Might and Right in Iraq
Dec 3, 2003

IRVINE, CA--As election deadlines draw near in Iraq, Shiite religious parties are forcefully demanding direct-majority elections for a transitional government.

      "The majority Shiites, with the backing of Iran, are demanding nothing less than an Islamic state," says Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute and an expert on Middle-East conflicts. He believes this is a political time bomb for America: "No threat in Iraq will do more to destroy America's military victory there than democracy, i.e., giving unlimited power to the majority, in this case a fervently religious majority. America's guiding principle should be the protection of individual rights--not the whims of the majority. Otherwise, Iraq will simply have replaced the tyranny of Saddam Hussein with the tyranny of Shiite mobs.

      "Our Founding Fathers understood that the tyranny of majorities was every bit as dangerous to the individual--the smallest minority--as the brutal rule of a single despotic dictator. That is why they fought to elevate individual rights above the majority's power by explicitly recognizing inalienable individual freedoms--for instance, the first amendment's protection of freedom of speech and its separation of state and religion.

      "Our Bill of Rights should serve the same purpose in Iraq as it did here. But if the Governing Council in Iraq accepts the mistaken notion, especially prevalent in America today, that an unlimited majority's wish should be the basis of law--rather than the protection of individual rights--then they will not only have created another haven for state-sponsored Islamic terrorism in Iraq. They will have betrayed every human being's sacred secular heritage--individual rights."

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Dr. Yaron Brook is available for interviews. To interview Dr. Brook or book him for your show, please e-mail media@aynrandcenter.org

For more articles by Yaron Brook, and his bio, click here.