The Huffington Post, among other Leftwing-Loon websites is pointing to Iran today, and saying that this is evidence that Western-style democracy cannot be exported to other regions. Their logic? Iran has a constitution and has elections every four years. An election was held, and now chaos is the result. Their solution, obviously, is that they'd like to see a totalitarian (socialist) state in every country.
I'm looking at the situation in Iran (which seems to be deteriorating), and I see just the opposite.
There is a story that during the 1960's the Soviets were trying to quell unrest among workers. They took news footage of violence that was taking place during a strike in which workers were making demands and were met with (in some instances) police brutality. The newsreels were shown to the Soviet workers by government officials with the hopes that these workers would see that under the US capitalist system, the government oppresses its workers. The propaganda backfired. The workers began watching the news footage and they all began to shout "They have shoes! They have shoes!" It didn't seem to matter that they were being "oppressed" by the government, because they viewed that as "normal." It happened to them, too. What they saw was a difference in lifestyle; specifically decent shoes for their feet.
This is what is causing unrest in places like Iran and other areas in the Middle East. There are estremists idealists like Ahmadinejihad and Osama Bin Laden who are trying to convince the populace of the Middle East that America is the Evil Empire because we are not muslim. While this resonates to a certain degree, what the average Joe (or the "Average Mohammed", as the case may be) sees is a big difference in lifestyle. And these places are becoming increasingly aware of the differences as satellite TV, internet and other media sources become more available.
The people in Iran would never have protested like this 20 years ago, even though they had the same constitution and the same every-four-years election process. They accepted that their government was oppressive, that they couldn't change it, and that they only had one choice of a candidate to vote for (at least when an incumbent regime was controlling things.)
They aren't accepting those givens any more. Whether or not the Huffington Post and other Leftwing Loons want to admit it, the Iranians are DEMANDING western style democracy.
And if we had a different leader in this country leading the charge, they'd probably get it.
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