We hear a lot of talk going around about spreading democracy around the world - a noble objective. There is, however, a certain lack of clarity around the meaning of democracy and the specifics of implementation. Here for clarification are a couple of examples of initiatives and where they fall in the Bush Doctrine definition of Democracy.
Bad - the recent elections in Belorus (a former member of the USSR) was condemned by all right thinking democrats and all Republicans period. There was widespread evidence of election fixing and fraud. This is clearly unacceptable and there were murmurings of disapproval from Washington. Subsequent protests were watched by police and eventually broken up.
Okay - in the State of Texas, Republicans moved electoral boundaries around to ensure more Republicans get elected and re-elected. In Illinois it is my understanding that some districts aren't even contiguous (or are marginally so) in order to sufficiently gerrymander the districts to ensure incumbents are rarely defeated.
The difference - apparently if you only hijack individual elections you are making a mockery of democracy. If you create laws that essentially hijack every election you are paragon of democray. I have that on good authority - Tom DeLay.
More to come.
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