If we advocate "democracy" as a current goal for every nation, we had better prepare to pay the price for what will emerge. Democracy cannot be built or sustained on just any religious-cultural-social foundation. It emerged in the Western world for specific reasons, not the least of which were the sets of values and ideas established in its Judeo-Christian foundations. Indeed, even many of its current democratic notions of freedom emerged as believers reacted against some of the abuses of religious persecution in the church that were eventually seen to be in contradiction to the scriptures themselves. True democracy carries in it the Christian notion of social repentance and cultural transformation against its own immature abuses. Indeed, a culture devoid of the mandate to repent cannot produce either freedom or democracy.

Permit me to list a mere seven sets of the essential ingredients which must be in a social-religious foundation in order to create and sustain democracy as a viable form of civil government:

1. The citizens must constantly be reminded of the need for self-government lest the civil government become their surrogate parent and provider.
2. Personal responsibility must carry at least an equal weight with personal rights.
3. Religion must be voluntary since a coerced spiritual "conversion" by definition cannot be truly authentic.
4. The institutions of church and state must be jurisdictionally separated.
5. All civil law must be understood to have "spiritual" roots since laws define the social morality of good and evil.
6. The culture must be clear on its values and assimilate only the values of other cultures that do not destroy the core values that created the culture. If it does assimilate self-destroying values, it should expect cultural collapse and either revolution, dictatorship, or invasion by the foreign cultures most capable of doing so.
7. Human interactive "truth" must commonly be understood, especially by a culture's educators and culture-shapers, as ideas which have been proven historically to create specific results when applied in every generation, every ethnic group, and every form of social organization beginning with the nuclear family. What isn't true in every generation, every ethnic group, and every form of social government, isn't true.

Without these basic concepts being taught and practiced, democracy as we comprehend it is not possible.

Some wonder why Iraq is convulsing into chaos despite the heroic efforts of numbers of brave and idealistic internal leaders and external supporters. It will break apart if left to its own devices. I personally doubt that Turkey, Iran, and the United States will permit this without further intervention. Pakistan? "Democracy," were it to break out, would undoubtedly lead to some form of Islamic absolutist government. The oil-rich middle eastern countries controlled by "benign" clans of authoritarianism? Were they removed, the ensuing chaos socially and petro-economically would not possibly evade political intervention from western oil-consuming nations.

Where the conditions are insufficient or premature to attempt democracy, the best thing we can do to insure a measure of global stability is leave the powers that be alone, unless they pose an undeniable clear and present danger. If they do pose such a danger, after you have dealt with them, don't try to dress up their successes in the garb of "democracy" unless you are willing to recreate a new social-religious culture which can sustain them. Neither ignorance, political naivete, nor "political correctness" concerning their religion or core values can create true democracy. Folks, we are all beginning to see before our very eyes...

... the bottom line.