Rice said it was wrong to imply the Middle East had been stable before the Bush administration launched its democracy push, arguing that 60 years of U.S. foreign policy caused a "freedom deficit" that was difficult to fix in a couple of years.
"Freedom Deficit" has been circulating for at least a year, as far as I can tell, and used the way Condi did, is a typical piece of bureaucratic distortion. It makes the difficulties in the middle east sound essentially technical and quantitative, matters that can be solved by little belt tightening and imposing a fee or two. But when applied to personal life rather than geopolitics, it stirs some interesting speculations.
How exactly do you determine you are running a freedom deficit? By what metric can you ascertain that your freedom balance is insufficient?
How does one incur a freedom deficit? What kind of profligate living or shoddy accounting brings one to that point? Can you cook the books to create an appearance of freedom that you don't actually have?
I occasionally get the feeling that a lot of us run freedom deficits, for reasons totally unrelated to the government under which we happen to live.
On the flip side, is it possible to run a freedom surplus? And if you do, are you obliged to return the unused freedom to someone? Can you bank it in the event of freedom famines?
Is someone taxed to fund my freedom?
I think that, in many senses, the answer to the last question is "yes."
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