Juan Cole, Informed Comment: observers who want to lay a guilt trip on us about falling for Mousavi's smooth upper middle class schtick are simply ignoring the last 12 years of Iranian history.
Today, the situation in Iran seems very much in flux, as street demonstrations continued for a second day. Before discussing Iran specifically, though, I want to address the the larger world historical background.
In yesterday's discussion of what's happening in Iran, there was a lot of back and forth that seemed to me to be of the "Blind Men and the Elephant" kind--the Elephant being liberal social democracy. The diary I wrote was about the events unfolding in Iran as part of a centuries-long struggle for liberal social democracy punctuated with several such crucial moments which I referred to, and since it seems the Elephant got lost a bit in that discussion, I thought it worthwhile to begin saying a few words about it.
First off, stealing elections is not democratic. That's more or less ground zero for me. Democracy that's not liberal does not protect individual rights. It would allow a democratic majority to arbitrarily put someone to death. And, of course, the right to vote--which of course includes the right to have it counted--os one of those rights. Democracy that's not social does not recognize protect social and economic rights. It would allow any number of people to starve to death.
That's why I see liberal social democracy as the minimal acceptable form of government. And I see the struggle to achieve LSD on a worldwide basis as the great struggle of the past 250 years--a struggle we are still very much in the midst of.
The post-WWII expansion of widespread prosperity, leading to the first truly mass middle class, first centered in Western Europe and North America, then spreading around the globe, has seen a reorientation toward what are called "post-materialist values". There is a great potential here, as this represents a great maturing in the potential for collective self-government, but there is a danger as well, to the extent that people born into conditions of basic material security may not appreciate what it has taken to achieve that state, or what it means that so many still live outside of it.
And now to Iran, specifically....
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