How do Western imperial powers compromise the notion of democracy and people's right in self-governance on the one hand, with political, cultural, and military expansionism on the other?
For example, how could America's long cherished institutions of democracy and liberty as acclaimed human rights hold integrity before the American public? Is it pragmatism on the part of the public, or being subjugated to the political authority, or ignorance about the current American international policy?
I don't think democracy is inherently related to a particular type of international policy such as imperialism. These two issues are in separate spheres.
Sadly, even countries that espouse universalistic values like human rights and democracy can apply those values selectively on a particularistic basis, that is to say "we" (defined by citizenship, race or what have you) deserve rights and freedom but "they" do not. This can happen not only if "they" are far away and out of sight, but also if "they" are close by. Think of the US constitution which said it was a self-evident truth that all men were created equal, while counting slaves as equivalent to three fifths of free people for representational purposes.
Feng Frederic Deng , that's what I am basically saying. It is a paradox that an imperial power has successfully advocated democracy within and outside its borders.
Charles Polidano . Very true. Thanks. Ethnic and cultural racism exist for a reason, for how else would institutions justify their policies.
Liberal imperialists forces have flooded the world with their liberal discourse of human rights, a weapon initially developed to fight the Soviet Union and Third World countries that sought economic democracy and independence. Since the 1970s, the West has reinforced this discourse with thousands of Western- funded and managed NGOs, which has replaced local grassroot political and labor organizations around the world as local "civil society" sponsored by the West. These human rights NGOS have never stopped denouncing the human rights violations of the anti-colonial regimes that pushed for economic democracy, while it remained mostly silent on the violation and abolition of the neoliberal regimes it replaced, the economic rights of citizens.
In line with neoliberal capitalist economics, the US and EU definition of human rights of course excludes economic rights altogether , while their main economic tools -the World Bank and IMF are causing extreme poverty all over the world.
For if the US did not exclude the economic aspect of its definition of democracy and human rights, it would have placed itself at the top of human rights violators by depriving its people of free universal health care, free higher education, free day care,, the right to work , and the right to housing . Such "marginal" matters find no space in the narrative of Western human rights organizations for what they call "human rights".
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