Limits of Democracy

Heading to work Friday AM the NPR announcer discussed how the win by Hezbolah in the elections was a huge problem for Bush, since he has been pushing for democracy as a solution in the Mideast, and now finds himself with a conflict of not being willing to work with an organization that has won a legitimate election that officially espouses terrorism and the destruction of Israel.

NPR is a great source of humor for me, and I was able to get a good belly laugh out of that one, as it shows the true NPR colors at a number of levels. The first level of course is that it is a problem for BUSH, since HE espouses Democracy. NPR, and of course liberals in general DON'T support Democracy ... they support "good results", or some other abstract concept.

They are very familiar with the idea that a Democracy can get "wrong results", since Bush is the President of the US ... sometimes they think because of Diebold messing up Ohio, but most of the time just because there are a bunch of idiot Christians in the red states that voted for something foolish like "values", rather then their proper "self interest" as defined by NPR and Democrats. They are very familiar with the idea of Democracy providing a "bad result" if they would just reflect for a second.

Is Hezbollah winning in Palestine a "bad result"? Democracy is one of those "it is what it is" things like a market economy. Are gas prices "bad"? Well, we would all like them lower (we think), but one of the things that the higher price provides is available gas. We like that part. Both the market and democracy (which is a political/ideas market) tend to provide a much more reality based view of the world than a command economy, or a dictatorship.

For people not taken in by the bleating of the MSM, it has been clear for a very long time that the Palestinian people generally support the destruction of Israel by whatever means, and so did their leaders, although they were very willing to lie to the likes of Billy Clinton, the UN, and the MSM if they thought it served their purposes. All that has happened now is that they have voted and let the rest of the folks know what non-sheep knew forever ... the majority of the Palestinians care more about the destruction of Israel than they do about their own safety, children, or any sort of future as long as Israel is DESTROYED!

Reality a huge problem for the left, and since one of things they like to do best is project their problems somewhere else, it is unsurprising to hear NPR call it "a problem for Bush". Hopefully Bush understands the right course of action pretty well ... it doesn't really make any difference how people with terrorist views get into power ... ballots, bullets, the answers are the same. Cut off their aid, cut off their trade, isolate them any way that we can, and help make the cost of their ideas as high as we possibly can. It is very true and unfortunate that a lot of them aren't going to change their minds until they are dead, so since they have selected their ideas, we need to do all we can to make sure that they get to live the logical Hobbesian outcome of those ideas (lives that are solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short)!

NPR and liberals like to be on the side of "reality avoidance". Providing aid and comfort to the PLO and cheering negotiations between Arafat and Israel even though the official position of the PLO was the annihilation of Israel was perfectly reasonable. It allowed the situation to go on forever, and it fit right into their world model where ideas don't have consequences, and there is no reason at all to have any sort of consistency in your view of the world. You make yourself feel good by negotiating with the PLO and simply ignore the fact that they want to destroy Israel by any means possible!

The vote is good in the sense that it is real. There should be a lot less doubt of what we are dealing with in Palestine. Conservatives at least tend to find that dealing with the real world has a higher chance of success than dealing with some abstract view of how we might like the world to be, the situation with Israel and the Palestinians is about as bad a reality as any around for hopes of success, but having a more realistic picture of the situation is at least a baby step in the way of progress.