Human rights for all is not an impossibility
In “Lesson of Empire” Georgie Anne Geyer writes that American-style democracy is not for everyone. She says that people “who have lived for millennia as tribes, clans or sultanates” do not have ”historical foundations that make our form of democracy possible.”
Geyer should not be so quick to dismiss these people as unfit for a democratic government. Young America may not have been a likely candidate for democracy either, but miraculously we gained our freedom and put together a Constitution that is the envy of the world for its protection of human rights.
We should never use our freedom as an excuse for killing our enemies, but we should always be willing to help any people that strive to be free and long for a government that protects their civil and human rights.
Judith Polson, Anderson