http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2003740623_sundaymanweller10.html

Liberty: A capital idea
By Matt Manweller
Special to The Times

During a recent visit to Seattle, I encountered a young woman standing on
a street corner demanding that President Bush take action to stop the
genocide in Sudan. When I asked her if she thought Bush should send troops
to the region as he did in Iraq, she responded with a blank stare. It was
then that I realized she had not thought that far down the road. Although
she wanted to use American power to stop genocide, she did not want to get
her hands dirty accomplishing the task.

Dilemmas like hers are why I often remind my students and colleagues that
only the impotent and the naïve have the luxury of self-righteousness.
After our five-year experience in Iraq, Americans are also learning this
lesson.

As a nation, we have messianic tendencies. We want to make the world a
better place, but we often recoil at the real-world consequences of
pursuing such policies. Our experience in Iraq requires us to re-examine
the practicality of our goals and tactics, and ask ourselves what we might
do differently in the future when we will most assuredly be needed to
again intervene abroad.

I want to start with a relatively controversial premise. Despite the
continual barrage of attacks from the blogging left, the neoconservatives
got one core argument correct: Killing Osama bin Laden will do nothing to
stop terrorism. If we want to stop terrorism, they correctly argue, we
need to bring hope, social and economic mobility, and the rule of law to
the places that foster terrorism. The mistake the neocons made was
assuming that democracy would foster such an environment in the Middle
East.

There are two reasons why initiating democracy early will not bring
economic, social or political stability to the Middle East. First,
democracy only works in places where it doesn't matter if you lose.
Second, democracy does not bring about liberty. Liberty, though, may bring
about democracy. Let's start with the first argument.

Democracy works in America because our lives are not dramatically altered
in any way if our preferred candidate loses.

Would my life really be that much different if Al Gore had won in 2000 or
John Kerry in 2004? Not really. My taxes would be a little higher. The
regulatory state would be a little bigger, and heath care would be a
little more bureaucratic. But the more fundamental aspects of my life,
such as my job, my religion and my personal security, would be the same.

American elections don't lead to violence because although we fight so
hard, we fight over differences that are minimal. I care if my taxes are
33 percent instead of 39 percent, but I won't kill someone over it. Can we
say the same thing about democracy for the Hutus and the Tutsis in Rwanda
or the people of Nigeria? Democracy doesn't work in some of these places
because it matters if you lose. If you lose, you may have all your
property taken, or worse, you die.

Turkey is currently learning the same lesson. As long as they only had
secular candidates on the ballot, it didn't really matter who won or lost.
Turkey would still be Turkey. Only life on the margin would change. When
an Islamic candidate made the ballot, however, the Turks realized it would
matter if the secular party lost. Their entire way of life might change.
So they stripped that candidate from the ballot. Democratic? No. Good
idea? Yes.

On the second point, the neocons assumed that democracy fosters liberty.
They got it exactly backwards. Democracy doesn't foster liberty. Liberty,
from time to time, fosters democracy.

Democracy does not cultivate liberty because democracy trades tyranny of
the one for tyranny of the 51 percent. It does nothing to limit the power
of government, protect the rights of minorities, or establish the rule of
law. Democracy ends up looking just as ruthless as a dictatorship because
it transfers ultimate and unchecked power from one to anyone who can
create a coalition of 51 percent. In such a democracy, the other 49
percent usually pick up a gun. Take Afghanistan for example. The Taliban
keep losing elections, but these losses do little to stop them from
killing people.

The neocons were correct to start with their initial premise: Liberty will
nurture an environment hostile to radical Islam. From there, however, they
should have done a better job finding the variable that actually creates
liberty. If they had looked harder, they would have found capitalism, not
democracy.

Although there are always exceptions to the rule, history has shown that
capitalism (more so than democracy) does an excellent job of fostering
property rights, independent courts, the rule of law, and dispersing power
to multiple stakeholders - particularly in countries that have few
cultural predispositions toward civil society. We political scientists
refer to these characteristics collectively as limited government. And a
government with limited power is the government with the limited ability
to kill its citizens, strip them of their resources, and deprive them of
their liberty.

By comparing the development of Africa to Asia, we find support for this
thesis. Africa's revolutions ushered in democracy overnight. They also
ushered in ethnic fighting, genocide and civil war. Africa got democracy,
but it couldn't find liberty. Asia, on the other hand, developed
"authoritarian capitalism," which has slowly moved South Korea, Taiwan and
Indonesia toward stable democracies. But capitalism and an independent,
stable middle class that demanded limits on the reach of majority rule
came first.

Russia and China offer an ongoing test of this process. Which one will be
a freer society in 10 years? My money is on China. Russia hurried headlong
into democracy. Now it has little more than a kleptocracy. China, which
has moved to capitalism but not democracy, is emerging as the freer
society.

My mother often repeats the phrase, "Don't throw the baby out with the
bathwater." I think that would be good advice for us all as we assess
where we are in Iraq, what we did well, and what we should do better if
there is ever a "next time."

On the left, there should be acceptance that America does have a role in
promoting environments that deter the development of radical and hostile
ideologies. No nation that claims to walk in the light can ignore cultures
that use children as bombs. In confronting these cultures, we may need to
get our hands dirty, even act unilaterally, and especially have the
patience to pursue foreign policies that bear fruit over generations, not
24-hour news cycles.

On the right, however, there must be an acceptance that democracy is not
the panacea we would like it to be.

The difficulty facing the next president will be rallying the citizenry to
a new noble cause, and then having to convince people that the noble cause
may initially require an economic solution, not a political solution - a
task made more difficult by the fact that democracy holds a softer spot in
our hearts and is more amenable to lofty and passionate rhetoric than
something so pedestrian as economics.

Matt Manweller is an assistant professor of political science at Central
Washington University in Ellensburg and chairman of the Kittitas County
Republican Central Committee.