The Uncomfortable Side of Democracy
Today’s Edmonton Journal re-printed an op-ed from the NYT, a very uncomfortable look at the results of the revolution this past spring in Egypt. It’s not something that is brand new, but is something that has been happening for a while. The last while has seen several attacks on Coptic Christians in sectarian violence.
This brings to the front one of the more uncomfortable sides of the fall of dictators: can this new muti-national and multicultural state survive? And for those who like bonus questions: How long do you try and keep it together? The first question was looked at in this article by a professor at Catholic University of America.
The second question is one that is especially important in this day and age, and the example are numerous. They include Russia and Chechnya, Scotland and the United Kingdom (not to mention the question of Northern Ireland), the EU itself (because of the financial near-ruin of several members), and of course Belgium. The issue is also being felt quite a bit across Europe due to the influx of Muslim immigrants, who seem to be at the very least challenging (not necessarily actively. More in the sociological sense) the status quo of fairly uniform ethnic backgrounds in many European countries.
In the case of Belgium, the informal consensus seems to be that the best case is for the Flemish half to separate from the Wallonian half (with that half possibly joining France, according to Wikipedia). Belgium is still, as of today, without a formal government from an election over a year ago due to disagreement between the 2 halves. A government is apparently coming soon.
Another recent example of this is the Sudan. The Christian South recently separated from the Muslim North. Of course, people now hope this will lead to peace in the Sudan at least. If you consider it peace when you don’t want to kill your neighbour because you decided to never work with them or even (preferably) see them again. The “success” is that two new countries are now lined up along the religious lines that divided the one original country.
The US doesn’t seem to be an example of this, but will it become this? The US is for all intensive purposes already fractured into regions, and the truth is that no one seems to be satisfied with how things are going. Christians don’t think that Judeo-Christian values are followed enough, while secularists argue that they hold too much sway. And the best case scenario seems to be that both sides stay unsatisfied, and that the status quo holds.
Is Canada exempt from this? Well, things are pretty quiet right now. As in the US, as long as the status quo doesn’t undergo too much of a shift, things should stay quiet. That doesn’t mean that everyone will be satisfied though, and a slow, small set of changes could probably go ahead without too much protesting.
Solutions? Some (they know who they are) would inevitably bring up religion as the problem. Not to get too much in that, but Absolute Relativism simply seems to have become it’s own decentralized faith/spirituality as a thinly-veiled attempt to deflect criticism that they are being hypocrites (the fact that “there are no absolute truths” is an absolute statement is only the tip of that iceberg).
I don’t have the answer, and someone who says they do probably has one that is too idealistic to ever work. I’ve often wondered if it would simply be best for countries to split up if they can’t seem to work together, following the example of the Sudan. I would be the first to admit that any peace that comes is largely artificial, but since we as a society have decided (rightly) that war is not an ethical option it seems to me that even artificial peace would be the better choice over continued conflict. On the flip side, and large number of smaller and smaller sovereign entities doesn’t seem like a real good idea either (especially accounting for economies of scale losses). Or will each region of the world decide to do either or, with smaller peaceful countries spring up some places while other continue to have larger, possibly unstable ones.
Big questions, and no right answers. These have to be decided by ordinary men and women either on their own or after considering arguments from the political leadership. That is why we call democracy the least-worst choice. It’s the only system that seems to be most successful when everyone is at least a unhappy.
