ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL, BUT NOT ALL WERE LUCKY ENOUGH TO BE SUBJECTS OF ENGLAND:

Freedom's False Ring: America's Hypocritical Impulse To Remake The World (Eric Rauchway, 8/22/07, TNR Online)

Presumably we should preserve and extend American ideals because they made us what we are. But if American history provides a script for becoming rich and free, how do you follow it? Postpone an end to chattel slavery for around 100 years and implementation of universal suffrage for around 200. Put off having a proper central bank until you're already among the richest nations of the earth, protect manufacturing industry from foreign trade with high tariffs until you're indisputably the richest nation, and display a fine disregard for the intellectual property of foreigners until you hold most of the worthwhile patents. Delay creation of a merit-based civil service for more than a century. Restrict the movement of foreign capital, and invest enormous public resources in education and state-funded enterprise.

Surveying this record, Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang says in Bad Samaritans that you can learn lessons about economic development from American history, but the benefits of free trade, free enterprise, democracy, and strong protection for private property are not among them. During the years when the United States developed industrial strength, Americans avoided free markets and, indeed, democracy. Yet nowadays the United States, along with the United Kingdom, the International Monetary Fund, and other major financial players, now prescribes free trade and a general withdrawal of the state from the economy as the only method of economic development, defying the actual history of today's rich nations.

It's interesting that the isolationists are sort of hoist on their own petard when they argue that Western values are not organic to most societies. Obviously it would be best if every country on Earth had been a Christianized colony of England, in which case democracy/capitalism/protestantism would indeed course through the lifeblood, but since they aren't they do need to go through an imperial phase where we force the script on them.

MORE:
Why George Bush’s “Freedom Agenda” Is Here to Stay: Most people assume that when President Bush leaves office, most of his failed foreign policies—especially democracy promotion—will wither on the vine. But if there’s one thing we know about government, it’s that it’s much harder to dismantle programs than it is to create them in the first place. (Paulette Chu Miniter, August 2007, Foreign Policy)

In many ways, President Bush is hewing to another aphorism for entrenching political legacies: “People are policy.” This means not only ingraining your policies with bigger government, but carrying them out with strategically placed people who share your philosophy. Although it may be easy to discount talk of ending tyranny in the world as little more than that, backing political dissidents can help tip the balance. One example is Rebiya Kadeer, an ethnic Uighur from China and human rights activist who spent years as a political prisoner. The Bush administration lobbied for her release from prison, and she has since been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Is China’s communist regime stronger for it? Hardly. If anything, China’s restive Uighur minority is only more emboldened in their push for independence.

Bush has also created a government position many would likely notice if the next president abolished it: a special envoy to North Korea on human rights. Pushing for human rights is inherently a push for democracy—authoritarian regimes by their nature don’t respect the individual rights and aspirations of their people. This is just one appointment that has the potential to start a new trajectory for U.S. policy. Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh and Republican presidential candidate Sen. Sam Brownback are already calling for a special envoy to Iran on human rights. The next president has the choice of supporting such envoys or risk looking callous to the plight of oppressed people, or worse, looking too soft on the world’s dictators. Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton isn’t going that route. She’s not even willing to commit herself now to meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong Il.

Indeed, Democrats are loath to be outdone by Republicans when it comes to something as all-American as supporting democracy and standing up to despots. We shouldn’t forget that it was former Democratic President John F. Kennedy who created the U.S. Agency for International Development, today the largest grant-making agency promoting democracy in the Middle East. Or that it was former Democratic President Jimmy Carter who first put human rights at the center of U.S. policy toward communist nations, calling for the establishment of what is today the U.N. high commissioner for human rights. Although the next president might make the freedom agenda a smaller priority, or even neglect it a little, the infrastructure of the democracy bureaucracy will remain in place for the next president, and the next one after that.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 22, 2007 1:50 PM