Defining The Goodness Of Democracy: What's Wrong With The President's Rhetoric

Tony the Snow-job is all about spin today. He sets up numerous straw arguments and goes about knocking them over and over and over. But here's one paragraph that spins me right round baby, right round, like a record baby (forgive the lyrical reference, but it's what popped into my head at this very moment). If it doesn't have you screaming, "look in the mirror you fools," then I don't know what will:

Democracies operate on different principles than totalitarian states. In a democracy, you have to respond to the will of the people. In a democracy within the United States, whether it be Joe Lieberman and Ned Lamont competing for votes in Connecticut, or on the local level, dealing with the needs for people to have safe streets, good schools and services they can depend upon, those are the things. You respond to the stated desires of the people. In totalitarian states, the despot alone has the opportunity to declare what he or she wants to do, and frankly, quite often they are much more warlike.

Well, let's do a little thinking aloud here. Which country is more war-like?

Cuba's a good example of a dictatorship. How many wars are they fighting? None? Hmmm.

Now The United States of America is usually considered a decent model of democracy in action. How many wars are we fighting right now? Iraq, Afghanistan, the war on terror....ah three....three, minimally, and how many more would the W, Rove and Co. like us to fight? Korea, Iran, Syria, Darfur...there are a large number of despots that need reigning in, aren't there?

So, in our side by side comparison, we have Cuba, dictatorship at zero wars - thus qualifying as not warlike at all. And, the offending democracy that sets the standard for wars being fought at at least two, if not three if you count the "global-war-on-terror" as one...thusly qualifying as very much war-like.

So, I quess they forgot to bring the regular as opposed to the fantasy fun mirror to Crawford with them, eh? As to which one is better, democracy or dictatorship, perhaps the measure of being more or less war-like is the wrong rhetorical argument to trot out, no?