A couple of long essays

Those dastardly, conspiratorial neo-conservatives are at it again. Formulating ideas that seem really persuasive to me, that is. Robert Kagan delivered this lecture ominously entitled The Crisis of Legitimacy: America and the World. In it he outlines the conflict between liberal modernism which promotes the rights of the individual and Westphalian ideas of sovereignty. I have mentioned my less than reverential view of sovereignty in this space before. Sovereignty just doesn't seem to fit very well with my ideas of the responsibilities of a state which is illegitimate in my view when it actively ignores those responsibilities. My support for the Iraq war has roots in this idea among other considerations.

If you're in the mood for reading long essays today, I would recommend reading Democracy as a Universal Value by Amartya Sen. It's a good complement to the Kagan essay. It's a couple years old, but is a good defense of the universality of democracy, particularly in answer to critics who say that authoritarianism is necessary for stability and economic development as well as those who say that regional and cultural differences are not compatible with democracy. It is an essay so it's more an outline of his positions on those issues than a detailed argument. He also has a new essay in the NY Review of Books called Passage to China which I haven't read yet, but which I can heartily recommend based on what I have read by him. Even if you don't agree with everything he says, he's a great writer and his knowledge is impressively broad.