{"id":1014,"date":"2011-02-27T09:19:25","date_gmt":"2011-02-27T14:19:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/?p=1014"},"modified":"2011-02-27T09:39:02","modified_gmt":"2011-02-27T14:39:02","slug":"democracy-in-the-arab-world-and-elsewhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/1014","title":{"rendered":"Democracy in the Arab World and Elsewhere"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <em>New York Times<\/em>&#8216; Nicholas D. Kristof <a title=\"Unfit for Democracy\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/02\/27\/opinion\/27kristof.html\" target=\"_blank\">writes<\/a>:<!--more--><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">&#8220;Is the Arab world unready for freedom? A crude stereotype lingers that some people \u2014 Arabs, Chinese and Africans \u2014 are incompatible with democracy. Many around the world fret that \u201cpeople power\u201d will likely result in Somalia-style chaos, Iraq-style civil war or Iran-style oppression. (&#8230;) I don\u2019t think so. Moreover, this line of thinking seems to me insulting to the unfree world. In Egypt and Bahrain in recent weeks, I\u2019ve been humbled by the lionhearted men and women I\u2019ve seen defying tear gas or bullets for freedom that we take for granted. How can we say that these people are unready for a democracy that they are prepared to die for? (&#8230;) I\u2019m awed by the courage I see, and it\u2019s condescending and foolish to suggest that people dying for democracy aren\u2019t ready for it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t always agree with Kristof&#8217;s take on things, but this is one of his most interesting columns as of late.<\/p>\n<p>(HT: <a title=\"Aid Watch\" href=\"http:\/\/aidwatchers.com\" target=\"_blank\">Bill Easterly<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The New York Times&#8216; Nicholas D. Kristof writes:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1gPg8-gm","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1014"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1027,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1014\/revisions\/1027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}