Originally Posted by
Topsy
The problem with your Africa related post isn't so much the dismissal of their IQ or intelligence(although this is surprising, since it has been the same reason for why you dismiss the ability for most Americans to rule themselves), but the complete dismissal of the North's place in creating those structural inequalities that now act as "factors" in making them "incapable of ruling themselves." Many of Africa's most horrific rulers have either been a direct result of colonialization, or neo-colonialization(most prominantly in the form of the IMF or of Western businesses propping up dictators), or a militaristic backlash to recent/past interferences by the North. To say that the answer to this is to further intervene in their ability to rule themselves is of the same logic that created the moral high ground for the North during the slave trade(they are worthless barbareans, atleast we will rule them insuch a way as to create value, and perhaps even Christianize them), or during the various IMF interventions of the last century.
This all is to say that these various elitist, and in most manifestations totalitarian, positions soak through all your posts on this thread because you seem to fundamentally believe that most people are incapable of knowing what it is that constitutes their needs, opinions, desires, and aspirations and that for this reason some "higher" power should rule over them, and as such create a more reasonable, perfect political realm. What this fails to recognize is precisely "a bit about ancient Athens"; namely, that it was a polis that despite the constant attepts at subterfuge on the part of the oligargich elite it was still able to be one of the most developed, and powerful city-states of the era, while all the time being ruled by excactly the poor, and "insane" plebes that you seem so convinced are only capable of knowing what's good for them if some white, privileged, atheist, European tells them.
Perhaps the problem in Africa is that the powers that dominate the individual states(be them European/American NGO's, direct intervention by the North, or the failed state leaders propped up by the North's insatiable desire for natural resources) are not the powers of the people who live within the state. And maybe in the U.S. the problem isn't so much the lack of "sane" people, but the deliberate establishment of a constitution that seeks to dis-empower the people, and privileges those who supposedly know "better".