Democracy -- A Flickering Star?

Democracy -- A Flickering Star?
By Patrick Buchanan

In his 1937 "Great Contemporaries," Winston Churchill wrote,
"Whatever else may be thought about (Hitler's) exploits, they are
among the most remarkable in the whole history of the world."

Churchill was referring not only to Hitler's political triumphs --
the return of the Saar and reoccupation of the Rhineland -- but his
economic achievements. By his fourth year in power, Hitler had
pulled Germany
out of the Depression, cut unemployment from 6
million to 1 million, grown the GNP 37 percent and increased auto
production from 45,000 vehicles a year to 250,000. City and
provincial deficits had vanished.

In material terms, Nazi Germany was a startling success.

And not only Churchill and Lloyd George but others in Europe and
America were marveling at the exploits of the Third Reich, its
fascist ally Italy and Joseph Stalin's rapidly industrializing
Soviet state. "I have seen the future, and it works," Lincoln
Steffins had burbled. Many Western men, seeing the democracies
mired in Depression and moral malaise, were also seeing the future
in Berlin, Moscow, Rome.

In Germany, Hitler was winning plebiscites with more than 90
percent of the vote in what outside observers said were free
elections.

What calls to mind the popularity of the Third Reich and the awe it
inspired abroad -- even after
the bloody Roehm purge and the Nazi
murder of Austrian Chancellor Dollfuss in 1934, and the
anti-Semitic Nuremberg laws -- is a poll buried in The New York
Times.

In a survey of 24 countries by Pew Research Center, the nation that
emerged as far and away first on earth in the satisfaction of its
people was China. No other nation even came close.

"Eighty-six percent of Chinese people surveyed said they were
content with the country's direction, up from 48 percent in 2002.
... And 82 percent of Chinese were satisfied with their national
economy, up from 52 percent," said the Times.

Yet, China has a regime that punishes dissent, severely restricts
freedom, persecutes Christians and all faiths that call for worship
of a God higher than the state, brutally represses Tibetans and
Uighurs, swamps their native lands with Han Chinese to bury their
cultures and threatens Taiwan.

China is also a
country where Maoist ideology has been replaced by
a racial chauvinism and raw nationalism reminiscent of Italy and
Germany in the 1930s. Yet, again, over 80 percent of all Chinese
are content or even happy with the direction of the country.
Two-thirds say the government is doing a good job in dealing with
the issues of greatest concern to them.

And what nation is it whose people rank as third most satisfied?

Vladimir Putin's Russia.

Moscow is today more nationalistic, less democratic and more
confrontational toward the West than it has been since before the
fall of communism. Power is being consolidated, former Soviet
republics are hearing dictatorial growls from Moscow and a chill
reminiscent of the Cold War is in the air.

Yet, wrote the Times, "Russians were the third most satisfied
people with their country's direction, at 54 percent, despite
Western concerns about authoritarian
trends."

Of the largest nations on earth, the two that today most satisfy
the desires of their peoples are the most authoritarian.

High among the reasons, of course, are the annual 10 percent to 12
percent growth China has experienced over the last decade, and the
wealth pouring into Russia for the oil and natural gas in which
that immense country abounds. Still, is this not disturbing? In
China and Russia, the greatest of world powers after the United
States, people seem to value freedom of speech, religion or the
press far less than they do a rising prosperity and national pride
and power. And they seem to have little moral concern about
crushing national minorities.

Contrast, if you will, the contentment of Chinese and Russians with
the dissatisfaction of Americans, only 23 percent of whom told the
Pew poll they approved of the nation's direction. Only one in five
Americans said they were
satisfied with the U.S. economy.

Other polls have found 82 percent of Americans saying the country
is headed in the wrong direction, only 28 percent approving of
President Bush's performance and only half that saying they approve
of the Congress. In Britain, France and Germany, only three in 10
expressed satisfaction with the direction of the nation.

Liberal democracy is in a bear market. Is it a systemic crisis, as
well?

In his 1992 "The End of History," Francis Fukuyama wrote of the
ultimate world triumph of democratic capitalism. All other systems
had fallen, or would fall by the wayside. The future belonged to us.

Democratic capitalism, it would appear, now has a great new rival
-- autocratic capitalism. In Asia, Africa, the Middle East and
Latin America, nations are beginning to imitate the autocrats of
China and Russia, even as some in the 1930s sought to ape fascist
Italy and Nazi
Germany.

The game is not over yet. We are going into extra innings.

SOURCE:
http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=BIz8Z&m=1b2DOcepy1xN9f&b=tkrLXcDmxmYZFQJ7TThttQ


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