The DOI goes something like this: God is Great and we, a bunch of rich American landowners, know what He wants: for all men to be treated equally and to be entitled to certain things, some which follow, etc.

To dump this requirement you’d need a revolution. But you can re-interpret it (though not easily), like this, for example: the concept of “men” (prophesied by revered Rich American Landowners) includes the men with dark skin too; we didn’t think so at first, but that was misunderstanding. Yeah, and it also includes the women. Yeah, and for the purpose of voting (but not buying a six-pack) it includes all those older than 18. Etc.

How is it different?

See, to dump all this nonsense and finally elect Abb1 to be your absolute infallible ruler forever (which is what we all want) we’ll need a revolution too. Same thing, dammit.

And it’s always like this; I bet every political system is based on some religious or quasi-religious (communist manifesto?) prophesy.

Admit it: you’re just being stubborn here. Don’t resist, don’t try to fight my ironclad logic, Tracy. Embrace the Abb1ism, the only true doctrine. It’ll make you happy, without having to pursue anything.

That strikes me as adequate reason to consider the US constitution as better than the Iranian one.

It is perfectly possible for me to recognise a system as ‘democratic’ and yet think that some changes may make a system better. I don’t know what you think McDonalds has to do with it.

In the US you can (very rarely and very laboriously) get to vote to amend the constitution, but you can’t vote to destroy the political system. Amending the Koran is an equivalent of destroying political system – that is an Islamic republic.

If Koran is anything like the Christian bible, I have no doubt that in practical terms it can be used to resolve any controversy in a million different ways. In fact, every Iranian I know tells me that the Iranian regime now is much more liberal than it was 20 years ago, so there you go – it does change; there is, obviously some sort of a feedback mechanism there, which is what the amendment process is all about.

Why is it so difficult for you, guys, to recognize something as ‘democratic’ even when it all is based on elections? Is it because it doesn’t have a huge McDonalds on top of it?

And a reasonable person may therefore think that the American form of government is better than the Iranian one because the practical benefits of a constitution that can be amended democratically.

There is no reason to believe that any Iranians who voted back to install that form of government had a right to bind future Iranians for all time. For example, what about the rights of those Iranians who were too young to vote, or hadn’t even been born?

This is of course a major and highly important difference between the US constitution and the Iranian form of government. The US constitution makes explicit allowance for itself to be changed.

Again, how does an Iranian go about amending the Koran through a democratic process?

Does this make their democratically expressed democratic will somehow democratically invalid in your democratic opinion?

It does, doesn’t it.

Damn.

If only we had a time machine so that you could democratically go there and warn that democratic demos against making this tragic democratic error before they overwhelmingly voted for that democratic-and-yet-so-appallingly-undemocratic political system.

A bunch of “wise men” changing their minds is not a democratic process.

Oddly, although the U.S. government’s sponsored state in Iraq is a thorough theocracy, an Islamic Republic relying, openly, on the advice of Ayatollah Sistani to pass laws, nobody pundit- speaks about the Mullahs of Najaf. Perhaps after Iranian intellectuals get a course of Rawls, Iraqi intellectuals could receive the same treatment.

The problem with that, though, is that Iraqi intellectuals are most likely to be found outside Iraq. Iranian intellectuals face house arrest and prison – Iraqi ones face kidnapping and the dentist’s drill to the eyesocket.

In Iran a liberal intellectual is likely to spend time in jail, incarceration rate: 194 per 100K. In the US a member of the underclass is likely to spend time in jail, incarceration rate: 714 per 100K.

Thus, if you are a liberal intellectual, you would definitely prefer the US version of democracy, if you’re a member of the underclass – not necessarily.

What exactly do you find so annoying here, and how does it warrant a string of insults? Are you well?

assembling a book of conversations he’s conducting with the likes of Habermas, Richard Rorty, Alasdair MacIntyre, Martha Nussbaum, Charles Taylor, Ronald Dworkin, Amartya Sen, Robert Bellah, and Nancy Fraser, among others.

… but apart from them, what has the American left ever done for us?

Come to think of it, one strong practical difference appears to be that in Iran progressive intelligentsia and students go to jail while in the US it’s mostly the inner city folk (in much greater numbers). Sure, it’s a difference and obviously smart educated people (like Matt upthread) strongly identify with the former group and probably don’t care that much about the latter. Fair enough.