Okay, building upon my earlier post on Rule of Law, I managed to get in a question to a panel discussion held by the Council on Foreign Relations (at the 50:05 mark). My actual question, submitted via Twitter, was "What is 'rule of law' and is it a prerequisite to 'state-building'?" Unfortunately, this less-than-140-character question was not concise enough for the moderator and he dumbed it down even more.

I think the simplistic, nebulous answer to the abbreviated version of the question, however, was very telling. You'd have thought I asked the panel discuss what they mean by "GDP growth" or "mortality." Everybody just assumes that we all mean the same thing and that it isn't even worth discussing. But nobody is even willing to state what they think Rule of Law is. Everybody has their own definition. Without agreeing on a definition, they are talking past each other. It's like ordering pizza. What do you want for toppings? Let's get something "good." Well, your definition of a good topping differs from mine. So if I order the pizza going only with the guidance of "good," then only I'm going to be happy if the pizza meets my definition of "good." And if I tell the guy taking the order that I want a pizza with "good" toppings then he's either going to a) hang up because he thinks it's a prank call or b) just send me a pizza that he burned 5 minutes ago and was going to throw away.