The Freedom Agenda

The Freedom Agenda

George W. Bush will be leaving office in just under a week from now, and most people couldn't be happier about it.  As an article this morning in BBC News points out, however, some countries still carry a high approval rating for the man, despite his many and varied presidential blunders.  Bush has, almost since his inauguration day as president, aimed to spread democracy around the world, by force if necessary.  It begs the question: does democracy need to be spread?

Anyone can look at a country's governmental structure and unearth one if not many faults.  Is it any better, then, to judge other systems of rule inferior and use that "knowledge" as justification for it's eradication, given the above tenant that all systems can be found flawed?  To quote a recent Daylight Atheism article:

Ultimately, countries are not patches of ground, but structures of ideas. What most defines a country is not its geographical borders: after all, we don't consider ancient Rome and modern Italy to be the same nation, even though they occupied much of the same ground. What defines a country is its system of law and government, its way of organizing its people. The existence of separate countries allows the human race to test out a diversity of ideas on how best to govern ourselves, and when one succeeds, it stands as an example to all the rest.

It is a logical face-plant to say that anyone is worthy of imposing their beliefs on another, but one that seems heavily entrenched in minds around the world.  The vision of a one-world government style carries with it a heavy cost.  The world and humans are not just better for their diversity.  It is essential to our survival.  By minimizing risk (inherent to the overwhelming factors presented by any type of diversity), we rob our economies, societies, and families of the very thing that allows their great success.  It also leads to the question of who is going to spearhead such an effort.  The leaders that have thus far have failed miserably, and blatant continuation of this ideal promises to attract self-interested, irrational people to it's helm.

But why does a better government need to be spread, anyway?  The rationale that a more structured, modern government will fix the problems of the world is foolhardy and dangerous.  We can see numerous examples of prejudice, hate, greed and murder in our own, "democratically mature" nation, and recent events in Iraq show that democracy has done little to quell the sectarian, ideological violence in it's 3-year tenure.  Many might say that the deaths are worth the end result of a stable nation based on equality, but isn't war and death the hallmark reason behind the desire to spread democracy in the first place?  

We've spent far too long, almost 8 years now and more in spirit, chasing ghosts.  The evils of the world are perpetrated by people, not governments.  The key to solving heartache and suffering on our Earth is in the minds, not the ruling system.  The dismissal of religious fundamentalism and in-fighting, irrational viewpoints based upon nothing but speculation, hyper-partisanship and misplaced patriotism will be the change humanity so desperately desires and needs, as it is a question of when we will finally destroy ourselves carrying on this way, not if.