Something worth noting about the unusual relative power of community building islamist movements when operating against well funded US led democracy wagons as evidenced by the recent victories of the Somali UIC; the promise of better shopping does not move the heart to the great acts of love or sacrifice required in war. "Democracy" is a difficult abstraction that is easily abused (try drawing it). It is a means to an end, not the end itself. There's no instinctive desire for democracy. Consider the US Declaration of Independence (1776), a document which is the distillation of psychological forces which drove men to civil war and kept them there. What are those forces?
...God.. Creator.. Men are created equal... Life, Liberty,... pursuit of Happiness.. Safety and Happiness... [followed by 26(!) paragraphs of hatred for the abuses of King George].
In other words, religious feeling (x2), equality, life, liberty, happiness (x2), safety and above all, an extreme hatred for the brutal acts, preferment, and corruption of foreign influenced or controlled government.
Not once does democracy or shopping appear.
This doesn't bode well for the Iraqi provisional authority -- at least the British spoke the same language.
Interesting Question
The State is a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of behavior; we destroy it by contracting other relationships, by behaving differently toward one another....We are the state, and we shall continue to be the state until we have created the institutions that form a real community and society of men.
- Gustav Landauer, Schwache Stattsmanner, Schwacheres Volk!, June, 1910
Selected Correspondence:
