December 1, 2005

Dennis Prager and the Value of Freedom

As I noted in an earlier post, Dennis Prager had made a stir among the Muslim community with his "five questions." Numerous people have written responses to Prager with regard to those questions. I, personally, don't have any desire to answer all five questions (which I generally regard as silly), but one question in particular gnawed at me. That was question three:

"Why is only one of the 47 Muslim-majority countries a free country?

"According to Freedom House, a Washington-based group that promotes democracy, of the world's 47 Muslim countries, only Mali is free. Sixty percent are not free, and 38% are partly free. Muslim-majority states account for a majority of the world's "not free" states. And of the 10 "worst of the worst," seven are Islamic states. Why is this?"


And so I visited Freedom house's website. Freedom House conducts an annual survey of all the countries in the world, and ranks those countries on two scales, political rights and civil liberties (the methodology that Freedom House uses can be found here). Survey results for the years 1972 through 2005 can be downloaded in an Excel file. And so, of course, I downloaded the file and reviewed the results.

And, lo and behold, what Prager wrote in his question is true. But, as Paul Harvey would say, "here's the rest of the story."

Looking at the ratings by Freedom House, I was curious as to how the local countries here in SE Asia would fare. Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore are all ranked as "PF" or "Partially Free." Indonesia has a Political Rights score of 3 and a Civil Liberties score of 4 (the best scores are 1 and 1, respectively), Malaysia has scores of 4 and 4, and Singapore 5 and 4. Mali, to give some contrast, has scores of 2 and 2, with a "Free" designation. So, based upon Freedom House's rankings, you'd think, "Wow, Mali must be a great place to live; their people are free. And Singapore, so awful! Those people must be oppressed."

Except, of course, that you can't judge the quality of life in any given country based upon a single factor. And this is where Prager's Question 3 is based upon a stupid assumption: That freedom in the form of political rights and civil liberties is somehow indicative (and predictive) of a country's quality of life. Let's take one other factor, Gross Domestic Product (Purchasing Power Parity) on a per capita basis, and see how the four countries mentioned above stack up.

Singapore, with the lowest combined score of political rights and civil liberties, has the highest GDP per capita of the four countries, with $27,800. (All of the following statistics come from the CIA's World Factbook.) That number is 29th highest in the world, and is higher than Italy (#30) or the European Union's combined average (#32). Malaysia, with a slightly better Freedom House ranking than Singapore, has a GDP of $9,700 per capita (ranked #83), which is just slightly behind that of Russia (#82) and ahead of Mexico (#85) and the World average (#89). Indonesia, which had the highest Freedom House statistics for the three SE Asian countries mentioned, has a GDP of $3,500 per capita (ranked #149), which is slightly better than that of up-and-coming India (#154). Mali, Prager's Freedom House champion, has a GDP per capita of $900 (ranked #214), which is just ahead of war-ravaged Afghanistan (#216) and has a GDP 2.25 times better than last place East Timor (#232).

Now, to be fair to the people of Mali, the CIA World Factbook reported the following:

"The government has continued its successful implementation of an IMF-recommended structural adjustment program that is helping the economy grow, diversify, and attract foreign investment. Mali's adherence to economic reform and the 50% devaluation of the African franc in January 1994 have pushed up economic growth to a sturdy 5% average in 1996-2004."

So there is hope for the people of Mali, that the country can continue to grow economically and provide a better life for its people. But in the meantime, let me ask Mr. Prager the following question:

"If you could only live in either Mali, with its very poor economy but high ranking of political rights and civil liberties, or in Singapore, with its very good economy but much lower Freedom House ranking, which one would you choose?"

Of course, we know you would choose Singapore, as I did (and do). So, what then is the real value of freedom? Is it as necessary as you think? Or do we just recognize how intellectually dishonest you really are.

2 comments:

Big Red said...

Ok, You make a fairly good point about the rankings not taking into account all of which "freedom" entails.

However, the bigger point remains, Muslim countries (for the most part) are not free and have lower-than-desired economies.

The point wasn't to make Mali seem like a good place to live. It was just to point out that 46 out of 47 Muslim countries don't offer their citizens some of the most basic personal freedoms.

Your criticism of Prager's question dodges the real issue: Muslim counries are not FREE.

Yusuf Smith said...

As-Salaamu 'alaikum,

Singapore is also not a Muslim-majority country, and has never been as long as it has been an independent state. So you cannot blame the Muslims for Singapore.

But as for some of the others, many of the regimes not marked as "free" on the FH table are secular dictatorships and even some of the higher-scoring countries are pseudo-democracies like Turkey, which has various "unsayables", such as insults to the state or its reprobate founder and discussion of the massacre by Turkish secularists of Armenian Christians, and also restrictions on participation by religious Muslims in public life. A "free" country means free for everyone, not just those the ruling class desire (as in Israel and pre-1994 South Africa). Their methodology is obviously flawed itself (besides that the table is badly laid-out and difficult to follow).