Comment

The 'State of Palestine' quiz

40
sliv_the_eli9/22/2011 4:18:12 pm PDT

re: #37 Obdicut

I think better of them than you, I guess.

It’s not a question of better, only different. I assure you, I think very highly of the men and women whose exertions led to the founding of the modern State of Israel and who decided that it was just and proper that the Jewish state be governed by principles of Western liberalism, rather than the autocratic tribal culture that dominates the Middle East or the dictatorial culture of Eastern Europe. The fact is, however, that while you or I define a government’s legitimacy by whether or not it reflects the will of the people, and while the founders of Israel chose democracy as their form of government, it was not their guiding principle. By the same token, the motives of many of the United States’ founding fathers were not necessarily pure — witness, for example, their stances on slavery — but that does not lessen my tremendous respect for what they created.