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Jun 17, 2007

The Democrats Dilemma with Democracy

"Democrats today have a problem with democracy. We have lost our voice on the issue of promoting democracy abroad -- which means that what was once a core Democratic foreign policy idea is being ceded to the GOP." -- so writes Ronald D. Asmus in today's Washington Post.

The frustration and impotence expressed in Mr. Asmus' editorial on behalf of the nation's Democrats is understandable. What Mr. Asmus failed to grasp however is that the ideology held by the Democrats today has taken a sharp left turn since the days of John F. Kennedy's inaugural speech where Kennedy said "Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country."

The democrat leadership of today promotes an authoritarian government that will regulate and manage society through a cradle to grave agenda of redistributive caretaking, an imperfect society that is willing to abort innocent lives while sanctifying those of criminals and which undermines it's own principles by banning moral absolutes as politically incorrect.

These impetuous and rapid revolutions in values and principles combined with an ever growing dependency today on breakneck technology and globalization for economic progress is unsettling to most people overseas here in Southeast Asia and bewildering to many others.

The endless social engineering and the more recent tinkering with the basic foundations of civil society brought on by arbitrary governance has led many in Southeast Asia to question the merits of an American-style liberal democracy promoted by the Democrat leadership. The Asian-Style Democracy promoted by Singapore's Lee Kwan Yew has found new momentum in countries in Southeast Asia where political control is considered a necessity needed to provide social order during the disruptive period of economic development.

Further, the quality of America's Democrat leadership such as Hillary (Clinton Part 2 now with added Estrogen) and Obama (Half-black, Half-Muslim) has only strengthened the conviction of many in Southeast Asia that democracy and meritocracy are the desiderata of effective leadership as opposed to a popularity system designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

In closing, for a region that has experienced the horrors of of communism and totalitarianism firsthand, the path to socialism advocated by America's democrat leadership is not one that they are willing to take.


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