As Winston Churchill said, democracy is a very lousy form of government. It’s just that all the other forms that have been tried so far are usually even worse.

Then, if a “democracy” were a sham (like, say, Germany just before World war 2), one would expect that even though they were “popularly elected”, the leaders would not be listening and such events might occur. So my model supposes that one could just view a society and measure three things; and that from these three things one can judge whether or not the society is democratic regardless of its purported system of leadership. My three tests are:

a) is a non-negligible proportion of the society starving?
b) is the society engaged in aggressive war with another country?
c) is a non-negligible proportion of the society living in fear of violence?

If the answer to any of these questions is yes, the society is not a democracy (this is my model). The logic of the third one is that democracies don`t need to torture people, but note I haven`t said “state violence”. If one were to say “state violence”, then New Zealand is a democracy. (NZ is otherwise quite a violent place). One could modify all the components of this test to say “is an identifiable social group …” By this example Japan is a democracy (constitutionally incapable of attacking other countries, no violence to speak of, and no starvation except a few strange criminal instances). Depending on the truth about 3), Iran is a democracy (despite our exchange). Obviously because of 2) America is not, and nor is Australia, the UK, etc.

Obviously this is a pointless thought experiment, but I`m bored of this debate (and bored generally).

Would it please you anymore if the Iranian system did a religious simulacrum of what the US does? I.e. allowed a bunch of anti-religious or anti-Iranian people (of a sort diametrically opposed to Khomeini) to run but then guaranteed them failure? Would you then claim it was fair? For example, if the Iranians had set up a system where anyone could run for parliament, but the only source of money for their election campaign was from the Council of Guardians? Or from a fund administered by the Iranian equivalent of the Heritage Foundation? It would be just as much of a sham as the US system, but I can`t imagine that you would give it the same benefit of the doubt as the US System. I doubt you would be saying that you were merely “troubled by campaign financing” in what was otherwise a halfway decent democratic system. I suppose then I should conclude that you are anti-Iranian.

In any case this business of democracy is irrelevant. The Iranians had a revolution and installed a system of government that they like, and they aren`t showing any inclination to revolutionise it again (unless you believe the Bush administration, whose record of accuracy is 100% on middle east issues). The Bushies hate Iran for that reason and that reason alone, and it wouldn`t matter if that system was the purest democracy in the world. Witness Palestine for proof.

Bush vs. Gore does invalidate the US claim to be a democracy. In order to be a democracy, the people have to choose their leaders through an election. In this case, one of the candidates who did not win the popular vote appealed to an unelected body appointed by his brother to prevent the votes of a proportion of the populace from being counted. How is that a democracy?

Why you feel this amounts to anti-Americanism, I don’t understand at all. And I never suggested that Bush v Gore invalidates democracy; quite the contrary, I suggested that it hints to certain similarities between American and Iranian versions of democracy.

If you wouldn’t provide that same benefit to the American system then hell yes. And neither I, nor anyone else posting here would. We’ve gone nuts about habeus corpus. Hell, abb1 has suggested elsewhere that the decision in Bush v Gore is enough to invalidate the US’ claim to be a democracy. And yet he appears completely unworried by Khatami v the Council of Guardians. That’s clear, transparent hypocrisy, in fact I believe we call it a “double standard”.
Iranian democracy doesn’t come close to meeting the standards we’d set for US democracy, and anyone who’s prepared to sign off on it is either, as I suggest above, an idiot or a hypocrite,

I think the remainder of your post rests on suggesting those banned from standing are anti-Iranian (where as abb1 seems to be arguing that they are insufficiently pious, but inconsistently so). Obviously I don’t agree with that, or anything that follows from it.
Finally, I’ll repeat that the interests represented by electoral donations aren’t monolithic and so a variety of outcomes (though sadly not all) can be supported by them. This leads to flawed but real democracy. The interests represented by Al Khamenei are, in relation to issues he cares about, monolithic, and so support only a single outcome. This is not democracy in any meaningful sense. You can call that a matter of degree if you wish, but “they’re just the same, but with money instead of islam” won’t fly and is, as I suggest above, a little offensive to islam’s political potential.
My discussion of Russia is intended to suggest that there is a strand of leftist thought which has always been prepared to criticise the west by looking to form rather than substance. Abb1’s “the council of guardians is just like the supreme court, only islamic” evokes this. The criticism of marxism is intended to suggest that certain political ideals fail in the american political system because they are unpopular and, in some cases, they are unpopular because they are bad. Any narrative that defines away these possibilities is a bit silly.

If you want to start from the assumption that the US is always right and everyone else is always wrong, you can draw whatever conclusions you want, can`t you?

Paul, you misread my post a little I think. I asked you to answer the second half of Abb1`s point, I didn`t suggest you had to. As part of the (boring, oh so boring) claim that he is anti-American. Give it a try.

In the meantime you are still deliberately misreading my point about democracy, which is that a rigged system is no different to a system where certain people cannot run. Identify a group that is anti-American; then tell me that if they run for president they will have any realistic chance of getting the funding to achieve anything. Then tell me why you should expect otherwise of candidates in an Iranian election.

Yes I was a little loose lipped in suggesting that greenies cannot run in elections in the US (although I believe I was correct about marxists et al). But due to the dependence of the process on fat scads of cash they cannot have any real chance of success, and (as I said) it is condescending to suggest that a group has representation in politics if that group`s representation is, well, how can I put this? Potemkin style window dressing. In the US, if you are a representative of the rich and powerful you can win an election. Otherwise you cannot. In Iran, if you are a representative of the rich and powerful you can win an election, otherwise you cannot (although there was a notable reformer who won an election a few years back who was not a representative of the powerful – but you have not included that in your analysis at all I note). So when you say “a broad range of outcomes are possible” what you should have said is “a broad range of outcomes are not possible.” It doesn`t matter that the process by which these outcmoes are stifled is different between the two countries, what matters is that the outcome is stifled by a process. You are being deliberately obtuse in suggesting otherwise.

