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![]() Just Above Sunset
January 29, 2006 - Power Doesn't Corrupt, It Forces Pragmatic Dreariness
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The old saw is that power
corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. But put aside consideration of the Republican Party in firm control of the
executive and legislative branches of the government, and about to pack the highest court with its newest "yes man," and the
coincidental Abramoff lobby scandal, and the former leader of the House under indictment in Texas, and the current leader
of the Senate under investigation by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Medicare Plan
D mess with the pharmaceutical corporations and HMO's raking in the bucks while hundreds of thousands of the elderly and poor
suddenly cannot get their medications and the states have to toss in millions so people don't die, and the half-hearted effort
to fix New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, and all the business with Halliburton and the other contractors in Iraq scamming the
system left and right, and the president's supporters, and the president, claiming he can break any law he decides is keeping
him from doing what he alone decides is best (eminent scholar and Federal Judge Richard Posner says that's fine here, and discussion here). And disregard the tax cuts that hit the middle class and let the rich get much richer, the budget that cuts services and
rewards corporations who make donations to the ruling party, the soaring deficit and all the "pork" in the budget for each
home district or state, and all that economic stuff. This isn't about that. Critics say Bush himself
deserves much of the blame by promoting what Daniel Pipes and others have pejoratively dubbed the "pothole theory" of democracy: the idea that if you allow radical Islamists into
the political fold and get them competing for votes - and dealing with mundane civic issues like fixing potholes and collecting
garbage - they will, by necessity, turn moderate and palatable. At the very least, so the theory goes, such inclusion will
force a split between the "hard men" and those willing to pursue Islamist goals through peaceful means. Well it's nifty theory.
In Egypt, the banned
Muslim Brotherhood has donned democratic garb since President Hosni Mubarak began tolerating the group in the mid-1980s. Well, will this work out
in this case? MacMillan acknowledges the commentators who worry that Hamas will create a Taliban-like fundamentalist enclave
- "Hamastan" - in the West Bank and Gaza - these folks who say Iran will step in to finance the Palestinian Authority as funding
from the European Union, the United States, and Israel goes away. That's possible. |
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This issue updated and published on...
Paris readers add nine hours....
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