This is an interesting topic Purple. Apparently many Chinese are baffled by our calls for democracy, given the abject poverty many lived in, and have now been rescued from by economic advancement. Russia I think, is also a special case.They had no experience of democracy and a long history of the "strong" man ruler. Putin is a perfect example of this. Interestingly, Suliman, (spelling?) the vice president in Egypt talked about Mubarek in the same terms as the father of the nation, making rebellion sound like perfideous disloyalty. All very pharonic. But underneath this notion is the sense that men (sic) are not equal, that there is a "natural" order to things where leaders have a version of the divine right of kings to rule which can be handed down to their children. Immediately, Syria, Egypt, Morocco & North Korea all spring to mind. The struggle to get most African leaders to step down demonstrates the ubiquitousness of this idea. What seems to happen is that both the rulers and the ruled forget their equality and assume such structures are" natural" and they are
wrong.
I don't argue the point that economics underpin most people's lives, and little enough attention is paid to how we are ruled. But this doesn't obviate the moral wrongness of the inequality that underpins it, or the nauseous misrule that follows from it. I've been reviewing Thomas Paine's
Rights of Man recently. He makes some extremely pertinent points:
- " It is by distortedly exalting some men, that others are distortedly debased till the whole thing is out of nature."
- "The equality of man, so far from being a modern doctrine, is the oldest upon record."
- "His natural rights are the foundation of his civil rights."
- Natural rights are those which appertain to man by virtue of his existence."
- "Civil rights appertain to man in right of his being a member of society."
- Society grants him nothing. Every man is a proprieter in society and draws on the capital as a matter of right."
- "If the present generation or any other are disposed to be slaves, it does not lessen the right of the succeeding generation to be free."
Mubarek's problem, and the problem of all dictatorships is that they don't understand these principles, or know them and tryto supress them. What we are witnessing in Egypt and elsewhere, is that people are
remembering & realising them, and critically they have lost their fear. As I said, I wish them well. Viva la revolution!