The Redhunter

The whole issue raises interesting, and I don't think completely easy to answer, questions about the nature of democracy, and it's twin, liberty.

The short version of my answer is that there is a lot more to democracy than just the mechanics of voting. Carter I'm not so sure about, but I have to think that most liberals and even leftists know this full well. So when the folks at Kos berate conservatives for not accepting Hamas because they were elected, I have to think they're not being entirely serious in their criticism, because it's eithe that or they're outright apologists for terrorism. I have to think that most who spout this line are just blinded by their hatred of President Bush. In short, they've got Bush Derangement Syndrome.

After all, if the Ku Klux Klan started winning elections in the U.S., I can't imagine the left would accept their right to rule regardless of the fairness of the vote.

Likewise, the Nazi party won a plurality of the vote in the 1933 elections, coming in first with 43.9%, more than twice that of their nearest opponent. The election itself was relatively free and fair, but who today would say that it really represented "democracy"?

All of this brings to the forefront the central question of elections and their relationship to what we think of as "democracy": Is it just or acceptable for a non-democratic party to come to power through elections?

What is Democracy?

The US Department of State helpfully provides a longish definition. Here are some of the highlights

Freedom and democracy are often used interchangeably, but the two are not synonymous. Democracy is indeed a set of ideas and principles about freedom, but it also consists of a set of practices and procedures that have been molded through a long, often tortuous history. In short, democracy is the institutionalization of freedom.

Several "Pillars of Democracy" are listed

# Sovereignty of the people. # Government based upon consent of the governed. # Majority rule. # Minority rights. # Guarantee of basic human rights. # Free and fair elections. # Equality before the law. # Due process of law. # Constitutional limits on government. # Social, economic, and political pluralism. # Values of tolerance, pragmatism, cooperation, and compromise.

Wikipedia says that

Liberal democracy is a representative democracy along with the protection of minorities, the rule of law, a separation of powers, and protection of liberties (thus the name liberal) of speech, assembly, religion, and property.

I think that most Westerners can agree that all of the above are pretty good definitions of democracy.

Back to the Palestinian Authority

Clearly, then, Hamas does not qualify as an institution committed to democracy. Neither, for that matter, does Fatah. Therefore, when the Kos author talks about "extreme contempt both Israel and the U.S. have for democracy" we can conclude that he either has no understanding of democracy, is just off on a political rant and is thus guilty of lazy thinking, or is just an apologist for terrorism. Or, as I mentioned above, he's got BDS.

As for ex-President Carter, I think he's just a bitter old man. He never reconciled himself to this 1980 defeat, and for a Christian seems not to have learned how to forgive. He's thrown in with the worst dictators, has become a virtual anti-Semite, and I believe will be judged harshly by history.

The Algerian Example

What if a situation develops whereby a political party promises to dismantle the institutions of democracy if it is elected? What if it actually wins a majority of the popular vote?

Such a situation has actually occured, not once but several times in the post-WWII era.

In 1991, the Islamic Salvation Front won the first round of Algeria's first multi-party elections. The ISF had promised to turn the country into an Islamic state and institute sharia law. After the voting, the military stepped in and annuled the elections. Western governments either applauded or remained silent. This led to a civil war, and some 160,000 people were killed over the next ten years. However, in the end the insurgents were defeated and a true democracy (republic, actually) is emerging.

What it Means

We in the West are good at the mechanics of voting. Through international agencies we can set up relatively free and fair votes most of the time.

But our record at installing actual democratic values has been rather hit-or-miss. We got it right in Germany and Japan. India has also turned out to be a stable democracy. We got it wrong in Zimbabwe and most other African states. El Salvadore seems to be doing well, but Nicaragua not so much.

Iraq somewhat parallels the Palestinian Authority. It was easy enough for us to set up voting, not so easy to convince people to respect each other's liberty.

In the end, then, we need to recognise that democracy is about more than voting. We need to think harder about what it takes to instill concepts of liberty in troubled regions, and not fixate on voting. This is a tough subject, and will require much thinking and trial and error in order to get it right in a place like Iraq. The first step, though, is to have moral clarity on the subject, and to recognize the true nature of democracy.