Long Live Shah
Long Live Reza Shah
Long Live Mosadegh
Long Live Amir Kabir
Long Live Khomeini
Death to Islamic Republic
Death to Shah
Death to Khomeini
Death to … (feel free and fill in the blank!)

Long live (Zend'e BaAd), Death to (Mord'e BaAd); an all or nothing attitude.

Our history is filled with black or white, yes or no, Zend'e baAd or Mord'e BaAd and as I like to refer to it a single political party culture (tak Hezbi). Are we truly ready for a multi-party political system? Before we can answer this question we need to perhaps agree as to what a multi-party political system requires and entails.

Thomas Sowell in his book titled: The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation As a Basis for Social Policy has a statement that to most people appears as common sense but yet its simplicity and depth of meaning requires much to think about. He states:

" We are all the same except for our differences and we are all different except for our similarities".

Let us think about this statement. In Iran, especially during the last 50 years what have we done to our country as citizens of this great nation? Let us sit back and think!

If I am a monarchist I feel that what Shah and Reza Shah did was absolutely right and no other way should be tolerated. If I belong to Jebh'e Melli I feel that what Mosadegh did was absolutely right and nothing he did was wrong. If I am a supporter of Islamic Republic I feel that Khomeini was Imam and whatever he did was absolutely right and whatever the current government is doing is absolutely correct.

But is that truly the case? Is that a matter of our own prejudices or are they truly realities? Can we truly progress as a nation if we all hold so tightly to our own black or white sense of reality? If we were to truly hold to this type of attitude in our own personal relationships, in dealing with our wives, husbands, children, or colleagues at work, would we be able to succeed in our family or business?

What if we try a little exercise? What if we try real hard to identify only one action that whoever we oppose has done that is right. For example:

1. If you believe in monarchy, please identify one action of Mosadegh that was right.
2. If you belong to Jebh'e Melli, please identify one action that Reza Shah did was right.
3. If you believe in the 1979 revolution and the Islamic Republic, please identify one action that Mohammad Reza Shah did that was right.
4. Did Bakhtiar do anything that was good for our country?

All we ask is for you to identify a SINGLE action. Not two actions, but a simple action.

Please realize that for us to be true to our own conscious we have to put ourselves in that time period, feel the constraints facing the very person we oppose, and then think if what they did was, in their opinion something they thought that was going to serve the country or they maliciously wanted to hurt our nation.

The list goes on and on… All we want to do is to find a common ground. Help in finding a platform of commonality amongst all of us. Let us do this against all of our prejudices and beliefs.

In a multi-party system we have to learn to find common ground and build on our similarities. Our differences should make us diverse and help us be prepared against unforeseen surprises perhaps not seen by the majority.

My friends, Galileo was one person while the rest of the world was adamantly certain that he was wrong. Today we know it was the rest of the world that was wrong and one person was right. It is very well possible that we are wrong and the very person that we adamantly fight against is right. Let us all keep an open mind and embrace the differences amongst ourselves. Let us build on our similarities.

We encourage you to take a second and vote to the series of questions that are posed on this very subject. We want to simply show if there are any common grounds amongst us.

One last thought- I sure hope one day we all come to terms with this simple concept that Iran belongs to the living. The living can only decide for the living. The dead have no rights. Democracy is the government of the living by the living for the living. Decisions made by the dead can not govern the living! We should let go of our dead and concentrate on ourselves, Iran of today and today's Iranians. We have to have the courage to accept that our children have as much right as we have now to decide for what is right for them.

Let the dialog begin