Reviews for The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror

The average rating for The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2007-07-30 00:00:00 Vincent Beck Pros 1. Sharansky is an engaging writer. He has a considerable amount of passion for the subject, which helps carry the book along (and which is also one of the cons). 2. Sharansky does a good job of providing a history of one aspect of the Cold War, the dissident movement in the East Bloc and its importance in the final denouement of that conflict. 3. Sharansky provides an in-depth narrative of Israeli/Palestinian politics during the 1990s. 4. Sharansky's basic points - that democratic societies are better to live in than repressive societies, that their is nothing inherent in any person mandating they have to live in an authoritarian regime, that a world in which people have broad freedoms, rights and responsibilities is better than a world in which people are pawns in the games of autocrats - are hard to argue with. Cons 1. The problem with Sharansky's thesis is that he is never convincing in his assertion that every culture is amenable to democracy and the rule of the individual. Some cultures lend themselves to rule by an authoritarian government, whether it is secular or religiously based. That is not to say that democracy and the rule of the individual can't change a given culture so that they become reconciled. Rather, this change would mean a radical shift in that culture. 2. The history of the Israel/Palestinian conflict is interesting, but a 70 page tangent. It does little to support his thesis. 3. His thesis about the outcome of the Cold War, while accurate as far as it goes, is woefully incomplete. One could certainly look at the inherent economic flaws in the Soviet communist system, the sclerotic leadership class, the over reliance on military force for holding the Soviet Empire together, the failure of the neo-Marxist liberation movements in the post-colonial world to deliver anything except for a new set of oppressors, etc, for the way the Cold War ended. 4. His argument that democracies are more peaceful is weak, given that the age of what we would recognize as modern democracies (a broad franchise, a robust legislature, a focus on the individual as the basic unit of society) is fairly new. The farthest back you can push this is the early 20th century. One could argue that it actually came later, with the end of segregation in America and the end of the European empires. Either period is distorted by the global wars of the first half of the 20th century - in which democracy seemed to be in retreat - or the Cold War - in which the Free World had an external threat that set limits on just how much they would clash. Even then, there were periods of tension within the Western Alliance (e.g., Suez 56, the lack of FW support in Vietnam). While there was never a serious threat of war amongst the Western democracies, this was in part due to the existential threat of the USSR. So, while free society democracies - societies in which people have an unfettered voice in some key aspect of the policy decision process, whether direct (voting on a given policy) or indirect (electing representatives) and in which their is a free political voice (both personal - me on a soapbox - or public - me writing in a newspaper) - may be more peaceful, the period we are looking at has features that make that conclusion problematic. In earlier, proto-democratic eras (the lead up to World War One) combatants (some, not all) on both sides were along a spectrum of limited democracies with free presses and the citizenry went enthusiastically off to war. Further, democracies have not proven themselves to be more peaceful than other forms of government. Our own history is full of wars and military operations, few of which were forced on us. I'm not arguing against democracy, just that the democracy=peace meme is flawed. 5. Finally, while he is passionate and engaging, there are times when this passion leads to either assertions or to tangents that do support his basic thesis.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-01-22 00:00:00 Christopher Hellerman Natan Sharansky knows more about resisting tyranny than most, having been incarcerated in a prison of one of history's greatest tyrannies-the Soviet Union, as he illustrated in his incredible memoirs Fear No Evil: The Classic Memoir of One Man's Triumph over a Police State In this book he puts under the microscope the totalitarian states of the world, dissecting the inner workings of fear societies. Sharansky contrasts fear societies with free societies. The profound moral difference between a free society and a fear society, as Sharansky shows us, is that people in free societies can publicly express their own ideas and persuade people to accept these ideas as well. Sharansky points out that "moral clarity provides us with a place to stand, a reference point from where to leverage our talents, energies and ideas to create a better world. Without moral clarity, without a referewnce point, those same talents, ideas and energies are just as likely to do harm as good...A world without moral clarity is a world in which dictators speak of human rights even as they kill thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, tens of millions, even hundreds of millions of people. It is a world in which the only democracy in the Middle East is percieved as the greatest violator of human rights in the world. It is a world in which a human rights conference against racism, such as the one that took place in Durban, South Africa a few years ago, can be turned into a carnival of hate". Sharansky reminds us that there has never been a war between two democracies. He attacks those who believe that democracy cannot work in certain countries, pointing out that the same was said about Germany and Japan during and just after the Second World War. Today Germany and Japan are among the world's strongest democracies and human rights societies in the world. Sharansky also condemmns the distortions by the world media, painting the masses in tyrannies such as that of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and the Taleban in Afghanistan, as being contented. He compares this to leftist intellectuals in the West who praised the Soviet Union as a paradise on earth at a time when Stalin was killing tens of millions of men, women and children. While Sharansky is hopeful for an eventual peace settlement betwen Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, he is adamant that this must be tied to improvements in human rights and basic freedoms in Palestinian society. He condemmns the Oslo Process for strengthening and attempting to appease the mass murderer and tyrant Yasser Arafat and his ruthless terror network. He points out how the human rights principles that once guided him in the Soviet Union remain the cornerstone of his approach to the peace process, that a neighbour who tramples the rights of his own people will eventually threaten the rights of the author's people, and that the only way to create Arab-Israeli reconciliation is to press the Arab world to protect human rights. Sharansky reminds us that those who hoped for a quick fix to the conflict should not have been surprised when the Oslo process collapsed and Arafat began his war of terror against the Israeli people. For seven years Arafat had been doing what all dictators do, using his power not to promote peace and better the lot of the Palestinian Arabs but rather to turn the Palestinian Arabs into a battering ram against the Jewish State. Money allocated to improve the Palestinian Arab's living standards was diverted to support a vast network of terror. "By allowing and often encouraging Arafat to create a fear society, a peace process that should have been steadily reducing a century old animus had instead exacerbated it". Sharansky stresses that he is not opposed to legitimate criticism of Israel's policies. However to distinguish legitimate criticism from anti-Semitism he has come up with what he calls the 3 D Test. If the criticism of Israel contains demonization of the Jewish State, double standards against the Jewish State, or delegitimization of the Jewish State, then it certainly can be termed anti-Semitic. Sharansky believes that bthe war between the Jews and the Arabs is not a tribal war but a part of the first world war of the 21st century between the world of democracy and the world of terror. Leftwing extremists who support tyranny ands terror and who do not want people to be free, will of course try to rubbish the book. But for true lovers of freedom and human rights, this is an essential guide to understanding the great struggle we are faced with at the beginning of the 21st century.