Month: January 2008

Creating Islamic Democracies

Some sound advice:

Growing strong pluralist democracies in Pakistan and Bangladesh cannot be achieved by talking democracy up while giving tacit support to military backed autocrats. If you were to start a wish list you would ask for the building of institutional competencies framed by a rock-solid secular constitution. The role of the military in politics would have to be checked and it would have to be conditionally bound not to enter politics. Finally, Islamist parties would need to accept the role of sharia to cover only certain aspects of law, ethics and morality that are congruent with civil law. Divine law would be divested of its paramount position in regard to legislature. The last point is already in place; it is the pervasive role of the military that has been the greatest impediment to deal with. Made trickier since they get so much support from other powerful democracies in the west.

Democracies are inclusive by definition. In muslim-majority countries, this means it is not correct to deny the validity of Islamist parties which should be welcomed to operate as long as they demonstrate their willingness to play by the rules of the democratic process. Many of the mainstream Islamist parties already do: the AK in Turkey and Jamaati Islam in Bangladesh are adept political manouverers, playing the game as well the next secular party.

Obama In NYC

A reader does the math:

Winning New York City would be more than a symbolic victory for Obama. In New York State, twenty-three Congressional Districts have five delegates apiece, and six CDs have six delegates. Five of those six are in NYC. Were Obama to carry those districts, he’d score 4 delegates to Hillary’s 2, or 3 to her 1 if Edwards tops 15%. In the remaining CDs, if Obama can just top 30%, the delegates will split 3-2 in favor of Hillary, or 2-2-1 if Edwards meets the threshold.

The point is this. Using the numbers in the poll you cite, and the conservative assumptions that Hillary wins every single district out of the city, that Obama everywhere garners at least 30%, and that Edwards doesn’t meet the threshold anywhere, the pledged delegate tallies for New York State would be: Hillary 132, Obama 100. You can knock one delegate off of Hillary’s total for every upstate CD in which Edwards cracks 15%; if he breaks that statewide, subtract another 6 from Hillary and 4 from Obama.

The point is this. Hillary’s strategy is built on the assumption that she can leverage huge leads in NY, NJ, and CA to compensate for her losses in the south and midwest. And in the last week, that strategy has gone up in smoke. She’s finished; if our national media wasn’t innumerate, it would have noticed by now.

Imagining A Pro-Life America

Ross tries hard:

Over the long run, my assumption is that a ban on abortion, by changing the incentives of sexual behavior and family formation, would actually end up reducing out-of-wedlock births, welfare spending, and all the rest of it, and that a short-term investment in a pro-life welfare state (and an acceptance of the short term spike in illegitimacy, dependency and government spending that would presumably accompany it) would prove a boon to conservatism in the end. But that’s a long-term hope, not a short-term plan – and even if that assumption weren’t borne out, I still think that a higher illegitimacy rate and a more expensive and intrusive welfare state would be a small price to pay for a country where every human being enjoyed the protection of the laws.