Monday, January 26, 2004
(8:46 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
At least I know I'm free
This morning, my alarm clock played angry right-wing talk radio as usual, and they were pissed off that Howard Dean claimed that living conditions in Iraq were worse now than under Saddam. This seems to be objectively true. For instance, ten-thousand people have died in Iraq in the last year due to the war. Did Saddam kill ten-thousand of his people every year? I don't know -- maybe he did. Someone should do some research. In any case, they still lack many basic utilities; they have schools, but it's too dangerous to walk to and from school; they are subject to random violence on the street; their property rights are not as secure; they are more likely to be involved in a terrorist attack; they still run a risk of having their home ransacked or being taken into custody for no reason (although it is probably "better" that this is due to American incompetence rather than Saddam's malice); government workers aren't getting paid; many have lost their jobs entirely; government agencies have been completely ransacked. If American troops were to leave now, they would leave the country in an objectively worse state than they found it. That seems to be the reality on the ground, the actual facts.
But on the level of slogans, the hosts are right. Let's call it the "Proud to Be an American" argument. Everyone prefers "freedom" to tyranny, even if on the level of one's day-to-day life, tyranny afforded a much better standard of living. I think people need to get it through their skulls -- political freedoms just don't matter very much to most people. Formal "freedom of speech" doesn't matter much when you don't have "freedom to eat." There's an even chance that the majority of people would choose to live under a benevolent dicatorship where you were insured basic housing, food, work, and medical attention, rather than in a "free country" where you were free to be unemployed and indebted but had some kind of snowball's chance of becoming fabulously wealthy (at least according to the TV).
I'm going to be late for work.
