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Democracy not ours to export, just to guard jealously
April 4, 2006
Arrogance makes us believe that the rights we take for granted are immortal, writes Neville Wran.
DEMOCRACY is a work in progress. When we of the West talk about building and spreading democracy, even fighting wars for democracy, we ought to have the grace to realise our own shortcomings and hypocrisies.
We talk as if these values - democratically elected assemblies, equal representation, the sanctity of the ballot, the secular state, freedom of religion, including freedom from religion as a political test, the equal status of women, the right of organised labour, the rule of law, the independence of the judiciary, the presumption of innocence … the list goes on - were all self-evident truths and inalienable rights which we uphold as universal, immutable and immortal … as if we guaranteed them in our own societies.
In all our arrogance, we talk about these values as if they were so much part of the natural order of things that we have a divine right to impose them on the rest of the world, even if it means war. Yet not one of these values has not been under challenge in our societies in our lifetime.
What are we to make of the very principle of responsible government itself - the accountability of ministers - in the wake of the Cole inquiry into the oil-for-food scandal? What are we to make of the massive attack being made on everything we were entitled to believe from 120 years of decisions made in this Parliament, about one of the most fundamental democratic rights - that of workers to organise?
How fragile and vulnerable, how hard and recently won, are those concepts which we now demand, in all our arrogance and hypocrisy, shall be accepted by the rest of the world without question. We ought, at least, to have a decent humility about these things. We did, in fact, fight a great war to make the world "safe for democracy", as we were told. This was 1914 to 1918.
In less than two decades, the democracy we were supposed to have established in Europe - in the very heartland of Western civilisation - had been destroyed; in Italy, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Poland, Yugoslavia, Austria and, above all, Germany.
Just three years ago, at the start of the war against Iraq, the American writer Norman Mailer wrote in his pamphlet Why Are We at War? these prophetic words: "Democracy is never there, in us, to create in another country, by the force of our will. Real democracy comes out of many subtle individual human battles that are fought over decades and finally over centuries. You can't play with it. You can't assume we're going over there to show them what a great system we have. This is monstrous arrogance."
And, separately, he wrote: "Democracy is a state of grace attained only by those countries that have a host of individuals not only ready to enjoy freedom, but to undergo the heavy labour to maintain it."
That captures the message and the true meaning of the important events which we will celebrate in May, the meeting of the first elected Legislative Assembly of NSW on May 22, 1856.
Neville Wran was NSW premier 1976-86. This is an edited version of a speech he gave late last week about the sesquicentenary of responsible government in NSW.
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Finally some sense in the SMH to all the democratocunts.
April 4, 2006
Arrogance makes us believe that the rights we take for granted are immortal, writes Neville Wran.
DEMOCRACY is a work in progress. When we of the West talk about building and spreading democracy, even fighting wars for democracy, we ought to have the grace to realise our own shortcomings and hypocrisies.
We talk as if these values - democratically elected assemblies, equal representation, the sanctity of the ballot, the secular state, freedom of religion, including freedom from religion as a political test, the equal status of women, the right of organised labour, the rule of law, the independence of the judiciary, the presumption of innocence … the list goes on - were all self-evident truths and inalienable rights which we uphold as universal, immutable and immortal … as if we guaranteed them in our own societies.
In all our arrogance, we talk about these values as if they were so much part of the natural order of things that we have a divine right to impose them on the rest of the world, even if it means war. Yet not one of these values has not been under challenge in our societies in our lifetime.
What are we to make of the very principle of responsible government itself - the accountability of ministers - in the wake of the Cole inquiry into the oil-for-food scandal? What are we to make of the massive attack being made on everything we were entitled to believe from 120 years of decisions made in this Parliament, about one of the most fundamental democratic rights - that of workers to organise?
How fragile and vulnerable, how hard and recently won, are those concepts which we now demand, in all our arrogance and hypocrisy, shall be accepted by the rest of the world without question. We ought, at least, to have a decent humility about these things. We did, in fact, fight a great war to make the world "safe for democracy", as we were told. This was 1914 to 1918.
In less than two decades, the democracy we were supposed to have established in Europe - in the very heartland of Western civilisation - had been destroyed; in Italy, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Poland, Yugoslavia, Austria and, above all, Germany.
Just three years ago, at the start of the war against Iraq, the American writer Norman Mailer wrote in his pamphlet Why Are We at War? these prophetic words: "Democracy is never there, in us, to create in another country, by the force of our will. Real democracy comes out of many subtle individual human battles that are fought over decades and finally over centuries. You can't play with it. You can't assume we're going over there to show them what a great system we have. This is monstrous arrogance."
And, separately, he wrote: "Democracy is a state of grace attained only by those countries that have a host of individuals not only ready to enjoy freedom, but to undergo the heavy labour to maintain it."
That captures the message and the true meaning of the important events which we will celebrate in May, the meeting of the first elected Legislative Assembly of NSW on May 22, 1856.
Neville Wran was NSW premier 1976-86. This is an edited version of a speech he gave late last week about the sesquicentenary of responsible government in NSW.
---
Finally some sense in the SMH to all the democratocunts.
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