Huffington Post publishes OpEd by Johnson ethicist, Dana Radcliffe

8/12/2011 11:58:00 PM

Radcliffe suggests U.S. politicians, as demonstrated through shenanigans of late, have abandoned key tenets of the democratic process thus relegating it to a win-lose power game

Excerpt from "What are we teaching the world about democracy?" (Huffington Post, Aug. 15) by Dana Radcliffe, Johnson senior lecturer of business ethics:

The United States has long worked to foster democracy around the world. We press authoritarian leaders to move toward representative government, and we support opponents of autocratic regimes that resist democratic reforms. We welcomed the Arab Spring as the harbinger of a transforming struggle for democratization in the Middle East. We are fighting costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in part to help build and protect democratic institutions in those strategically vital countries.

We have to assume, then, that people in the Middle East and other regions where we are promoting democracy look to us to demonstrate how it should operate. But what lessons are they taking from what has happened in Washington in recent months, especially in the political battle over raising the national debt ceiling? MORE

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