A political education

It is fascinating watching these Iraqi legislators learning about democratic government as they work to develop one of their own.

Iraqi parliament speaker suspends legislative session due to dispute over draft bill promoting federalism

It's an interesting lesson in the role that an education - especially a political education - plays in our lives. If these Sunni leaders understood federalism, better, I don't think they would feel so strongly that it threatened Iraqi national unity. It's a valuable and utterly relevant, to the Iraqi cultural and political landscape, means of dividing government and separating powers to prevent monopolies of power or domination of one ethnic group over another. Especially following a sectarian civil war, such a measure may create the breathing space necessary for Iraqis to heal their wounds with less of a propensity or ability to impose upon or oppress one another in the wake of their bitterness and antagonism.

If the Sunnis understood that better, I imagine they would sense some serious self-interest in giving less power to their Shia brethren/rivals to exact revenge for their repression under Saddam Hussein's regime and since the 30's and pave the way to a more genuinely democratic - meaning not just a government with regular election or universal suffrage, but division of powers as well - Iraqi government.

Politics seems to regularly be a enterprise where players are learning as they go, if they learn, at all. It's nice to see some legislators making an effort.

Superior

Trying to prove that you are superior to others is a losing gambit out the gates. There is no nobility in trying to be superior. Excelling is someone being better than they were the day before and doing better than others have done. Trying to be superior is a sure sign that someone doesn't know who they are very well at all and are trying desperately to get others to confirm for them that this is exactly as things should be.

Sinning

Sinning is generally the notion that armed with the knowledge that one can do what is wrong, one will, or armed with the knowledge that one can have what is excessive or foolish, one must.

And so it goes

"The capacity for discerning the essential truth, in fact, is as rare among men as it is common among crows, bullfrogs and mackerel. The man who shows it is a man of quite extraordinary quality— perhaps even, a man downright diseased. Exhibit a new truth of any natural plausibility before the great masses of men, and not one in ten thousand will suspect its existence, and not one in a hundred thousand will embrace it without a ferocious resistance. All the durable truths that have come into the world within historic times have been opposed as bitterly as if they were so many waves of smallpox, and every individual who has welcomed and advocated them, absolutely without exception, has been denounced and punished as an enemy of the race. Perhaps "absolutely without exception" goes too far. I substitute "with five or six exceptions." But who were the five or six exceptions? I leave you to think of them; myself, I can’t."
-H.L.Mencken, Meditation on Meditation


"Time is a great legalizer, even in the field of morals."
- H.L. Mencken, A Book of Prefaces