Özgürlüğün Geleceği Sözleri ve Alıntıları
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Nicelik, nitelik haline dönmüştür.
Birleşik Devletler’in yurt dışında sıkça sınırsız demokrasiyi savunması biraz tuhaftır. Amerikan sisteminin ayırt edici özelliği ne kadar demokratik olduğu değil, seçmen kitlelerinin üzerine koyduğu birçok kısıtlamalar nedeniyle, ne kadar demokratik olmadığıdır.
Ethnic conflict is as old as recorded history, and dictatorships are hardly innocent in fomenting it. But newly democratizing societies display a disturbingly common tendency toward it. The reason is simple: as society opens up and politicians scramble for power, they appeal to the public for votes using what ends up being the most direct, effective language, that of group solidarity in opposition to some other group. Often this stokes the fires of ethnic or religious conflict. Sometimes the conflict turns into a full-scale war.
Sayfa 113
Most Third World countries that proclaimed themselves democracies immediately after their independence, while they were poor and unstable, became dictatorships within a decade. As Giovanni Sartori, Columbia University's great scholar of democracy, noted about the path from constitutional liberalism to democracy, "the itinerary is not reversible." Even European deviations from the Anglo-American pattern constitutionalism and capitalism first, only then democracy- were far less successful in producing liberal democracy. To see the complications produced by premature democratization, we could return to the heart of Europe-back in time to the early twentieth century.
Sayfa 58
More to the point, Greece was not the birthplace of liberty as we understand it today. Liberty in the modern world is first and fore- most the freedom of the individual from arbitrary authority, which has meant, for most of history, from the brute power of the state. It implies certain basic human rights: freedom of expression, of associ ation, and of worship, and rights of due process. But ancient liberty, as the enlightenment philosopher Benjamin Constant explained, meant something different: that everyone (actually, every male citizen) had the right to participate in the governance of the community. Usually all citizens served in the legislature or, if this was impractical, legislators were chosen by lottery, as with American juries today. The people's assemblies of ancient Greece had unlimited powers. An individual's rights were neither sacred in theory nor protected in fact. Greek democracy often meant, in Constant's phrase, "the subjection of the individual to the authority of the community." Recall that in the fourth century B.C. in Athens, where Greek democracy is said to have found its truest expression, the popular assembly-by democratic vote-put to death the greatest philosopher of the age because of his teachings. The execution of Socrates was democratic but not liberal.
Sayfa 32
Dünyanın her yerinde genelde referandumlarla yeniden seçilen veya yeniden onaylanan, demokratik seçimlerle göreve gelmiş yönetimler, iktidarları üzerindeki anayasal kısıtlamaları görmezden gelip vatandaşlarını en temel haklarından mahrum bırakıyorlar.
Ancak geçmişini anlayarak özgürlüğün geleceğini güven altına alabiliriz.
Germany at the turn of the century seemed to be moving in the right direction toward democracy. Then came World War I, which killed 2 million Germans and left the country devastated and was closed with the punitive and humiliating peace of Versailles. The years after Versailles saw the mass flight of ethnic Germans from Poland, Russia, and other eastern lands into Germany (a migration that produced immense social turmoil); hyperinflation; and finally the Great Depression. The liberalizing strains in German society were overwhelmed by much darker ones, and political order collapsed. In particular, hyperinflation-which Niall Ferguson has aptly called an "anti-bourgeois revolution"-wiped out the savings of the middle class and utterly alienated them from the Weimar Republic. The country became easy prey for extreme ideologies and leaders. It is common to read history backward and assume that Germany was destined to become what it became under Hitler. But even the United Kingdom and the United States had their ugly sides and desperate demagogues who grew in strength during the Great Depression. Had those countries gone through twenty years of defeat, humiliation, chaos, economic depression, and the evisceration of their middle classes, perhaps they, too, would have ended up being governed by demagogues such as Huey Long and Oswald Mosley rather than the statesmen Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.
Sayfa 66
That Bombay is now a memory. In the last twenty years, the rise of Hindu nationalism and a local variant, Maratha chauvinism, has systematically destroyed the old city. The regional party that has spearheaded this movement, the Shiv Sena, is named after a seventeenth century chieftain, Shivaji, who opposed New Delhi's (Muslim) Mughal emperors. The party is determined to rid the state of Maha- rashtra, of which Bombay is the capital, of all "alien" influences. (The Muslims came to India beginning in the twelfth century; 800 years is apparently not long enough to be considered a native.) This is most evident in its campaign to rename cities, towns, roads, and buildings that have anything other than pure Hindu names. It culminated in the renaming of Bombay as Mumbai in 1996, an act that illustrates the invented quality of much of Hindu nationalism. Unlike Beijing (a long-standing city whose name was Anglicized into Peking by Westerners), Mumbai did not really exist as a city before the Portuguese and the British called it Bombay. Like Singapore and Hong Kong, it was a tiny fishermen's village. The city was a colonial creation. "Mumbai" is not a return to the past but the validation of a myth.
Sayfa 112
Even with the best historical insights, one can't predict when a country will embrace democracy. It often depends on a complex mix of historical facts particular to each country. Why did Spain move to democracy only in 1977 and not earlier? Because its dictator-for-life, Franco, died two years earlier. Why Hungary in 1989? Because that year the Soviet Union stopped threatening it with a military invasion if it liberalized its politics. Why India in 1947? Because that's when Britain liquidated its empire on the subcontinent. And so on. The more interesting question, however, is what makes democracy endure. Political regimes change for varied reasons-war, economic crises, death. But when an autocratic regime does collapse and people try to establish a democracy, what makes it last? Historically, the best single answer to that question has been wealth.
Sayfa 71