Charlie Rose

robdverity  02/02/2011 05:40 PM Report

Democracy? Whose? What style? We sure aren't one. Plutocracy, perhaps. Oligarchy, perhaps.[Thanks to John Roberts for his contribution.]

Egypt needs to be left alone. We have no credibility, nor qualifications for interfering. A benevolent autocracy would likely 'fit' their history better. A democracy a la USA where governance is for sale to the highest bidding lobbyists is hardly a model for any transitional looking government.

charlizecourriers  02/02/2011 03:42 PM Report

The problem is NOT low quality governments. The problem is high quality dictatorships, financed by the U.S. government. In the recent shows by this host on these events I don't recall hearing him mention the word freedom or any of its synonyms. It's not hard to figure out, since he has been handed a living by the very wealthy, but never been on the street, or more particularly, served his country as a draftee, or a commissioned or non-commissioned officer. What you do or have done is who you are. Sycophancy has its rewards and also its costs. The vast majority of men and women and even children in the mideast are involved a vast symbolic exhange in their psychic lives. They are literally coming to life. I hope the schedulers of this show bring guests who can speak about these events from this perspective. So far, Rose is missing the meaning.

REMant  02/02/2011 12:43 PM Report

I thought Obama's statement ill-advised for several reasons. If the US (or Europe) says Mubarak should go or stay it will be condemned for involving itself in the decision regardless of the position taken, even by the winning side, which will resent their power. The offer not to run, while it may seem reasonable in foreign capitals, sounds like a kind of Mugabi tactic to the people, giving his party time to terrorize and rig any election. And if Mubarak goes, in any case, he will not being taking the paramilitary with him, who, realizing they are at great risk of retaliation, may become uncontrollable (indeed, I see this morning they already have). The greatest hope to avoid civil war is probably ElBaradie backed by the army. Still, something will have to done about the Islamists.

On that score, Muasher, like the neocons and liberals, seems overly optimistic. Islamists are not inherently "democratic" and whatever the situation is now, it will certainly not in an open society remain the same. The Egyptian al-Qaeda cadre did not foment revolution elsewhere simply because they were unable to in their home country. It is not clear to me that any amount of preparation for democracy would have or will change that. They are not opposed to the idea of a strong government as he is.

I would quibble, too, with Satloff's understanding of monarchy. Kings these days rest on the people directly, though they may use force, bribery and fraud. In that sense they are also democracies. What they aren't are aristocracies or republics where subsidiary groups have real backbone and power. There really are no instances of democracy in the world, even in Vermont town meetingss and the PTA. No one would say either that our corporations are democracies. What you have is more or less allowed participation, which as he said is characteristic of monarchy. The best form of government is one in which there is enough local governance for independence and enough federalism for cohesion.

Since this lies also behind my position on free trade, which we were discussing in the wake of the president's state of the union, permit me to slip a restatement of that in here. It is like Friederich List's. Tho Smith is considered the free trader par excellence, he assumed specialization would be useful to the world based on the idea that it would, as in the pin factory, result in people working toward a common goal, making pins. The idea was inherently a matter of unity, as well as, diversity. We have to consider not only the efficiency of the market, but also of the commons. As the market becomes more fragmented the costs of trade and maintaining separate plants increases, so there is considerable benefit to economies of scale. But he also pointed out that factory work makes men narrow-minded, and he might have said too that they may specialize so idiosyncratically as to be of little benefit to others. Tho developed countries have been in favor of free trade since they dominate it, developing countries need to protect themselves if they are to grow independently, and, these days, specifically the ability of the former to manipulate currency. This would, however, be much less necessary if the world returned to a gold standard and/or 100% reserve requirements.

To return to the subject at hand, a possible silver lining in all of this may be that it so terrifies the Israelis they finally make some reasonable accommodation with the Palestinians.