Democracy

Unfortunately, with the limited experience that Egypt has with democracy, there is a very good chance that we shall see continuing chaos in that nation, spreading throughout the Middle East, a region not noted for listening to the voices of its own people. The results in Iran were devastating, with the initial acceptance of a purported democratic government, destroyed by the accession of Khomeini to power. Fortunately, the religious leaders of Egypt do not have the same following, but with the Muslim Brotherhood a strong factor we may be looking at a theocratic government with no possible conversion to what we consider a democracy.

For the first time in some 5,000 years of Egyptian civilization, voters went to the polls this week to select a leader in a contest where the outcome was uncertain. Given Egypt's crucial role in maintaining order and stability in the Middle East and the wide range of candidates, from secular to military to Islamist, that fact is unnerving to some in the United States, Israel and elsewhere. But it has been a cause of unbridled jubilation throughout Egypt, where millions of ordinary people lined up to cast ballots and determine their national destiny.

Regarding your editorial "Obama and the Arab Spring" (May 20), your assessment that the president laid out a "pragmatic, nuanced approach to the region" is not borne out by the realities on the ground. The region is still embroiled in chaos and conflict. Most recently Coptic Christians and Islamists have clashed in Egypt. Libya seems mired in stalemate. Bahrain and Syria continue repression and murder of protesters on the streets. And Saudi Arabia's royal family is not even remotely ready for democracy.

Maybe what this country needs on the Supreme Court is a real politician or at least a sensible political scientist or two. Perhaps they would help the court's majority understand how it has allowed unlimited big-donor money to contaminate and almost destroy our politics. The infamous Citizens United decision -- which permits corporations and individuals to flood election campaigns with torrents of cash through super PACs as long as they are independent of candidates' formal organizations -- has invited some of the worst abuses of negative campaigning.

The article in Friday's Sunpaper ("Petition drive yields big numbers," July 1) was an example of freedom at work. It seems from this article that the people of Maryland have had enough of Maryland politicians who ignore their constituents and kowtow to lobbyists and political correctness. I sincerely hope their next step is to vote every politician who voted for this legislation out of office as I intend to do. Hats off to the Sunpaper for using the correct terminology, "illegal immigrant," rather than the ridiculous terminology from Gov. Martin O'Malley in this article.

Regarding your recent article about the continuing violence in Iraq, it's disturbing that it and many similar pieces all followed President Obama's Dec. 2010 announcement that all American troops would be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of 2011 ("Blasts targeting pilgrims kill 15, injure 52 in Iraq," Jan.10). It's quite obvious that the president's action was nothing more than a political ploy to position himself in a more favorable position for re-election in 2012. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama's announcement also created the chaotic situation the articles describe.

I'm sorry to disagree with Sean Parnell of the Center for Competitive Politics ("Court's campaign finance ruling a free speech victory," July 8), but I cannot see any practical democracy in the Supreme Court's "Citizens United" ruling. Elective offices are now for sale to the highest bidder, which puts the richest Americans firmly and permanently in the driver's seat. As long as this pernicious decision remains unchallenged in the legislature, the United States is and will remain plutocratic, and ordinary citizens' voices are effectively silenced by the shouts of organizations and candidates with limitless budgets for the purchase of air time.

Shibley Talhami's article "Egypt's revolt and America's Role" (Feb. 16) is right on target regarding our government's interest in democracy in the Middle East. Its sudden enthusiasm for the need for democratic reform in Egypt is a good case of how our foreign policy can shift with the wind. Our State Department has previously mentioned the need for the Egyptian government to respond more to the needs the people, but that was about it. No strong demands change were voiced until events in the last two weeks forced us to dramatically raise the volume of our protests.

When Andres Rodriguez hands the sash of office to Juan Carlos Wasmosy on Aug. 15, it will be the first time in Paraguay's 182 years of independence that an elected president succeeded an elected president.The winner of a more-or-less fair, three-way election with nearly 40 percent of the vote, Mr. Wasmosy was indistinguishable from his opponents as a free-market conservative. The real distinction is that he and not they carried the banner of the Colorado Party. This was the vehicle through which the dictator Alfredo Stroessner ruled from 1954 to 1989.

