Democracy at Home

Every day brings more news about the breakout of democracy in the Middle East, driven by the successive and successful elections in the Ukraine, Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq, and even Saudi Arabia, and by the protests against continued Syrian domination of Lebanon. But I would like to sound a cautionary note amidst this celebration - which is, that we should not take our eyes off the domestic ball, lest we see erosion in the very democratic institutions at home that we are seeking to export. The problem is that we take many of the basic building blocks of our market economy for granted. The rule of law, the protection of basic property rights and the right to contract, and the safeguarding of basic civil liberties such as freedom of the press are so commonplace here that I think we sometimes forget that they are just as essential to democracy abroad. I am, for example, on the board of an American Bar Association (ABA) spin-off called Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative (CEELI), which trains judges and lawyers in Eastern Europe and Eurasia. We helped train the Ukrainian judges who helped preserve the Orange Revolution there, and we have been training Iraqi judges at our new campus in Prague. But how many people here have heard of CEELI or any of its activities? More important perhaps, how many people know what is or is not happening in Iraq to establish the building blocks necessary to sustain the free market activities ...