All Together Now

As various western factions debate whether Iran is or is not a democracy, or is or is not in the process of becoming one, or mired forever as some sort of mishmashed autocratic theocracy or theocratic autocracy or theo-oligarchic dictatorship or military oligocracy or or or . . . it does us well to bear in mind that not one of these various régimes, Hitlers, enemies-of-order, terrorists, failed states, nemeses, adversaries, competitors, ad inf. exhibits anywhere near the hegemonizing, evangelical zeal of the club of Western democracies when it comes to their political institutions and variously scorned or vaunted ways of life. I'm not referring specifically to the American version of militarized neocolonialism in which foreign nations are forcibly conquered and occupied, their leaders deposed, their governments disassembled, and the whole thing reconstituted at gunpoint in some or other image of American Federalism, although that's certainly part of it. I'm referring instead to the broad philosophical and ideological commitment to "spreading democracy," from niggling hopes that the Chinese industrial economy will convert that nation to the doctrine of universal suffrage and 30-second campaign spots to the more romantic ideation of Iranian street protests as an early application for NATO membership and congressional seats in Brussels.

You might call it Democratic internationalism, and although it's gaudier by far, it bears a striking resemblance to its old nemesis, Soviet Communism. It stands in stark contrast, incidentally, to whatever on earth you'd call the Chinese system--whatever else you might say about the Chinese, they don't seem to have any designs on the American constitution. Our various scardeycats prattle fearfully about Islamofascism and its expansionist impulses, but while one can certainly find radical voices calling for the unification of the Ummah, even the wildest dreams of some new caliphate stop short of Cordoba, let alone Vienna, despite the fever dreams of The Internet's more entertaining madmen. Occasionally you will hear some American rightwinger or British nationalist averring that the Muslims are overrunning London, Paris, Marseilles, but even this doomsday is more a worry about displacement than conquest, a vaguely held fear that white folk are being outbred. There is no sense or evidence that Osama bin Laden wishes for America to convert and embrace the religion of the Prophet. The Taliban have no designs on Topeka. Yet you cannot say the US Congress has no plans for Karachi.