More freedom

Most people are insufferable hypocrits is the truth. But they're generally decent insufferable hypocrits. Or, at least they're not psychopaths. And the great thing about liberal democracy is that at least that's an open secret rather than a dirty little bit of repression. Plenty of repression in democracies. But very little place to hide forever.

The question is whether we face our biggest secret - that we're all packing them. And that the world is worse for our being such pricks in the name of uncovering them rather than living up to our liberal democratic ideals and treating people with more decency and humanity.

And the greatest thing of all about liberal democracies is that we always come to our senses, eventually. Because there really is only one way forward. And liberal democracies more than any other culture more honestly and reliably move in that direction: more freedom.

Love,
Ben

Talking sense on Iraq

Joe Biden, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Democratic Presidential Candidate, and Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, write the most sensible thinking I have heard come from liberals in a very long time in the Washington Post, today, on a political resolution in Iraq.

Federalism, Not Partition

It's refreshing to read something that finally comes to terms with the failure of force as a governing philosophy on the left, these days, I must say. And in the context of the one central situation that America face today which should bring home that lesson, if nothing else will: the failure of force, militarily and politically, in controlling the situation in Iraq.

Biden and Gelb are right. A federal solution would likely be a more peaceful and politically sustainable situation than a partition created through civil war or a peaceful partition that does not resolve disputes between Shias, Sunnis, and Kurds. Politics is the means of resolving those disputes without warfare. And without a workable political solution that precludes military conflict, armed clashes are likely to arise again.

It is possible that a soft partition that involves either a confederation, or, more likely and workable, three separately governed regions, might avoid a civil war or the on-going military conflict and bloodshed. But federalism does seem like a likely path for resolving many of the different disputes that Shias, Sunnis, and Kurds have with one another, that Iraqis have generally within the country, and to resolve, better, issues like the border problems with Turkey, Iran, and Syria.

I could very well be wrong about that. It is very possible that three, peacefully-associating self-governing regions may better resolve the issues Iraqis face, today, than would one central government with autonomous regions built on principles of federalism. But Joe and Leslie's plan does look like one that offers an opportunity for resolving the many overlapping issues that Iraqis face, right now.

But, more importantly, it is nice to read that some folks on the left are coming to terms with the failures of any imposed solution on the Iraqi people and with some of the failures of force as a governing philosophy.

Perhaps there is hope after all.

Love,
Ben