[extropy-chat] If the nonUS citizens voted in Nov 2 elections...

[Amara Graps]

>From: Mike Lorrey <mlorrey at yahoo.com>, Tue, 21 Sep 2004 04:41:32 -0700 (PDT)
>
>--- Amara Graps <amara.graps at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>  Kerry would win in a landslide.
>>
>>  http://www.iht.com/articles/537873.html
>>
>>  (not because he is that popular, but because Bush is that unpopular)
>
>If foreigners could vote in the US, we'd have lost the Cold War, we'd
>be a communist nation, and the USSR would be the sole superpower in the
>world. That is not a good reflection of the wisdom of the rest of the world.


http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/article.print?id=4559

"US policy now affects every citizen on the planet. So we should all
have a say in who gets to the White House"

by Jonathan Freedland
The Guardian, 22 September 2004


an excerpt:

"Today, people far from America's shores do indeed pay for the
consequences of US actions. The citizens of Iraq are the obvious
example, living in a land where a vile dictatorship was removed only
for a military occupation and unspeakable violence to be unleashed in
its place. The would-be voters of downtown Baghdad might like a say in
whether their country would be better off with US forces gone. Perhaps
John Kerry's Monday promise to start bringing the troops home,
beginning next summer, would appeal to them. But they have no voice.

It's not just those who live under US military rule who might wish to
choose the commander-in-chief. Everyone from Madrid to Bali is now
drawn into the "war on terror" declared by President Bush. We might
believe that war is being badly mishandled - that US actions are
aggravating the threat rather than reducing it - and that we or our
neighbours will eventually pay the price for those errors. We might
fear that the Bush policy is inflaming al-Qaida, making it more not
less likely to strike in our towns and cities, but right now we cannot
do anything to change that policy. Instead we have to watch the US
campaign on TV, with our fingers crossed - impotent spectators of a
contest that could shake up our lives. (Those who feel the same way
about Tony Blair should remember: at least we will get a vote.)

So we ought to hold America to its word. When George Bush spoke to the
UN yesterday, he invoked democracy in almost every paragraph, citing
America's declaration of independence which insists on the equal worth
of every human being. Well, surely equal worth means an equal say in
the decisions that affect the entire human race.

That 1776 declaration is worth rereading. Its very first sentence
demands "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind": isn't that
exactly what the world would like from America today? The document
goes on to excoriate the distant emperor George for his recklessness,
insisting that authority is only legitimate when it enjoys "the
consent of the governed". As the world's sole superpower, the US now
has global authority. But where is the consent?

By this logic, it is not a declaration of independence the world would
be making. On the contrary, in seeking a say in US elections, the
human race would be making a declaration of dependence - acknowledging
that Washington's decisions affect us more than those taken in our own
capitals. In contrast with those founding Americans, the new
declaration would argue that, in order to take charge of our destiny,
we do not need to break free from the imperial power - we need to tame
it."


-- 

Amara Graps, PhD
Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario (IFSI)
Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF),
Adjunct Assistant Professor Astronomy, AUR,
Roma, ITALIA     Amara.Graps at ifsi.rm.cnr.it