Do you believe there is a downside to encouraging nations to move toward being free societies? Can all nations benefit from the move from dicatorship to freedom, or are some cultures simply incapable of it and why? Might they end up worse off? Also, do you believe these shifts are always in America and the West's interests, or will we simply create democratic enemies that are worse for us than the dictators they replace?I'll try and take these singly and hope that the answers will build on themselves. Do you believe there is a downside to encouraging nations to move toward being free societies? The key word in this question is 'encourage,' and because of that the answer is no, there is no downside to 'encouraging' anyone toward a goal that you believe to be in their best intestests. If after said encouragement you are politely (or not so politely) told to mind your own buisness... well, guess what, you should respect that. This again is Golden Rule territory, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." This is also specification, not implementation. How you go about 'encouraging' people towards a desired behaviour is usually the crux of the problem. My first thought is that the best form of 'encouragement' is leading by example. Living that which you preach to be superior.
Can all nations benefit from the move from dicatorship to freedom, or are some cultures simply incapable of it and why? Might they end up worse off?
Is a monarchy a form of Dictatorship? If so, the record of Kings is far superior to that of Democracies in terms of real freedom. Hans Hermann-Hoppe has a fantastic book called Democracy: The God That Failed that details the economics underlying the differences between these two systems of government and the 'natural order.'
Dictatorships are not necessarily bad for individuals any more than Democracies are necessarily good for individuals. There is a strong argument, based on property, that a Dictator has more stake in the well-being of his subjects than the governing body of a Democracy. Hayek makes a strong argument against democracies as well in The Road to Serfdom. That being said, and now to address the question directly the concepts of 'freedom' and 'nations' are mutually exclusive in my interpretation of the words. Real freedom means no governmental abridgment of an individual's property, while government, by it's very existance, nullifies private property to some extent. In the presense of government one can be freer than someone else, but, in no way does this mean that one is, in effect, free. As far as different cultures' capability to handle 'freedom' I don't feel qualified to make that judgment. Again, I'll state carefully that, while I may not agree with the way a group of people live or organize themselves, it's not my place to judge them. My preference is to live in a completely voluntary fashion, free from coersion. My admittedly limited study of cultural behaviour tends to reinforce my ideas about individualism, in that non-coersive cultural(governmental) traditions were developed for reasons that have to do with stability and procreation and governmental decrees are the source of internal conflict in a society as it clashes directly with those derived behaviors.
The Natural Order of things is anarchy (lack of Government), because we existed before we invented government. Any deviation from that is where things become worse via codification and ossification. So, no society is incapable of dealing with being 'free,' simply because all societies are made up of humans who at one point were free.
Also, do you believe these shifts are always in America and the West's interests, or will we simply create democratic enemies that are worse for us than the dictators they replace?
Any time you force people to become something they don't want to be you will create animosity. There is an assumption that the shift is towards the U.S. and the West in terms of 'freedom,' and that is, in reality, not true. The U.S. is not free. We've never been 'Free!' The existence of the Constitution and the States guarantees that. Real freedom is the complete lack of government. So, no these shifts may not be in the U.S.'s best interests because the interests of the U.S. are not necessarily for making people (including it's citizens) free, but the assumption in the question is that the 'shift' is towards freedom. If by freedom the questioner means 'democracy' (which the careful substitution of one word for the other suggests) then I, obviously, disagree with the premise of the question, as I don't view Democracy as a mechanism by which freedom can be achieved, unless, of course, the Democracy votes to disband itself.
I believe that organizations are interested in, primarily, their own survival. Fufilling their stated mandate is far and away of secondary concern. Governments have one thing that all other organizations lack, the power of pointing guns at people with the explicit consent of enoug of the governed to make the threat stick. In that respect, the only thing a government is good at is killing people, either it's own citizens or another government's.
Ta,
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