and bruised, but democracy too. When people say, Yeah, that Brexit thing, it might not happen, and its probably just as well, I hear: Democracy is a mistake. To try to block Brexit is to display an alarming disregard for what is perhaps the most important idea of the enlightened era: that the people should shape the political fate of their nation.

Cable says Brexit is just too complicated. The problems are so enormous, he said on Sunday. He echoes various experts, or what Plato had the honesty to call philosopher-kings: people who believe their cleverness makes them better at political decision-making than the plebs. Brexit is hideously technical, experts say. The British people have unleashed a process potentially as complex as it is unpredictable, they whine, and so perhaps we should call it off. Others say Brexit was based on lies about NHS funding, immigration numbers, a future of milk and honey etc and thats why it shouldnt happen. It would be mad to let Britain be shaped by a referendum result that was the handiwork of myth-making demagogues.

Bless them, they think these are original arguments, when in fact such haughty disdain for the demos and its political choices is as old as democracy itself. In the 1840s, when the Chartists demanded the vote for working-class men, they were told they lacked ripened wisdom and thus were more exposed than any other class to the vicious ends of faction. That is, they were easily bought off by demagogues. When women demanded the vote, they were told that an excess of sympathy in their mental constitution meant they lacked logical power and judicial impartiality. In the Brexit era, that is said about all voters, female and male, which is a progress of sorts, I guess. Brexit has brought outthe lowest human impulses, saysIan McEwan. Cheers Ian.

That the arguments against Brexit the masses fell for misinformation, it was a howl of rage, etczzz sound so similar to old arguments against democracy is not a coincidence. Because the railing against Brexit is fundamentally a railing against the idea that we should entrust the political future to ordinary people which is otherwise known as democracy.

Some angry Remainers say: Are you saying we cannot argue against Brexit? Doesnt democracy mean being free to express political opinion? Of course! People absolutely have the right to weep and wail and take to the streets over Brexit. To say they hate Brexit and wish it would die in a ditch. To exaggerate the impact Brexit will have on the economy and political stability. My personal view is that such Remoaning adds enormously to the gaiety of the nation. Its cute and hilarious that people who call themselves progressive should now devote their lives and Twitterfeeds to bitching about the demos. But heres the thing: if youre using your clout or influence or money to ensure that Brexit doesnt happen, then you arent engaging in democratic debate youre seeking to overturn a free and fair democratic decision. Youre saying you know better than the masses. You are thwarting the democratic process.

We have to get real. If Brexit doesnt happen, democracy will be gravely wounded for a generation. The people will receive loud and clear the message that they dont really matter. Sure, well still have General Elections and pick our MPs. But the Brexit betrayal would rankle for decades, a sore on the body politic, a niggling reminder that when democracy returned a result that the political class didnt like, Britain flinched, and turned its back on democracy. Brexit must happen. It simply must. Because 17.4 million people want it, and democracy needs it.

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If Brexit doesn't happen, then Britain isn't a democracy - Spectator.co.uk (blog)

Sekulow: Comey 'Illegally Leaked Information' About Trump Meeting

AP Stylebook Instructs Writers Not to Use Words Like 'Pro-Life,' 'Refugee' & 'Terrorist'

Former presidential candidate Howard Dean claimed that a "criminal enterprise" is now controlling the United States.

Dean, formerly the governor of Vermont and chair of the DNC, said President Trump is a liar - especially when it comes to Russia - and everyone knows it.

He was reacting to new reports alleging Donald Trump Jr. met with a Russian attorney last summer in an attempt to find out damaging information on Hillary Clinton.

"The real savior for democracy is going to be Robert Mueller. He's going to find out what the truth is," said Dean on MSNBC.

Dean said even Trump's supporters know he doesn't tell the truth, but they back him anyway.

He said it's "beginning to look more and more" like Russia influenced the outcome of the presidential election, citing the "drip, drip, drip" of reports on contacts between the Kremlin and the Trump team.

Earlier today, the Russian lawyer who met Trump Jr. denied she has links to the Kremlin and denied ever possessing dirt on Clinton.

A lawyer for Trump Jr. said the president's eldest son "did nothing wrong."

MSNBC Guest: Trump's Warsaw Speech 'Fulfillment of Bin Laden's Ideology'

Hannity: 'Destroy-Trump' Media 'Foaming at the Mouth' Over Trump Jr. Report

Dem Strategist: Trump's Poland Speech Contained 'Dog Whistles to White Nationalists'

Continued here:
Dean: 'Criminal Enterprise' Running the Country, Mueller Will Save ... - Fox News Insider