Right Pulse

Interesting article in the WSJ about Obama’s abandonment of democracy promotion. For example In his Egyptian speech:

…while he asserted his belief in “governments that reflect the will of the people,” he added, “Each nation gives life to this principle in its own way, grounded in the traditions of its own people. America does not presume to know what is best for everyone.”

This, alas, is very much the claim advanced by many authoritarian regimes, including the absolute monarchy of Saudi Arabia, which Obama had visited the day before. Nowhere did the president make the critical point that elections are the only known way to determine the will of the people. That, apparently, would have been “presumptuous.”

…while it may be possible to identify derogations from democracy and human rights in America, those that are ubiquitous in the Muslim world are greater by many orders of magnitude. If democracy and human rights are held as high values, then all societies are not morally equal. This is a thought that cuts sharply against Obama’s multicultural sensibilities.

I just finished reading a book on the Rhodesian Bush War. It was a choice between a racist white minority efficient government and a racist black inefficient supposed majority government. With Obama’s cultural relativism and emphasis on “freedom from want and freedom from fear…if people are starving, then elections may or may not address those issues, but they are not a perfect overlay”, where would he stand on Rhodesia? Average life expectancy at the end of the Bush War and the rule of white minority government in the early 1980s was around 62 years. Under Mugabe’s supposed majority black government it is now 37 years. Dose anyone seriously think Mugabe represents or ever represented the will and aspirations of the majority of the population because he was black and was voted in? So according to Obama’s foreign policy mantra, with its emphasis on freedom from want, starvation, diseases, etc…over voting rights, he would have to support the racist minority white government. Given Obama’s African origins, it would seem unlikely – if he ever had to make the choice – that he would have supported Ian Smith’s government. Which proves the unsustainable nature of his policy of cultural relativism. Classical human rights and democracy are absolutes that should taken together, not to be traded off when it is inconvenient or you don’t want to offend.