In a recent BreakPoint article, Chuck Colson talks about how the impending Iraqi constitution is looking a lot like an effort to create sharia--Islamic law. I do not believe the Iraqis have what it takes to be self-governed. (This assertion presupposes--and I can prove it--that Islam is not a stable worldview that is capable of any of the ingredients required for an orderly, human society.) I believe the Iraq we'll end up, say 20 years from now, with will be even worse than the one we liberated from Saddan Hussein.

Come to think of it, I am beginning to believe that Americans may no longer possess that which is necessary for self-government. If a Constitutional convention were held today to start over here in America, I believe we'd end up with something far closer to the USSR than the original US.

I believe I know some of what's required to be "worthy" of self-government (most notably, morality), but that's not so much my concern at the moment. What I wonder about is what the alternative to self-government is. Is it a socialist oligarchy, much as we have now? Are we possibly living with the government that is necessary given our seeming inability to self-govern? In other words, do we deserve what we have because it's *necessary*, given our immature, immoral, ignorant condition? How ironic that would be!

I suppose part of what I'm asking is a chicken-and-egg question. It's well-known (among the educated) that a moral society is necessary if it is to be a free one. Will freeing an immoral society necessarily result in a moral one? Or is there no choice but to rule the immoral one with an iron fist until a moral sub-culture gains dominance and rebels?