An Important Date In History.

Today, February 12th 2009, marks the bicentennial of a very important day in human history. In 1809 two men were born that would go on to change the shape of the Western world, but in different ways. Christopher Hitchens has referred to these two gentlemen as the Two Great Emancipators. These men are of course Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin.

Abraham Lincoln is the man who adorns the five dollar bill in the United States. The 16th President is widely regarded as one of the very best. He is one of only four Presidents whose faces adorn Mount Rushmore. When elected President, he saw the country he was put in charge of split into two sides. The Union and the Confederacy. As Lincoln's opponents during the campaign had attached the label of 'abolitionist' in regards to slavery he knew that he would not win the votes of the southern slave states. Instead he campaigned solely in the northern states, which earned him enough electoral college votes to take the White House. The southern states refused to acknowledge him as their President as they had not voted for him and decided that it was their time to secede from the Union.

What followed was the bloodiest war in American history. The Civil War. Lincoln was determined to succeed in order to preserve the integrity of the Union. He was passionate about keeping the United States together. In order to achieve this goal, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation. This essentially made every slave a free citizen. This was certainly advantageous to the Union army as they were victorious. Before the Civil War people would say that "the United States are..." when referring to it, as an emphasis of the collective. Only after the Civil War did people start saying "the United States is...", signifying its ascension to being one nation. This idea is reflected in the motto of the United States: "E Pluribus Unum", or "Out of many, one".

In regards to the preserving of the Union, Lincoln was a one hundred percent success. As an emancipator though, maybe not so much. While the Emancipation Proclamation made slaves free under the law they were not treated as such. Segregation became the new way to keep down the millions of African Americans who were now technically citizens. Segregation was even written into law, the now infamous Jim Crow laws in the south. It was not until the 1960s until a Civil Rights Bill was passed which started the road to equality. Many argue that true equality has yet to be achieved, others argue that it has been equal since the passage of the bill and some believe that equality was achieved when Barack Obama was elected the first African American President of the United States.

Charles Darwin, the other Emancipator (who has also been immortalized on a bank note), has had a different type of success. His studies of nature and animals led him to write On the Origin of Species in 1859. This was a huge step forward for scientific knowledge as there was now finally a theory which logically explained the diversity of life on this planet without any supernatural aids. This idea still causes debate between scientists and those who believe that God created the world in six days. While it is depressing that this argument is still going on, one cannot argue Darwin's impact on the scientific world, and world as a whole.

While I am in no way a scientist, the idea of evolution by natural selection seems to be the best explanation by a long margin of why life is the way it is on this planet. This theory has been further backed up by the discovery of gene sequencing, which has revealed that human beings are closely related to other animal and even plant life. Until something better comes along to explain the intricacies of life, it is safe enough to say that evolution was a correct idea. That is, after all, the nature of scientific discovery.

Darwin emancipated people in a totally different way from Lincoln. Darwin emancipated people's minds from the idea of creationism and gave those minds a logical, and superior, alternative.

The question of who was the greatest emancipator (Hitchens contends that it was Darwin) is not something I want to get into. Both men shaped the course of human history as we know it, and the world would be worse off without having had them in it. Both were extraordinary human beings and both were, in my opinion, Great Emancipators.

It's About Time.

This week, there was a major step forward in the world. In a time when the global economy is making life difficult for millions of people (me included) throughout the world we do have some good news. It is about time too. The 2003 Intervention in Iraq was probably the most unpopular policy of George W. Bush as President of the United States (except maybe his inaction on Katrina), and undoubtedly the most unpopular policy of Tony Blair as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

The two nations were told that Saddam Hussein, the dictator of Iraq, had weapons of mass destruction and that he was an imminent threat to the Western world. Unfortunately for Bush and Blair's popularity the weapons were never found. The reason for the intervention then changed. It was to liberate the people of Iraq from this dictator. This rationale proved just as unpopular as the war itself, and even revealed some opponents of the war to be apologists for Saddam Hussein (like UK Member of Parliament George Galloway). The argument from those who were not apologists was that by deposing Hussein there had been a power vacuum created which different Muslim sects were eager to fill. Then came the insurgency. Suicide bombs in market places, mosques and other public places became the norm.

Whether you agree with the initial policy or not, it must be admitted that the Armed Forces of the United States and the United Kingdom have done exceedingly well in dealing with such horrors. The number of attacks have been decreasing lately and the Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has become a supporter of the withdrawal of troops from the country. This shows progress, but this is not the big step forward I mentioned earlier.

The big step was the latest provincial elections to take place in Iraq. 440 seats were up for election in regional positions with 14,000 candidates. That to me is amazing. A country that was run for years by a brutal, sadistic dictator and then plunged into holy war by the parties of God is now emerging as a Middle Eastern democracy. The level of enthusiasm for a local election is very encouraging. The people of Iraq are determined to participate in the elections. One voter in Basra said "How can we not vote? All of us here have always complained about being oppressed and not having a leader who represented us. Now is our chance" (credit: msnbc.com). The purple finger (to show that they have voted) has become an image of this emerging democracy.

Whether you supported the Iraqi intervention or not, this can be seen as nothing but good news. The participation in democracy and no reports of major violence on election day is a sign that the US and UK Armed Services will be able to leave Iraq to its people sooner rather than later. It is about time too.