To The Point “Iraq Insurgency Still Strong Three Years after US Invasion� @ http://www.kcrw.org/cgi-bin/db/kcrw.pl?tmplt_type=program&show_code=tp

and KUOW’s Weekday “Eman Ahmad Khammas – What is it live in Iraq right now? Eman Ahmad Khammas knows. She is an Iraqi journalist and women’s advocate visiting Seattle to share her first hand experience. What is her vision for the future of her country? What is it like to be a Iraqi citizen in the midst of war? Do Iraqi women have a different experience than the men? Is there way for peace to come to the region?â€?

@ http://www.kuow.org/weekday.asp

(After today, look for the ‘Recent Shows’ ‘Choose a date’ drop-down box option)

http://www.kuow.org/weekday.asp

‘Weekday’ is usually excellent and its topics are often worthy of a national audience instead of just its Puget Sound regional listeners.

After today, the ‘Civil War In Iraq?’ Weekday show will go into the show archives to the right on the page (called ‘select a date’); the date was March 9th, and it was the show’s second hour.

I’d rather my intellectual independence sometimes lead me astray into mistakenness than to relax and be an incurious dupe of the rightwing propaganda factory.

So, please let me know which part(s) deals with Wilson — and thanks again.

See ya.

Your premise that countries hosting US forces are wealthier became ‘any land mass within range of US ICBMs’ – which include my penguin pals down in Antarctica!

Please understand that those of us standing well away from the rightwing circle of logic can easily see through its tricks – even if the merry-go-round’s riders can’t.

This one just kinda tastes foul, doesn’t it?

It’s as old a ruling-class conceit as the country, though, and it’s used all around the world by repressive regimes drawn from the governing elites as the primary excuse for their ignoring of the people’s will. Luckily, it is very easy to parse, and to afterwards debunk.

Starting with a definition of the fearful concept’s underlying bias:

Chauvinism:

1. Unwarranted bias, favoritism, or devotion to a particular group, cause, or idea.

2. A bias in favour of the familiar. (My emphasis.)

History: Chauvinism originally referred only to an excessive nationalism or patriotism, but its use has broadened. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Chauvinism

Its use has broadened indeed. Nationalism and sexism are both chauvinism, but so are racism, speciesism, resourceism, and classism, to name but four.

Racism underpinned slavery, and, as a credible ideology, has been scientifically debunked. Thus African-Americans are accorded full personhood, and not the 3/5’s written into our 18th century constitution. The enfranchisement of African Americans significantly expanded democracy in the USA. This expansion has enriched the nation by adding many brilliant minds to the national dialogue – not to mention much of the world’s greatest arts and music.

Sexism: it was long believed that woman’s capacity for rational thought was biologically impaired by emotiveness. This has been scientifically debunked. Yet even before science debunked the sexist doctrine, women in this country earned the vote, more than doubling democracy in the USA.

The addition of women’s voices to the national dialogue is every bit as significant as the addition of African-American voices. This is in no small part because many more women seem to have greater capacity for empathy than many or most men do, although this argument might be difficult to test empirically. Nevertheless, dozens of patient and sympathetic contributions from bloggers like our very own Allison, Peggy Sue, and Potter suggest at least a tad of evidence for such an argument. And frankly, empathy is a virtue, not a flaw of any kind, at least not by any acceptable measure. (Indeed, the GOP leadership would benefit immeasurably from a much bigger dose of it, imho.)

So what about classism?

How can we allow California-style ballot-measure democracy when the comparatively undereducated middle and lower classes can hardly be trusted to understand complex issues enough to vote sagaciously? Isn’t this a recipe for the catastrophic mobocracy the founders fretted over in the Federalist Papers and elsewhere?

Perhaps, but only in a undereducated populace – and even then one must ask the moral question: shouldn’t any government founded on the democratic impulse allow for the possibility of a population’s self-destructive foolishness (ala ancient Athens)?

What’s the point of preaching the virtues of popular self-determination if a populace’s elites are allowed to hold up their collective hands and say: “No, no, children, you can’t redistribute the political or economic power against your oligarchs’ will�?

And as far as education goes, Swedes graduate from high school fluent in three languages – Swedish, English, and an elective. This opens the entire world to Swedes: they are one of the least ignorant populaces of the world because in a single year they can read vastly more viewpoints in more languages than most Americans ever will in a lifetime.

In other words, the only enduring foundation for this country’s entrenched classist resistance to greater democracy is our inadequate popular education – which is obviously a product of governmental disinterest.

The simplest way to defeat this glaring conceit is to ponder the following: A liberally educated populace is eminently qualified to determine its national policies and priorities with only minimal framing from political professionals.

Finally, for an American to cast aspersions on the democracies of other countries is not only ignorant but simply arrogant. Swedes are vastly better able to gauge whether or not their parliamentary system is appropriate for their popular self-determination than any American republican.

They are, after all, liberally educated. They trust one another – and that’s what counts most.

In sum, the expansion of democracy is preferable because the more educated and curious minds a nation produces, the more innovative solutions that country will inevitably generate.

Democracy – founded on liberal education – not the trickery of self-justifying republican ideology, is the key to the furtherance of human progress and humanism.

Too much democracy?

No, not nearly enough of it.