It is kind of amusing to see that conservative newspapers still talk about the war in Afghanistan and Iraq as defending the west. From here:

Barack Obama this week vowed to defeat what he described as a confidence-sagging fear that the US faces an inevitable decline that would force the generation of his daughters Malia and Sasha to lower its sights. That could leave the US stranded in a decade of recession, bruised by massive wealth destruction from collapsed housing and stock prices, saddled with crushing debt and yet still responsible for defending the West in hot spots such as Afghanistan.

Anecdotal, however, despite living in a red state in the US I have not anyone here term it as a fight to protect the West. Maybe it is a submissive and cringe-inducing justification for bit players like Australia and their cheer leaders - namely Australian conservatives - to involve themselves in the nation-building going on in Afghanistan and Iraq. In terms of American politics, Australia's contribution has never been so insignificant. The only reason it was with Bush was because Bush, his policies and the implementation of those policies, were so unpopular that he sought some kind of justification through international support by lackey nations such as Britain, Australia and Poland.

The 'West' or more accurately in this day and age, nations who use liberal-democracy and capitalism as their guiding forms of social organization, are safe from any intrusion by terrorism. The late 19thC saw spates of terrorism, including one that helped propel Europe into a World War, however the forms of organization that define western attitudes have been more resilient than any anarchic forms of violence.

Despite conservatism's overly patriarchal fear of cultural regression, there is no need to believe that liberal-democracy and capitalism will collapse from external violent pressures. As the last two years have shown it is more in danger from destruction from within via politicians and capitalists and their immoral pursuits of absolute power and greed.

Both liberal-democracy and capitalism have mechanism for dealing with this, except when criminal political behavior is pardoned or avoided, or when failed capital enterprises are not allowed to fail, both issues which have occurred recently. Violence is a pin-prick in comparison.

Peter Watson argues the great intellectual forces of the 20thC were science, free-market economics and mass media. He writes:

That is not say; of course, that science or free-market economics, or the mass media were entirely twentieth century phenomena; they were not. But there were important aspects of the twentieth century which meant that each of these forces took on a new potency, which only emerged for all to see in the 1920s.

With science the different disciplines started to come together and combine into new descriptions which cumulatively left new technologies in its wake; physics joined with chemistry as the electron was explored and physics met chemistry and biology as the DNA molecule was theorized. Mathematics, geology, cosmology, biology, genetics, linguistics, anthropology, economics and sociology all bled into each other adding new authority to science as it provided increasingly accurate and resilient descriptions of the world, past, present and evolutionary.

Social organization counts in progress; and currently the scientific method, liberal democracy and free markets are the most efficient forms of organization for progress and democratization of wealth and knowledge. The advantages this gives has left much of the non-western world rushing to catch up to the inherent advantages these forms of organization give. Watson writes:

Finally in considering this evolution of knowledge forms, think back to the link between science, free-markets and liberal democracy ... The relevance and importance of that link is brought home in this book by the dearth of non-Western thinkers.

This will change as more and more nations adopt the very successful forms of knowledge, political and market organization that the West has been using. The issue of course is that the three major forms of organization the West has been using are eminently modifiable at their core. It may be like Zeno's paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise. Everytime Achilles reached where the Tortoise had been when he set out, the tortoise had moved again.

The Australian Democrats usually get pidgeon-holed as a 'lefty' party, but if you look at their Senate performance and speeches they are by far the most liberal and republican party in the Australian system. They actually practice a relatively pure style of liberal democracy which is based around deliberation, debate, competition over policy and then majority support. (more)

Augusto Pinochet was the tyrannical leader of the military junta which ran Chile from 1973 to 1990. Unusually at the time, but which is becoming standard for juntas or one party states more recently, he adopted economic policies of economic liberalism with the help of the 'Chicago Boys' . One of the benefits of liberalisation of any system is that its maximises efficiency through self-organisation. Chile under democratic rule has had higher economic performance and decline in poverty than it did under dictatorship. (more)

In a speech on national security on September 13th in the Senate, George Brandis argued that sedition laws were out of date and have little place in a liberal democracy which takes the individual's autonomy of liberty as its first priority. Avocadia described this as; "the moral force that liberal democracy serves is the morality of liberty." Brandis describes the strength of liberal democracy before agreeing with the recommendations of the Australian Law Reform Commission. (more)

Is social democratic organisation the only way an elected government can maintain their legitimacy against intrusion from non-state movements? (more)

In Muslim nations that go to the ballot box, such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Bangladesh, extremist political parties get crushed by voters. Those extremists are not able to earn more than a few percent of the vote. Most people want good government, the electricity to work, the trains to run on time, low crime and so forth. The people are wise, and with a proper outlet to let that wisdom flow to government, superior outcomes prevail. Voters choose secular political parties over religious ones, and moderate parties over extremists.

Saudi Arabia and Iran are the two best examples of failed states which breed extremist views. Both use the state to advocate an intolerant religious monoculture that is the basis for their authority. To reject the state, dissenters also reject the monoculture by choosing extremism. Lately Australia is establishing the "National Security State" and expanding the "Shadow State". In addition the Australian conservative commenteriat are seeking to establish a monoculture. These place us closer to the conditions that make Saudi Arabia such a problem. Only the principles of Australian Republicanism can save us now. (more)