What we are calling democracy is unfortunately just a smokescreen for the imposition of cookie-cutter versions of the American way and the American economy, etc. I believe that there is a big diffeence between democracy in principle and democracy in practice, just as there was a wide gap between the ideal of communism and the iterations of those ideals in the Soviet Union and China.

The real oddity is that there is a such a belief in governmental paradigms as the solution for all problems

If only we had been as sophisticated as your post indicates we should have been.

It's a complicated world, and the US should tread lightly the instant they get outside their own borders.

If we don't we all of sudden find out that our desire to free Iraq, for example, unveils enormous problems that we are not equipped to deal with.

I agree that we need to find a balance between individual and collective rights. If we look at big-city histories in the United States, we might see that tribal traditions were at the heart of "machine" politics in places such as New York City. We ought to understand tribes in the way they apply to our own society, our own needs for order and conformity versus individual freedoms. If tribes do not conjure up funny costumes and warlords, we may begin to address the balance, which comes in a society of laws, not customs, where each man and women is expected to learn and obey the rules of the nation-state. If equality is the first principle, then the traditions of the tribe may readjust themselves to accommodate this.

I echo Mr. Kuttab's wish that over the world we renounce weapons technology expertise as something to be proud of. I just don't have a clue how that happens.