Rick Steves
Salon publishes an interesting interview with Rick Steves, an American travel writer who recently returned from a trip to Iran.
I've never been a huge fan of Steves and typically regarded his followers as sheep, but in this interview he comes across as thoughtful and interesting. A lot of his observations seem naive on the surface but are typically ignored by the more jingoistic half of American society, a group of people who would do well to travel a little bit more.
Steves could use a lesson in history, though. Of Iran, he says:
I do want to make clear that Iran is not a free society. They traded away their freedom for a theocracy, out of fear. It's just like Americans. We don't want to torture people, we want to have civil liberties, we don't want our government reading our mail. But when we have fear, we let fear trump our commitment to our civil liberties and decency. We allow torture, we allow the government to read our mail. It's not because we're bad, it's because sometimes fear is more important than our core values. And Iran is afraid. They've given up democracy because they know a theocracy will stand strong against encroaching Western values.
Actually, Iran didn't trade its freedom for theocracy. It traded a repressive klepto-state monarchy for a repressive backward theology. Iran hasn't been "free" in a Western sense since the early 1950s, when the US and UK conspired to overthrow the democratically-elected prime minister, Mohammed Mossadeq in order to prevent him from nationalizing Iranian oil. The popularity of the mullahs in the waning years of the Shah's rule had less to do with encroaching Western values and more to do with the Shah's craven willingness to suck up to the West politically and his life of opulence in comparison to the crushing poverty experienced by the rest of the country.
In fact, Western cultural values are popular in Tehran and other big cities--something Steves points out when he mentions the discrepancy between the rural and urban populations of Iran-- and in many ways the strict conservatism of the mullahs has backfired.
But I digress. Historical revisionism aside, Steves has his heart in the right place and the US would be a lot better off if more people shared his point of view about travel in foreign countries.
March 20th, 2009 - 15:46
I think it’s also worth adding that Iranians vote in surprisingly free and fair elections for their president. Sure, the candidates must first be vetted be the ayatollahs, but there’s still a pretty decent amount of political debate there. The “repressive theocracy” talk really should be directed at America’s good friends the House of Saud.
March 24th, 2009 - 02:55
If you can download the Rick Steve’s in Iran its worth it. I watched a few weeks ago and it was amazing how he interacted with everyone there. He just went up and talked to people as if the were all his good friends and everyone loved the guy. Amazing..
April 10th, 2009 - 12:33
Well, you can’t forget that Mossadeq was drifting into the grip of the Soviet Union…if the US and UK hadn’t taken him out the world could be a very different place today, given that the USSR would have made headway into the world’s oil supplies.