Are We Hypocrites?

This may be a slightly disjointed ramble, but I want to talk about the American position on the recent unrest in Egypt.

Our relationship with Egypt, as with many other countries, isn't a simple one. For right or wrong, America supports Israel, a country that's largely hated by its neighbors. Egypt is pretty much the only country in the Arab (Muslim) world that has achieved a long-lasting peace with Israel. Egypt has pretty much toed the American line in diplomatic issues as it relates to Arab countries. At the same time though, Egypt is not a democratic society.

Life would be easy if we could simply say that Egypt is an ally or an enemy, but life rarely works out that way. I think the best way to say it is that we're allies because it's mutually convenient.

With that said though, I believe that there's a fatal flaw in our thinking. We preach democracy to the world, but we only tend to support democracy when it's a carbon copy of our system. We get downright pissed when democratic societies don't walk in lock-step with our beliefs. A great example of this is how we bashed on France when they didn't patently buy in to, and support, our invasion of Iraq.

Instead, like many individuals, our country tends to form alliances based on conveniences. This means that we form alliances with nations who support us on given issues, despite their radically differing opinions on the issue of personal liberty. In my opinion, this is a major shortcoming of America's foreign policy.

At the end of the day, we need to determine our primary goal. Do we want to support democracy, regardless of how the voice of a country's people may differ with ours? Or do we push our own self interests, regardless of another nation's principles regarding individual liberty?

Taking a simplistic view, I believe that we should push democracy. America was founded on the principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of (individual) happiness. The idea of individual autonomy is what makes America great. The downside of this, of course, is that reasonable people disagree with what constitutes personal freedom.

It is perfectly reasonable, for example, that a given Arab country would want a democracy based on Islamic law. Such laws could oppress the rights of women, Christians, and so forth, but if the people of that country genuinely want such a system of government, and that country's constitution was genuinely the will of the people, we, as a country that values the will of the people, should support this system of government.

It is also reasonable that the people of a given country value the collective over the individual... that the desire of a single person is subservient to the will of a village or country as a whole. Again, if that is the will of the people in that country, then we, as a country that values "we the people," should support these differing ideas.

The problem is that we seem to think that personal liberty is inviolable. The reality is, that liberty can take many forms. An individual can choose to think of themselves first, or they can decide to put the needs of others first. Failure to realize these fundamental differences is where we fail as a country in our ideal of democracy. People can, and do, put the needs of the collective before the desires of the individual. People can, and do, place spirituality above secular desires.

If we are going to preach democracy, we need to be prepared for the possibility that a given nation's idea of democracy, due to cultural differences, may not walk hand-in-hand with our own brand of freedom.