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Wednesday, February 23, 2005
How free choice can be illiberal
Primary Red of Secular-Right India writes:
Read the full thing, the comments are also interesting. As I'd said about a previous post of theirs, it's thought-provoking stuff.
At a recent New York dinner a few liberal Americans, and their angst-ridden Indian counterparts, challenged us on the irony of illiberal Pakistan's support for Kashmiri self-determination, versus liberal India's resistance to it. The following is our response [snip]:
Consider a hypothetical 10-year-old tsunami orphan, facing these terrible choices: either join an ill-run orphanage or become a bonded laborer or a street urchin. Her choosing freely from among these is hardly "free choice", is it? In other words, free choice absent good options is meaningless.
Why this principle doesn’t apply in Kashmir is baffling. Here, India is pressured to allow Kashmiris "free choice" from among terrible options all of which, as we shall see, would reduce their existing freedoms. Liberals aggressively demand Indian flexibility on Kashmir - implicitly condemning Kashmiris to an illiberal fate.
Read the full thing, the comments are also interesting. As I'd said about a previous post of theirs, it's thought-provoking stuff.
