Thursday, October 28, 2010

Democracies Need the Trust and Faith of all Citizens to Survive

It could be said that "Democracy is an extention of a belief in human rights and the brotherhood and sisterhood of all mankind".

So, for any democracy to long survive it needs a high enough percentage of its people to believe in its system of democracy. The biggest single threat that world democracies have faced is systems of belief that do not believe in the basic process of a living democracy. In other words people who only believe in certain parts of that democracy and not others.

For example, the problem European democracies are facing is Islamic peoples not properly integrating into their societies by not learning the local languages and adopting local philosophies. This creates ongoing and increasing trouble for European democracies because in a democracy, if you don't join the democratic "family" in language and custom then eventually directly or indirectly you will be expelled one way or the other because the democracy can only continue to exist with enough people in that democracy who actually believe in all of it and who practice its tenents daily.

In the U.S. you have somewhat different problems. In order to even come to the U.S. Islamic families tend to be more affluent and well educated because they are going so much further away from their Islamic roots. So Islamic peoples in the United States are much better integrated and accepted by American societies than in Europe where many don't educate themselves into local languages and local culture. In the U.S.  Islam and being an American citizen in every way don't usually stand in contrast to each other like they do in Europe. So in the U.S. most Islamic peoples usually believe in democracy and human rights completely so they tend to be very good and productive citizens within American society.

However, since the advent of Islamic Terrorism we find an insidious terrorism that harkens back to ways of thinking the reminds one of some Islamic peoples in the 12th to 14th Century. In this type of thinking only people who are Islamic are to be tolerated. All other peoples are to be killed brutally, and in many other parts of the world they are, regularly.

This is very difficult for Christian democracies to deal with, especially with churches teaching, "Turn the other cheek" rather than an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth which is more common still in the Middle East.

So, the ongoing vulnerabilities of Democratic secular Christian Western Societies have been exposed. And even though it may not be the main cause of the decline of the western democracies, it is one of the main reasons of the decline of the western democracies, simply because money has to be spent killing terrorists who are constantly trying to destroy western democracies.

At this point I would like to try and bring in another model that also worries western democracies. And this model is built around State Capitalism. China and Saudi Arabia are the two biggest proponents of State Capitalism on earth. And China and Saudi Arabia right now in a way are competing for being the strongest (each in their own way). And right now China is winning this battle because its State Capitalism is a form that culturally goes back about 5000 to 6000 years.

China has a long history of taking care of itself. Ever since all the Chinese provinces became one under a King several thousand years ago, it has been almost impossible to rule ever since because it has been just so large that it was always on the edge of collapse. So, China invented ways to cope with this.

It's two basic rules seem to be, "Take no territory outside of China because we can barely cope with what we have already". And the second rule is, "Human rights are not possible in a Country as big as this". Instead, "The majority rule gets everything and everyone else gets wiped out". And these days "since Islamic peoples aren't a majority they will be rendered either powerless or extinct within China".

The whole world is watching the western democracies and their suffering caused by the changing world and Islamic Terrorism but also watching horrified as China spreads its 5000 year philosophy and its State Capitalism around the world in various ways. But also the world has a new respect for China, because even though people are horrified by its basic lack of human rights there, they are amazed by what China has accomplished even without any human rights. So the world keeps asking the question, "How is this possible?"

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