War, disease, famine, murder. What would you say if someone knew a cure for them? A way to achieve a veritable utopia on earth, free of oppression and pain and suffering? Well, if you are like most Americans, and many people of the world, you might call him a nazi, a terrorist, or a dictator.

There is a cure for these terrible things, and it is called democracy. Now before you cringe, lets clarify democracy. Democracy is not (as it is used commonly now) a simple majority rule. If you think so, then let’s you, me, and my friend partake in a vote to take all your money from you and divide it between my friend and I, and see how ‘democratic’ you consider that process. Though the phrase originally meant a literal majority rule, a modern democracy has a specific meaning. It is representative rule and liberal (liberal in it’s classical sense, meaning it respects the rights of its people) has laws that are equally applicable to all people, and for the most part let people determine the course of their own lives. Former Soviet gulag victim Natan Sharansky promotes a even simpler definition, fear. Go to the town square and criticize your government. If you do that in Vietnam, you will get thrown in jail. If you do that in China, you will get beaten and thrown in jail. If you did that in the Stalinist Soviet Union, you would be thrown in jail for years, beaten routinely and tortured, as Natan Sharansky did…if you were lucky. If you were not, you were worked, literally, until you died. If you did that in Iraq, you were murdered, male family members were murdered and female ones raped, then murdered. Saddam Hussein murdered 50,000 Shi’ites (about how many Americans were killed in Vietnam) post Gulf War I his murderous Anfal campaign sought a final solution to the Kurdish question and murdered over 100,000. If you find yourself afraid to actually speak your mind then you are in a fear society. One that operates, rules, and is based on fear. If you find yourself able to speak your mind, you are in a free society.

Democracies do not commit mass murder, they do not murder large numbers of their own people, they do not start wars, they do not get in wars with other democracies. They do not have famines, they promote and produce freedom, increased standards of living, longer life spans, and in general much more wealth and prosperity. All of which has been empirically proven.

Democrats, who so despise Bush as to vilify anything he could possibly do as evil (instead of rationally recognizing these aspects are good, as Christopher Hitchens and Peter Beinhart of The New Republic have) seek to undermined the very concept of peace and freedom. Not able to vilify Bush’s policy of spreading democracy and bemused by the success of the first election in Iraq, they instead attack democracy itself. For the majority of this century every academic, member of the intelligentsia and liberal elitist knew and recognized the value of liberal representative democracies in the world and rightly despised totalitarian dictatorships. Now, because what Bush is doing is right, they all the sudden change their minds. If democracies are no good, what then is? They highlight the few isolated cases of conflicts between democracies while those countries were neither liberal nor representative (but might have been majority rule) and suggest that the very concept of democratic peace is flawed. Their ideological hatred of Bush clouds their mind to such an extent that they now belie the greatest governmental form humanity has yet devised and the very source of all the great things they themselves value so much in life, like freedom of speech, press, and expression.

Now I am no coddling party line Bush supporter. I am an atheist, a libertarian, and extropian, all of which conflict with the vast majority of Republican ideals. However, I am also a freedomist, I value the freedom of the people of the world. And Bush for his part is doing his best to promulgate that freedom.

The leading proponent of democratic peace these days might be political science professor R.J. Rummel. Rummel has authored 24 books, was a runner up for the Noble Peace price, and is author of the most sighted book in academic history. Rummel has spent more time than anyone alive studying the murderous effects of power in government, showing that governments have murdered 170 million of their own people in this century. Far more than have been killed in wars between nations. Visit his extensive website at http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/welcome.html for more information.

Michael