Democracy is Hard Work

If you favor a neat and orderly progression of events in government, you probably favor some dictatorial form of government. Kings, emperors, dictators, caliphs, emirs, and other supreme rulers, usually backed by the overwhelming force that only a nation state can bring to bear, need not concern themselves with the differing wills and needs of a diverse people. They simply get up in the morning and tell their ministers, who are in power because of their loyalty or family relationship to the potentate, to enact a certain policy. Those who resist are simply crushed with military force.

Democracy is not so neat. America is the world’s oldest democracy and had some serious problems in its first 100 years. When the opening gavel fell at the Federal Convention in Philadelphia in the spring of 1787 to hammer out a new constitution, only seven states were represented. Eventually, all of the states except Rhode Island attended, but even then the delegates came and went like Christmas shoppers looking for stocking stuffers at a Spencer’s Gift Store.

There were three serious rebellions in the United States between the signing of the peace accords that ended the Revolutionary War in 1783 and 1794. In 1800 the presidential election was a dead heat in the Electoral Collage between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr and was thrown into the House of Representatives for resolution. Jefferson became President and Burr Vice President. Those who think the current vice president was a bit harsh in cussing out a prominent Democrat using the f word, are reminded that in 1804 Burr shot Alexander Hamilton in a duel to settle a political dispute. That’s harsh.

In 1846 President James Polk started a peremptory, unilateral war of aggression against Mexico. Through the first 100 years there were raging Indian wars and an untold number of political and civil battles concerning states rights centered primarily on the slavery question. The question was finally settled through the bloodiest war America has ever fought. All this happened in the first 100 years. How did we ever survive?

By contrast, Iraq is scheduled to become the world’s newest democracy at the end of January, 2005. Our glorious media would have us believe that the entire country is in chaos and that there is no chance of stability in Iraq. This same media no doubt would have given an infant America slim chance of emerging as a stable nation in 1787 let alone becoming world’s lone hyper-power 225 years later.

Iraq faces tough problems, perhaps more difficult problems than those faced by our own founding fathers. They reside in a neighborhood were no government wants their experiment in democracy to succeed. They have a stubborn, foreign led and financed terrorist insurgency. They have a dilapidated infrastructure and no experience with freedom. For sure, the deck is stacked against the Iraqi people.

But what is the alternative? Our media would have us throw up our hands and quit. America’s road to a stable democracy has been anything but a smooth road. Iraq’s road is likely to be rockier yet. But we won’t get where we want to go by sitting in the driveway complaining about all the potholes that we are likely encounter along the way.