Then I was inspired, Now I'm sad and tired

Jill from Feministe found a good editorial in the New York Times:

...if there ever was an exhibit of the misguided conviction that for some people very little is good enough, it’s the current administration spin that the proposed Iraqi constitution is fine because the founding fathers didn’t give women equal rights either.

Among other things, the constitution drafted under American supervision does not provide for the rights of women and minorities and enshrines one religion as the fundamental source of law. Administration officials excuse this poor excuse for a constitution by saying it also refers to democratic values. But it makes them secondary to Islamic law and never actually defines them. Our founding fathers had higher expectations: they made the split of church and state fundamental, and spelled out what they meant by democracy and the rule of law.

It’s true that the United States Constitution once allowed slavery, denied women the right to vote and granted property rights only to white men. But it’s offensive for the administration to use that as an excuse for the failings of the Iraqi constitution. The bar on democracy has been raised since 1787. We don’t agree that the 218-year-old standard is good enough for Iraq

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