The Will of the People

Submitted by Jon (France), Jan 28, 2006 at 05:13

Democracy clearly gives the people a real expression of their views, of their vision of the future. It has given a straightforward legitimacy to the people they elected to govern them.

It does not, by itself, impose any obligation on the taxpayers of foreign countries to provide any support to such representatives as have been chosen, or their policies. Where our approval, our "support" and our money goes is surely our problem, our decision. Since there does not seem, today, to be any reason we should be worried about the likelihood of the Hamas party organising a genocide of the population under their control, all we are obliged by morality to do is to say "well done for the election" and "get on with it so long as your behaviour is within international norms". We have no obligation whatever to pay for the mess.

Our western "morality" has installed a respect for the nation state, even if such a state has a vision which includes heaps of dead bodies bulldozed into holes, whether the bodies wear or do not wear yellow stars. We talk in a concerned way about 100 or a thousand, dead terrorists, dying on "business trips", and we protest fences built to keep them away from their publicly designated potential business targets, throwing billions at their kleptocratic leaders to calm their high spirits and provide for future generations of their families living in western europe, and dither about wholesale (and therefore cheap) slaughter in Darfour.

Apparently "Hamastan" has been the largest per capital receiver of aid in the world! A radical change in that status would seem like a good idea to experiment with, and today a good date to start.

Keep up the good work,

Jon

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