[mmooss]

Yes, that's all the more reason they need a real government that protects people's rights.

The anti-freedom crowd always finds an excuse to disregard others' rights, liberty, and welfare, to impose what they want to do on others. They do it in the US too.

Plenty of places like Haiti just put civilians in the battleground between two equal and equally bad sides, the military and the insurgents. Both sides give the same excuse why they maim and murder civilians, which doesn't begin to address the damage to property and welfare.

In Iraq, for example, the US finally stabilized things when they adopted an effective and acceptable anti-insurgent strategy (led by David Petraeus): Protect the population.

[jkman]

That is naive. 'they need a real government that protects people's rights' and this government will magically materialize out of thin air and institute an island paradise, right? You can't even meaningfully discuss a real 'military' in Haiti, it is a failed state with minimal control of even their capital city.

[01100011]

This is a very common view among people who have grown up in the west. Some form of "people are inherently good, governments will spontaneously form and will be altruistic unless a bad minority does otherwise."

It's strange because the dominant religion in the west has as a fundamental tenet that people are inherently bad. But I digress...

Unless one is some form of deist who believes there is a top-tier authority who is active in bending the fate of the world, there is no reason to believe rights are natural or exist in any way absent the will of the powerful. It's a sad conclusion but the only one I can come up with after 50 trips around the sun.

[HuaraHuara2]

This is an extraordinarily realistic take, I imagine you've traveled well to reach to that conclusion. The West is simply unwilling to concede that nothing is given in nature, as they have never truly dealt with the conniving spirit in the hearts of most men.

[mmooss]

Yet universal rights have taken over the world, and are embraced by all the most free, most wealthy, most safe countries; it is the foundation of their governments. They are the most succesful governments in history with no others even close to competing, and have done that for many generations.

And now that universal rights have been weakened, the freedom, prosperity, and safety of those countries is weakening.

> Some form of "people are inherently good, governments will spontaneously form and will be altruistic unless a bad minority does otherwise."

That is a strawperson. Certainly nobody says 'spontaneously', and democratic goverments are constructed carefully to prevent abuses of power.

Naivete is swallowing the bait of fascists, hook, line and sinker: That freedom is somehow impossible, that people are only evil (instead of a mix of good and bad, either of which we can embrace and strengthen), and we must have a strongman. How convenient for the wannabe dictator.

[mmooss]

> naive

Exactly the words used by the enemies of freedom: 'It's naive!' It's predictable.

Nobody said anything about easy. Murdering civilians is easy, I suppose, but not a route to a solution nor an acceptable means.

[HuaraHuara2]

America has always been blessed with great geography, natural resources, an educated populace, and an inventive, optimistic spirit. That is to say, Americans have never suffered and as such, cannot comprehend suffering. Thus Americans are blind and naive to injustices they have never faced.

[mmooss]

It's been embraced and is highly successful all over the world.