Letters to the editor

A crisis in Europe

Will Sample’s “Immigration in Europe” (Op-Ed, Wednesday) describes a crisis that is confusing and frustrating Europe. Like the response of the European community to date, it doesn’t go deep enough.

In spite of war, religious conflict and nationalistic ambition, Europe once possessed a transcendent culture that asserted a purposeful life, produced art and architecture that had profound meaning to its people, fostered the advancement of science by asserting that the universe was intelligible and its laws accessible by man, and recognized a solemn responsibility to future generations.

In the past century, this culture has been replaced by an obsession with maximizing individual liberty and with a materialism that rejects objective truth, even the concept of truth itself. When that happens, the underpinnings of liberal democracy are sabotaged because justice, honor, service and honesty are viewed as subjective beliefs rather than as good in and of themselves. Thus, we have a Europe without children and a Europe that is proposing an uninspiring constitution mired in legalese.

Reversing the trauma associated with massive immigration requires far more than a competitive economic model and so-called respect for diversity, as these are products of a vibrant culture and not its motive force.

THOMAS M. DORAN

Plymouth, Mich.

The K Street Project

Thank you for accurately portraying the K Street Project in the Jan. 13 article “Candidates disavow ’K Street project’ ” (Nation). The original K Street Project, and today’s project, always advised companies and trade associations to hire men and women who are in their best interest: people who understand free-market economics, who support their principled positions for free trade, who are against tort law abuse and for lower and more transparent taxation. It is in the best interest of trade associations, companies and industry for them to hire such individuals because they can believably articulate and translate these messages to lawmakers. Just as it would not be in their own interest for unions to hire Republicans, it would not be wise for corporations to hire pro-regulatory Democrats.

Additionally, the K Street Project joins Reps. John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, and Roy Blunt, Missouri Republican, in rejecting the practice of hiring people based on the party in power, in which the true project has never participated. Ultimately, hiring members from the majority party will not help the business community if pro-tax Democrats rule Congress again. The old model of hiring for access must be terminated, as it leads to a culture of corruption.

Today’s K Street Project will continue to support free-market conservatives in government relations positions at trade associations and corporations, while also tracking the most recent hires on the K Street Project Web site: www.kstreetproject.com.

SARAH SMITH

Manager

K Street Project

Washington

Democracy in the Middle East

Helle Dale’s “Fundamentalist populism run amok” (Op-Ed, Wednesday) is, in my view, on the right path, specifically when she says that “another model of democratic development does exist in the Middle East, in the top-down approach of countries like Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan and Qatar.”

There also is the Lebanese model, a confessional system in which each significant religious group is guaranteed representation at the highest levels so that, say, the president must be from one religious group, the prime minister from another, and so on.

For 30 years I worked as a university professor and project director for the U.S. Agency for International Development in a field called “building democratic institutions in developing countries.” In the Middle East, we made a lot of mistakes and learned a lot of lessons. Unfortunately there is little evidence that the lessons came to the attention of those who directed and managed democracy building in Iraq.

A few years ago, I received an e-mail from an Army officer who had attended one of my seminars. He said he was on an American military committee working in Baghdad with the task of coming up with ideas for building democracy in Iraq. He wondered if I had anything to throw into the pot. I told him that the lessons we had learned suggested a top-down model or a confessional system.

His answer was that he agreed with me but that “no one around here wants to hear anything about a top-down model.” The confessional-system model was something he intended to bring up, he wrote.

I mention this because I think it exemplifies one of our problems in Iraq. If that American military committee in Iraq had looked into the lessons learned — which are easy to find in U.S. government publications and academic articles and books — it would have known what little I have to offer and far more. The officer who wrote to me would have known. And, I think, the statement that “no one around here wants to hear …” would have taken a different form, such as: “We have considered that model and think it inappropriate because …

My belief is that democracy and Islam are incompatible because a secular rule of law challenges Islamic law. Nonetheless, I believe there are realizable alternatives to the Iranian model of religious despotism. As Mrs. Dale so well suggests, the alternatives might just be “too modest” for President Bush. We all hope he doesn’t fall on that sword because the implications for America could be dire.

JAMES HEAPHEY

Professor emeritus

Rockefeller College of Public Affairs

State University of New York

Williamsburg

Pork portends greater problems

The Sunday Commentary column by Brian Riedl, “How pork corrupts,” offers a chilling view of today’s leaders. Mr. Riedl describes a situation in which more than $12 billion of our tax dollars are in the hands of lawmakers to disburse with virtually no accountability. This is even more disturbing because it could have been avoided. Alexander Fraser Tytler (1748-1813), a highly respected Scottish historian, is credited with writing a book titled “The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic” more than 200 years ago. The following quotation attributed to that book is amazingly telling:

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the Public Treasury. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the Public Treasury with a result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by dictatorship.

He added: “The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependency; from dependency back into bondage.”

The current “age” of the United States is 230 years, longer if one considers the century between the early settlers and the formalization of the nation in 1776. There has been a noticeable acceleration in the duration of the last three stages, and one wonders how long it will take to reach the final stage. It seems clear that we have either forgotten the past or we are ignoring it.

RICHARD LAMBERT

Rockville