And just by the way, the Soviet Union is long gone, and many of the people posting here in support of non-US interests probably did not support that state. I know I didn`t. So why don`t you lighten up with the Soviet-era comparisons and insults. They`re boring, and deliberately antagonistic. If I choose Marxists as an example, just assume it is an example, okay? Don`t assume I`m a Marxist out to eat your children, because I`m not. You could extend Abb1 the same courtesy. Quoting Kissinger does not make one anti-American – it makes one critical of a tryant. Pointing out atrocities by the US does not make one an American hater, although the US has given a lot of people a lot of reason to do so. So cool your heels with the rhetoric.

(You forgot to mention which sura though…)

You see where I’m coming from with this “knee-jerk anti-americanism” thing right?

Not “people”, but people, in a national referendum in 1979, the same referendum that approved their current constitution.

Really abb1, which sura do you fell they relied on in excluding secular candidates?

They rely on their constitution that declares an “Islamic republic”, democracy based on Islam. Theocratic democracy, as opposed to secular democracy (as in the US). In the US, according to the constitution, the state is not allowed to establish an official religion (even though most people would probably like it); in Iran, according to the constitution, the state has to comply with its official creed.

“they hate Iran because it’s a democracy, they wish it was repressive like Jordan”

They don’t hate democracy, they only hate it when it produces undesirable results. As Henry Kissinger put it (referring to Chile): “I don’t see why we have to let a country go Marxist just because its people are irresponsible.”

Once we have concluded Iran is not a democracy, as you and I (though not, I suspect abb1) have, it is irrelevant what the US would think of it if it were. Does the US hate some democracies because of their democratic status? Maybe, though I don’t really buy it. Would that make abb1’s original claim accurate? No. Case closed.

As to the first part, I do not “condescendingly conclude that the existence of the Green Party is somehow proof that greenies get a say in government”, rather, I address you actual claim that: “a mechanism exists to prevent greenies…from running”. I appear to have been correct. Nor do I claim that “[Communists and the Islamic community hate America]”. It is not clear why I would want or need to do so, or which part of my post you misread so as to draw that impression.
Similarly, I never “calmly advocate that opponents of the Iranian regime should be given a voice by Khomeini.” Rather, I suggest that implicit in the definition of democracy is the ideal that policies held by the government ought not to be completely circumscribed by a body, let alone an individual, other than the people. If Iran’s electoral system simply included a religious qualification it would make it a bad democracy, probably a much worse one that the US, but I’d accept its democratic credentials. As I’ve pointed out a number of times above, the restrictions on the electoral lists, campaigning and holding office are far more thoroughgoing than that, and it’s an insult to islam to suggest that sharia dictates a system like Iran’s.

To repeat: money politics in the US restricts the set of positions which governments hold, subject to their level of support in the electorate, but money comes from a variety of sources and wants a variety of things, such that a broad range of outcomes are possible. None of these claims is true of Iran. Marxism, for the record, fails to flourish in America (and in electoral systems elsewhere) not because of restrictions on its free speech but due to much earlier restrictions on the amount of sensible thought devoted to creating it.

As for your “proof” that Abb1 is wrong, you haven`t. You have proven that Iran is not a democracy, but you have not proven that were it a democracy the US would embrace it. Were the latter true, then you could paint Abb1 as anti-American, since he has either foolishly or deliberately misrepresented US attitudes towards foreign (and Islamic) countries. As it is he has it in a nutshell. The US likes countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt which ban political parties and embrace torture. It also likes countries like Israel which bomb its enemies without declaring war. It explicitly hates countries like Palestine which vote freely and fairly for their leadership, and sets about destroying them. This is Abb1`s point. The promise of a truly independent national entity in the Middle East scares the US to bejesus, and that is why it hates Iran. And everyone knows that in the Middle East any genuinely democratic nation will be independent of the US. It`s not hard to join the dots, is it?

To repeat – it would be impossible to win election in America by espousing certain beliefs even were those beliefs favoured by a narrow majority. That is clearly a problem with US democracy. It is however, possible to win elections by espousing any one of hundreds of possible combinations of policies, depending on the strength of their support from the people and which backers one courts.

It is no longer possible to win, or indeed contest elections in Iran unless one supports a precise set of policies covering the key areas of government, as authorised from time to time by Iran’s actual head of state, as whose figurehead elected officials serve.

These two states are relevantly different. In one, the decision of the people is circumscribed, in the other it is irrelevant.

The rest of your post is either irrelevant to my argument (that saying “America hates Iran because it is a democracy unlike Saudi Arabia” is stupid) or odd. If we conclude that abb1’s statement is stupid (to which my argument above is devoted) then diagnosing its source as anti-americanism rather than stupidity on his part seems polite, and has the virtue of being consistent with most of his statements on this board.
Asking me to show “why America would not hate Iran if it were a democracy” is a bit like asking me to show why America would not eat Iran if it were made out of cheese, in that it is an irrelevant and deeply odd counter-factual. Though not, for the record, necessarily an anti-american one.

Meanwhile, you called Abb1 anti-American. Nice going. Way to make a point. Why don`t you dispute his claim from a different angle: Tell us why America would not hate Iran if it were a democracy. Or alternatively explain why this claim is anti-american rather than, just, say, for example, um, wrong?