My annoying dinner discussion tonight.....

At a wine dinner tonight, I had to again endure European commentary about the United States...of course indirectly and directly aimed at the administration of George Bush and his policies.

Annoying comment number one....

There hasn't be any successful 'imposition' of democracy anytime or anywhere in the world.

Alrighty. Lets take a look at Germany and Japan. How about Korea? Philippines....ok that is not a success but they do have elections. It is disfunctional. Sure, these took time to build but aren't they vibrant democracies? How about Afghanistan? Well, my French friend, railing against me last weekend said, 'Well we don't know if Afghanistan will be a success yet.' But of course if you don't know if Afghanistan is yet a success, then how sure can you be that Iraq is a failure? Both require judgments and Iraq is clearly the younger of the two situations.

My comment to the both of these people, tonight and last week, was 'I suppose that your view depends upon your viewpoint.'

Annoying comment number two....

Islam is not conducive to Democracy and has no tradition in respect to this....

Of course I pointed out that in Islam, there is an actual process for the election of a Caliph through what could be seen as a a indirect election of this leader. In fact, I recall that following the prophet Muhammad, they choose leader of the Islamist movement. I looked for references in the Koran to this but was not able to find any.

However, this was belittled as just the election by elders of the head is not any call towards universal suffrage. But I also have failed to find any reference to universal suffrage in the Bible.

The modern concept of elections flows from the reformation where people revolted against the autocratic rule of the Catholic Church. Modern democratic tradition a la the United States comes from the wars and difficulties fought in England several hundred years ago. I am no expert in this stuff, but the modern concept of universal suffrage is not something that flows from Christianity but from a need to create stability given the friction caused by such powerful institutions that existed at the time. And it appears as if even the Arab world could use such a pressure valve.

So no reference to this process in either holy book forever condemns both religions to an eternity of autocratic rule? We know that this has not been the case since over the past 200 years, most of the Christian world has moved towards democratic self determination. Turkey and Indonesia are large Muslim majority democratically run countries that have been able to find themselves through to universal suffrage. Afghanistan is the newest. Maybe all of these will be failures. Maybe not. Africa, has largely been a failure with a few successes, South Africa, Senegal and Ghana. Yes, may of them have had terrible times recently. But there always has to be hope.

Is Islam abhorrent of democracy? Maybe, maybe not. Is it impossible? As Turkey and Indonesia illustrate, that there is hope. Is Christianity better suited to democratic rule? For 1800 years, it wasn't.

So, what is these people's point? Are Arab genetically incapable of any life but one where a strongman rules or are they culturally conditioned this way? If its the later, then yes, there is hope.