Hugo Chavez of Venezuela's recent speech at the UN made a lot of waves...but I didn't hear (until now) that he had invoked the ancient world.
They say they want to impose a democratic model. But that's their democratic model. It's the false democracy of elites, and, I would say, a very original democracy that's imposed by weapons and bombs and firing weapons.
What a strange democracy. Aristotle might not recognize it or others who are at the root of democracy.
What type of democracy do you impose with marines and bombs?
Au contraire: ancient Athenians would certainly have recognized such democracy! Further, Peter Beinart (New Republic) comments, citing a modern account:
Funny that he should mention Aristotle. In 1991, the sociologist Orlando Patterson published a book titled Freedom in the Making of Western Culture. Our understanding of freedom, he argued, comes from the Greeks. But, for many Greeks, freedom was intimately connected to slavery: Unless you dominated others, you weren't really free. (Southern slaveholders made a similar argument.) Patterson called this "sovereignal freedom," which he defined as "the power to act as one pleases, regardless of the wishes of others." And he contrasted it with "personal freedom"--the right to act as one pleases while respecting the rights of others to do the same.
Patterson is an eminent social scientist; Ahmadinejad and Chávez are populist thugs. But, without realizing it, they are playing on his distinction. Bush, they claim, defines freedom as America's right to impose its wishes on others, and, if people resist that imposition, they are therefore resisting freedom and democracy. "For some powers," Ahmadinejad declared, "claims of promotion of human rights and democracy can only last as long as they can be used as instruments of pressure and intimidation against other nations."
It would be nice to dismiss Ahmadinejad and Chávez as irrelevant, but their arguments have deep resonance.
Comments