A Society of Justice

Yesterday President Bush gave a speech in Istanbul that, read in its entirety, lays out the reasons for supporting American efforts to put the Middle East on the road to legitimate government. Although the Washington Post gave the speech page one prominence, the New York Times buried it on page A13. But it deserves wide circulation, because it argues that democracy is inherently superior to other forms of government and serves as a stabilizing force wherever it is instituted. In time, stability breeds prosperity and a reduction of terrorists' ability to garner the sympathies of an oppressed people.

As the Post notes, this speech echoes another Bush gave in November, in which he tied political reform in the Middle East directly to national security issues in the U.S. It's a theme that needs to be repeated until fall, because it reduces the potency of claims that the war in Iraq and, by extension, the war against terrorists, are based on nothing more than revenge, or WMDs, or oil, or whatever else the left chirps on a given day.

A choice quote: "The best way to prevent corruption and abuse of power is to hold rulers accountable. The best way to ensure fairness to all is to establish the rule of law. The best way to honor human dignity is to protect human rights. Turkey has found what nations of every culture and every region have found: If justice is the goal, then democracy is the answer."

The latter point about Turkey's increasingly democratic rule is vital, for it helps vanquish race or culture-based arguments that Muslims are incapable of establishing democracies. That assertion (it rarely is argued) is made by far right pundits such as Pat Buchanan and Samuel Francis and echoed by the pro-multicultural left, for whom all American ideals, including apparently freedom, are inherently evil. The extremists' positions are examples of ethnocentrism run amok, for they deny both experience (witness democratic developments in Asia, not to mention Europe) and hope (let bloody dictators slaughter locals with abandon).

It's obviously true that American culture cannot be exported in toto, and neither Bush nor his advisors have advocated such a facile policy. One radio report yesterday claimed that Bush said that Middle Eastern countries needn't adopt "Western culture" as they moved toward democracy. That, too, is wrong, because democracy itself is a Western creation.

What the president actually said to his audience in Istanbul wasn't too different from what he's argued at home. He acknowledged the vulgarity and crassness of some elements of American popular culture -- hardly a debatable point among most people -- and argued (not asserted) that freedom and virtue are natural allies, not enemies:

"In some parts of the world, especially in the Middle East, there is wariness toward democracy, often based on misunderstanding. Some people in Muslim cultures identify democracy with the worst of Western popular culture, and want no part of it. And I assure them, when I speak about the blessings of liberty, coarse videos and crass commercialism are not what I have in mind. There is nothing incompatible between democratic values and high standards of decency. For the sake of their families and their culture, citizens of a free society have every right to strive peacefully for a moral society. Democratic values also do not require citizens to abandon their faith."

But he also ruled out interpreting such encouraging words as a wink toward a less violent form of hard-line Islamic rule by bracketing them with strong warnings that liberty is possible only through the rule of law and religious tolerance. The above words were preceded by the first quotation I cite on preventing corruption and the abuse of power, and followed by a recitation of several features of democratic rule that are constants across times and locales:

"Because representative governments reflect their people, every democracy has its own structure, traditions, and opinions. There are, however, certain commitments of free government that do not change from place to place [emphasis added]. The promise of democracy is fulfilled in freedom of speech, the rule of law, limits on the power of the state, economic freedom, respect for women, and religious tolerance. These are the values that honor the dignity of every life, and set free the creative energies that lead to progress."

Finally, Bush reiterated an argument that is as applicable to the modern Middle East as it was to post-war Europe: "Democracy leads to justice within a nation - and the advance of democracy leads to greater security among nations. The reason is clear: Free peoples do not live in endless stagnation, and seethe in resentment, and lash out in envy, rage, and violence. Free peoples do not cling to every grievance of the past - they build and live for the future. This is the experience of countries in the NATO alliance. Bitterness and hostility once divided France and Germany... and Germany and Poland ... and Romania and Hungary. But as those nations grew in liberty, ancient disputes and hatreds have been left to history. And because the people of Europe now live in hope, Europe no longer produces armed ideologies that threaten the peace of the world. Freedom in Europe has brought peace to Europe - and now freedom can bring peace to the broader Middle East."

The speech contains other important points, including the call for all Middle Eastern nations to begin democratic reforms. It's worth reading in its entirety as a broad plan for stabilizing dangerous areas of the world. Nowhere is it claimed that the road ahead is easy or quick. But as more than one person has asked, what are our alternatives?