Turkey Day: Democracy--It's What's For Dinner

Basting Away

"Not only did these European Turks vote far more heavily in favor of Yes than their countrymen back home, they also voted more heavily Yes than just about any other Turkish expatriate community. Life in liberal Europe is not having the impact people hoped—Turks in Europe are not any less nationalistic, less authoritarian or less Islamist than their compatriots at home—rather they are more of all these things. If assimilation is failing with long established Turks in affluent, full employment Germany, what can we expect with other communities in less prosperous European countries? Europe...a continent that recently thought it had left history behind."--The American Interest

Mark Steyn: "As they used to say way back when in the long Ottoman twilight, the Turk is the sick man of Europe. Following this weekend's Caliph-for-Life referendum, the Turk is sicker than ever. But he's no longer of Europe, and instead is exiting for a destination dark and catastrophic for almost all his neighbors.
Sultan Erdoğan - who, a mere 15 years ago, was banned from holding political office - has now succeeded in dismantling almost every defining element of the Kemalist republic. What replaces it will be a crude strongman state in service of Islamic imperialism. ... In fairness to the new Caliph, ever since he emerged from his semi-pro footballing career to run for Mayor of Istanbul, he's played a more cunning game than the stan-of-the-month loons. As he said in one of his most famous soundbites, democracy is a bus you ride to the stop you want - and then you get off. And he was quite happy to take the scenic route, stop by stop by stop. ...
The fundamental problem is not Turkish democracy, but Turkish demography. Whether or not demography is always destiny, it certainly is in a democratic age. You can have a functioning democracy in a relatively homogeneous society in which parties compete over tax policy and health care. But, when a nation is divided into two groups with fundamentally opposing views of what that society is or should be, then democracy becomes tribal, and the size of the tribe determines the outcome. ...
As you'll recall, Kemal Atatürk was born Mustafa Kemal. The new moniker was a title bestowed on him by the post-Ottoman parliament. Atatürk means "Father of the Turks". Alas, he wasn't father of enough of them. ...What lessons does Turkey offer for France or Germany, Sweden or Britain? Look at, say, French natives as Rumelian Turks and French Muslims as Anatolians. In 2012, the Muslim vote for M Hollande was larger than his margin of victory over Sarkozy. On those numbers, it's asking a lot of a candidate to forego identity-group pandering. Ultimately, in Turkey as elsewhere, demography trumps democracy.".......

Rigged elections also trump democracy--and Erdogan rigged this one. What kind of strongman would allow an honest vote in a "Make Me a Strongman!"-election?

Steyn's demographic point still holds, though. In this follow-up Steyn Post #10 video, Fun For Young and Old, Mark notes that in contradiction of the Conventional Wisdom, Marine Le Pen is doing very well among younger French voters. The Right was supposedly for the old and stodgy, and young voters are supposedly Property of the Left, but many of them see their country slipping away.

I'm sure I would disagree strongly with Le Pen on many things, but the reigning Leftist Establishment has so thoroughly wrecked the world that I can't fault any European electorate who feels their national existence is hanging in the balance. It is.

I wish President Trump hadn't congratulated Erdogan on his "victory", but it's probably just a Realpolitik nod to someone who can make trouble for us in Syria and flood Europe with "refugees" again. Regardless, Trump will never be Erdogan's Boy Toy like Comrade O was.


"Yes, We Can, my sweet, sweet pet."

If only we had someone who had thought deeply about these issues...

Ronald Reagan's Commencement Address at Eureka College:

"So we worry a little about the class of '57, we who are older and have known another day. We worry that perhaps someday you might not resist as strongly as we would if someone decides to tell you what you can read in a newspaper, or hear on the radio, or hear from a speaker's platform, or what you can say or what you can think. So there are terms and conditions to the will, and one of the terms is your own eternal vigilance guarding against restrictions on our American freedom.

You today are smarter than we were. You are better educated and better informed than we were twenty-five years ago. And that is part of your heritage. You enjoy these added benefits because, more than 100 years ago near this very spot, a man plunged an ax into a tree and said, "here we will build a school for our children." ...

Now today as you prepare to leave your Alma Mater, you go into a world in which, due to our carelessness and apathy, a great many of our freedoms have been lost. It isn't that an outside enemy has taken them. It's just that there is something inherent in government which makes it, when it isn't controlled, continue to grow. So today for every seven of us sitting here in this lovely outdoor theater, there is one public servant, and 31 cents of every dollar earned in America goes in taxes. ...

Class of 1957, it will be part of the terms of the will for you to take stock in the days to come, because we enjoy a form of government in which mistakes can be rectified. The dictator can never admit he was wrong, but we are blessed with a form of government where we can call a halt, and say, "Back up. Let's take another look." Remember that every government service, every offer of government financed security, is paid for in the loss of personal freedom. I am not castigating government and business for those many areas of normal cooperation, for those services that we know we must have and that we do willingly support. ...But in the days to come whenever a voice is raised telling you to let the government do it, analyze very carefully to see whether the suggested service is worth the personal freedom which you must forego in return for such service.

There are many well-meaning people today who work at placing an economic floor beneath all of us so that no one shall exist below a certain level or standard of living, and certainly we don't quarrel with this. But look more closely and you may find that all too often these well-meaning people are building a ceiling above which no one shall be permitted to climb and between the two are pressing us all into conformity, into a mold of standardized mediocrity. ... 

Democracy with the personal freedoms that are ours we hold literally in trust for that day when we shall have fulfilled our destiny and brought mankind a great and long step from the swamps. Can we deliver it to our children? Democracy depends upon service voluntarily rendered, money voluntarily contributed. ...

This democracy of ours which sometimes we've treated so lightly, is more than ever a comfortable cloak, so let us not tear it asunder, for no man knows once it is destroyed where or when he will find its protective warmth again.".......

Good idea!