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Interesting speech by Bush. According to the Boston Globe, in Turkey he said:
"Some people in Muslim cultures identify democracy with the worst of Western popular culture and want no part of it. And I assure them, when I speak about the blessings of liberty, coarse videos and crass commercialism are not what I have in mind," Bush said. "There is nothing incompatible between democratic values and high standards of decency."
That certainly is to the point. But I wonder how it sounds to a conservative, tightly-controlled religious-based country. After all, as Bruce Sterling pointed out at SXSW, to much of the world, hooking up to the Internet means they start getting porn in their inbox. Does Bush mean that the US is ok with a democratic society enforcing standards of decency? The Saudis apparently consider it indecent for a woman to drive and the Taliban considered it indecent for a girl to show up in school. Does it mean that we're ok with censorship?
Or is Bush saying that democracy doesn't necessarily lead to coarse videos and crass commericalism, in which case, I'd like to know what W thinks has led the American democracy to coarsness and crassness. Is it a problem with American society but not with our democracy? Are they separable?
I think it was a good thing for Bush to say. I'm just having trouble figuring out what it means, and what I think about it.
Maybe, but I'm not sure you're right. He's contrasting democratic _values_, not just democracy. And free speech is a democratic value if anything is.
Jeez, I should probably re-read Isiah Berlin on the different defs of democracy; it's only been 30 years or so...
Posted by David Weinberger on June 30, 2004 11:40 PM | Permalink to CommentI think it's very difficult, if not impossible, to have consumer capitalism without coarse videos and crass commercialism. (I made the argument in slightly more detail here.) And judging from world events of the past fifteen years, it's damn hard for a country to institute democracy without letting in consumer capitalism. If anything, the capitalism is harder to keep out than the democracy.
Posted by Seth Gordon on July 1, 2004 09:26 AM | Permalink to Comment
1.0
I think he means democracy != freedom, and it's very candid of him to admit it :-)
That is, what does democracy, as a form of government, have to do with women driving, or attending school? These can simply be laws ruled outside the purview of the democratic process. Call it an anti-First-Amendment, "No laws shall be made which conflicts with Islam as determined by the Councul of Imams,", or some such.
Common discourse in the US conflates
1) Democracy
2) Free markets
3) Individualist Culture
as one and the same, or at least intertwined.
Bush is claiming they aren't. He said it, not me :-)
Posted by Seth Finkelstein on June 30, 2004 08:28 PM | Permalink to Comment