ConservativeINC

The Patriot Post
Founders’ Quote Daily

“[D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man’s life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few.”

– John Adams (An Essay on Man’s Lust for Power, 29 August 1763)

From patriotpost.us

I have echoed the same sentiments in past posts talking about Machiavelli’s view of democracy. That is why I am so conflicted promoting democracy in Iraq. The only reason why I do so is because I believe that democracy is more of a semantical argument and euphemism for republicanism. I guess that the meanings of words have largely changed and whatever, so I have to change along with the times.

The real point of this post is to argue against trying to maintain a strong Iraqi national government. I don’t think it is manageable and vests too much power and too much hope into a single body (figuratively in the Iraqi government and literally in Maliki). What should be done in Iraq is what America had before the Constitution: a Confederacy.

Confederacies are great for people who share basically the same geographical area but have different opinions about how things should be run. Unlike a federation, which we have and sorta works because we are more versed in self rule, a confederacy is a loose organization of states with a national government that does the basic stuff that countries do. The national government would be responsible for war, the currency, interstate commerce, resolving issues between the confederates, and some other crucial issues.

This would work well with Iraq because they are currently trying to do way too much with their government and the different groups of people have way too little in common. A confederacy would still have a national government but with less power and less expectations.

“Why do you think a confederacy would do any better?” you might be asking. Because it is already working on the war front in Iraq. The Sunni insurgents have dramatically switched to our side because al Qaeda Iraq was blowing up tribal leaders. The Sunnis did not do this out of love for their country but out of love for their tribe.

America became a country in much the same way. The British were going around and usurping our ancestor’s rights which lead to revolution starting at the local level. And this is what I see happening in Iraq right now.

Unfortunately I’m not sure anything can be done about it now on our side. It looks like the Iraqi government is unilaterally stripping itself of power but I would be in the wrong to say that this is in any way a beneficial occurrence. The only thing we can do at this time is work to strengthen Iraq region by region through the necessities on the ground. The Shiites are following in the Sunni’s path by arming themselves against Shiite militias. Maybe at some point they could work together against an enemy that shares a common goal: the destruction of democracy (if I said republicanism no one would know what I meant but you). BigT

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