Democracy vs. liberalism?

The experience of the Tampa saga in 2001 was deeply depressing for the Australian left. Many despaired at popular support for the Howard government. The Herd quoted one poll in their famous song 77%:
77 percent of aussies are racist
And if you're here, I'll say it your faces
Rich redneck pricks still hold all the aces
The Turkish protests raise the question of the relationship between liberalism and 'democracy'. One argument by a critic of the demonstrations argues that poll evidence suggests that Turkish voters do not see a threat to secularism and that 'secularism' is an ideology of the affluent privileged fearful of the mobilisation of the periphery. One wonders if respondents have different interpretations of secularism, to some it might imply the absence of Iranian-style regime (which I suspect has little popular support even among the religious) but to others it might imply a broader range of policies. In the US the issue was raised by Lipset's thesis of working-class authoritarianism, articulated in Political Man, but his argument for the populist origins of McCarthyism were challenged in Rogin's The Intellectuals and McCarthy. More recently populist conservatism has challenged the American left in its heartlands. Thus the only commentator to consider these parallels is an American M. J. Rosenberg who confesses:
I wonder if I'm alone in my conflicted view of all this. I am all for democracy and for the military keeping its nose out of politics. On the other hand, there is something I like about a political order which has secularism as; you'll forgive me, an article of faith.
Perhaps we can resolve this contradiction by recalling the Marxist critique of capitalist democracy, to Marx socialism would be a radicalised democracy that would enable humans to fulfil their full potential through collective self-government. We are not obliged to support capitalist democracy when it reduces the ability of hums to fulfil their full potential. Democracy, as James Bryce noted long ago, has won support as a means to an end. We can however be sure that Communism was a massive regression on capitalist democracy. We cannot be 'all for' democracy as currently constituted.

Turkey and Australia

More secularist protests in Turkey (picture from here). Once again they seem to have attracted little attention in Australia. media coverage tends to point the Islamist's success in attracting lower income voters, although I suspect the division is driven by region and history, and success in on the ground campaigning and the provision of social services. One revolutionary left interpretation is simply to dismiss the demonstrators as evil educated middle-class people. Adherents of this seem to be a minority on LBO however. Interesting article in New Left Review on Turkey by Cihan Tugal that shows the Islamists' political success based among other factors in the discrediting of the old parties. The problem is that the secular nationalist project is exhausted, Nasser and Ataturk no longer offer guidance in the present, and as Tugal shows the Turkish army has a very dubious record. The hint of military intervention can be compared to those on the Australian left, such as new NSW Labor MP Verity Firth who argued last year that a Bill of Rights in NSW would provide a protection against anti-union initiatives by a conservative government. This is weak shield indeed, what the left needs to do is to develop social institutions and widely shared social values that will ensure that any conservative government is constrained. Federal Labor shows little sign of this. Its proposed Fair Work Australia would presumably be abolished by a conservative government; a reinvigorated Industrial Relations Commission would have more prospect of survival.

Religion in Turkey and New York

I see the secularist protests in Turkey (picture from here) and hints of intervention by the military on behalf of the secular cause, have received little coverage in the Australian media which thinks Europe stops around Berlin. The conservative record in all policy aspects of the ruling Islamist party provides further confirmation, if any was needed, of the perfect compatibility of political Islam (and of course political Christianity) with economic conservatism. Would-be business modernisers seem to have little time for the secularists according to business-friendly commentary here. Nor it seems does the European whose Enlargement Commissioner stated:
This is a test case if the Turkish armed forces respect democratic secularism and the democratic arrangement of civil-military relations.
Well, for a start note that the Islamist ruling party won a landslide parliamentary majority with only 34.3% of the vote.
On a slightly less serious note Elliott Spitzer, the first Jewish Governor of New York, has generated outrage from Christian groups as the only state governor not to support a National Day of Prayer. See outraged comments here.

Iranian questions

Via Doug Ireland an interesting article by Scott McElmee in conversation with Danny Postel on whether some American progressives are failing to provide sufficnet opposition to the iranina regime. Sya Postel:
Due to intellectual laziness, a preference for moral simplicity, existential bad faith, or some combination thereof, lots of leftists have opted out of even expressing moral support, let alone standing in active solidarity with, Iranian dissidents, often on the specious grounds that the latter are on the CIA’s payroll or are cozy with the neocons.
Would this be a fair point in Australia? Green Left Weekly has given coverage to the protests of Iranian feminists and the Greens have been vociferous agaisnt the deportation of asylum-seekers back to Iran. See also Rodny Croome here.

Nuclear rhetoric from Regean to Ahmadinejad

Some discussion in Australia of an article by Benny Morris evoking the spectre of a 'second holocaust' the destruction of Israel by an Iranian nuclear attack. Truly repellent as the Iranian regime is I'm inclined to agree with Robert Farley:
His analysis rests, of course, on the assumption that Iran will behave differently than any country with nuclear weapons has ever behaved, including the Soviet Union under Stalin, the People's Republic of China during the Cultural Revolution, and North Korea under Kim Jong Il. He rejects any careful analysis of the decision-making of the Iranian state, building his argument around Ahmadinejad but failing to note that there is almost no chance that the current President of Iran will be in power when (and if) Iran develops a nuclear weapon. He notes in passing that the rest of the Iranian foreign policy elite also favors the destruction of Israel, which kind of makes me wonder why Ahmadinejad matters at all.
I don't follow the argument of Harry Feldman which seems to be that destruction of Israel wouldn't be a second holocaust as most Jews live outside Israel. Shades of the stolen generation not being a generation. What I am reminded off was Reagan’s 'joke' :
My fellow Americans. I'm pleased to announce that I've signed legislation outlawing the Soviet Union. We begin bombing in five minutes.
Reagan’s rhetoric inspired understandable fear and alarm. Within the Soviet Union according to the evidence of Vasil Mitrokohn it led many in the Soviet leadership to fear a nuclear first strike by the US. The KGB had difficulty persuading the leadership that however dramatic Reagan’s rhetoric this was not the case. Fortunately they were successful.