THE WAR in Iraq revealed a disturbing weakness in our democracy. Regardless of one's views on the war, it's hard to defend how Congress avoided debate about the administration's dramatic shift toward pre-emptive warfare. Lack of democracy at home is a grave threat to our national well-being and future. The data are stark. We rank 139th in the world in average turnout in national elections since 1945. It's been decades since even half of adults voted in congressional elections in a nonpresidential year.

The surveillance state expands. The Patriot Act allows our phones to be wiretapped. Our email and Internet transactions leave a trail for some to follow. The police can access our GPS location data through our smartphones without a warrant. Retailers record our purchasing habits with painstaking detail. Apparently, Target studies those purchases to determine when customers are pregnant - in the second trimester, no less - for specialized marketing purposes. And now, there will be surveillance drones.

The neck-and-neck race between President Barack Obama and the presumptive Republican nominee, Mitt Romney will be the most expensive campaign in American history. It will be a battle between two robust political organizations. And it is a good bet things are going to get really nasty. There are genuine differences between the two candidates -- one is a classic liberal, the other a classic conservative -- but neither is a renegade. And, despite what the partisan bombast may allege, neither man is anything close to a radical.

Hate speech is a form of vandalism. It defaces the environment, and like a broken window, if left untended, signals to other hoodlums that the coast is clear to do more damage. But unlike the proverbial broken window, which urban police departments and criminologists urge us to repair to maintain the aura of social order, nobody seems to be in much of a hurry to nip hate speech in the bud. That's because since the ill-fated attempt by several universities to regulate hate speech in the 1980s and 1990s, any discussion of reining in racist taunts inevitably degrades into charges of political correctness and ends abruptly with the invocation of the First Amendment.

Cuban accusations against American Alan Gross and recent Egyptian allegations against four Americans who were promoting democracy on Egyptian soil have some eerie similarities. Alan Gross, who has been confined in Cuba since 2009, and the four Americans in Egypt who recently had bail posted for them by the Government of Qatar, have been using United States taxpayers' money to promote openness and democracy in two countries that have no interest in the United States interfering in their internal affairs.

Watching Rick Santorum rise in the polls by positioning himself as the real Christian presidential candidate is like watching the sequel of a horror movie - one I literally lived through in the 1980s while growing up in Pakistan. There, another religious zealot, Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, played the lead role of the real Muslim. The plot went like this: The clerics called for candidates with "true" Muslim values, the masses demanded a "Muslim candidate for a Muslim state," the leaders proved their "Muslimness" by quoting scripture and calling others lesser Muslims, and the candidate who was able to appease the clergy privately and please the masses publicly held on to power.

Regarding your recent article about the continuing violence in Iraq, it's disturbing that it and many similar pieces all followed President Obama's Dec. 2010 announcement that all American troops would be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of 2011 ("Blasts targeting pilgrims kill 15, injure 52 in Iraq," Jan.10). It's quite obvious that the president's action was nothing more than a political ploy to position himself in a more favorable position for re-election in 2012. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama's announcement also created the chaotic situation the articles describe.

In Arabic, bukra means tomorrow, inshallah means God willing. Both words are used to indicate that things may not happen as stated.Kuwait was a pretty fair democracy by Arabic standards, with the only elected parliament in the gulf until it was dissolved in 1986. After pro-democracy forces pressed the point, elections were held last June, but only for an "interim parliament" with no legislative powers. Of Kuwait's population of about 2 million, only 65,000 (about 3 percent) were eligible to vote (males over age 21 whose families had lived in Kuwait before 1920)

Editor: The recent Open Forum letter "Uncompromising on when compromise is appropriate," was a great example of the mentality of the raging political machine, all passion, no compromise. At an early age we are taught some form of compromise. Somewhere along the way politicians forgot that early childhood lesson, and feel that compromise is a sign of weakness or failure. One man's beliefs are not more important than the overall system. Ronald Regan said If you get 75 or 80 percent of what you were asking, you take it and fight for the rest later.

Presidential elections have shoehorned their way onto a list that includes Christmas, Valentine's Day, Easter and Halloween: treasured national events that have become irritating, if not down right offensive, by how early they start and how long they last. (This list does not include tax season or bathing-suit season, both of which would be unpleasant no matter when they started or how long they lasted.) If you are like me, you have the sense that we have been sorting among possible Republican candidates since March of last year - and the election is still almost 11 months away.