Let’s talk about the Middle East for just a moment. One of the stated goals of the Bush Administration for the past few years in the Middle East is the promotion of American-style democracy. This is seen most clearly in Iraq, where purple-fingers marked the first democratic elections in that country since Saddam took power. At the time, those purple-fingers were seen as a sign of progress and a signal that we were succeeding in spreading liberal democracy in a Muslim country.
Two of the reasons (among many) that this project is doomed to fail in the Middle East are a) the United States was originally conceived as a republic and not a democracy, and b) as my grandfather says, “There are no Thomas Jefferson’s over there.” Now, obviously I think Jefferson got some fairly significant things wrong (taking scissors to your Bible is never a good idea). But caveats aside, the point remains.
“But surely you don’t mean to suggest that Washingtons, Jeffersons, Madisons, and Adams are required in order to have a successful democratic government!”
This is what I’m suggesting, and more. I want to suggest that the Founders of this country, in establishing what has proven to be a fairly successful form of representative government, were standing on the shoulders of those who came before them. And it just so happens that those who came before them were Puritans who were up to their eyeballs in the gospel (see Edwards, Jonathan).
The fact that the Middle East doesn’t have a (recent) Christian history is one of the main reasons that any democracies established over there will simply be short-term transitions to totalitarian states. You can’t simply plant the fruit of representative democracy in the soil of totalitarian religion and get anything other than totalitarian democracy, that is, democratically-elected tyrants. Just look at the Palestinians. During their first elections in 2006, they chose Hamas to rule.
Free and open societies, complete with free markets and responsible and limited government, don’t just appear out of nowhere. They come from somewhere. They are the fruit of something. And until the seeds of that something are sown, we’re just farmers sowing seedless oranges wondering why nothing ever grows around here.
