The area that gets the most attention in this regard is, of course, the Middle East. Despite the sound-bites crafted by executives of Saatchi and Saatchi for Lebanon's Cedar Revolution and Laura Bush's nonsense about Suzanne Mubarak's dedication to women's rights as Mubarak supporters were beating and sexually harassing female pro-democracy activists in the streets, the larger story is clearly that the United States is making the people of that part of the world its enemy. Greater democratization, as in greater expression of the popular will, will over the long run mean fiercer and fiercer opposition to U.S. hegemony and, indeed, to anything remotely associated with the United States.

In the Middle East, however, that loss of U.S. imperial prestige is really only a consideration for the long term – excepting in Iraq, where it's a matter of daily headlines. There is another region of the world, however, where that loss is exploding into significance right now.

That place, not surprisingly, is the true crucible of global democratization, South America. It is that continent, so long and so painfully dominated by the Colossus of the North, and not that same Colossus, that has something real to teach the world about democracy. The progress South America has managed to make in its noble experiment has largely been enabled by the Bush administration's imperial overstretch and consequent incapacity to enforce its imperial prerogatives in its own backyard.

This administration has, of course, meddled in Latin America. The coup attempt in Venezuela, continuing support to the opposition thereafter, the successful coup in Haiti and the subsequent international occupation both had U.S. complicity at the core.

But more often it has found itself unable to do much. The referendum in Venezuela was a huge blow to U.S. meddling, which has not recovered; the administration is floundering for a strategy to deal with Chavez. Brazil has won suits against the United States at the WTO, with minimal response. And Argentina recently asserted the right of sovereign default on debt, something no one had talked about for decades. It told creditors to whom it owed over $100 billion that they would have to take 30 cents on the dollar, with no negotiation; they meekly accepted it, and the United States had little to say.

And now, the Organization of American States is refusing to go along with the latest administration offensive.

On Sunday, Condoleezza Rice delivered an impassioned address to the OAS General Assembly, in which she proposed that the organization hold accountable "leaders who are elected democratically" to make sure that they exercise their "responsibility to govern democratically" – an obvious reference to Chavez.

The concrete proposal of the Bush administration, that the OAS establish a permanent committee that would "monitor the exercise of democracy in the hemisphere," was resoundingly rejected at the meeting. So concerned is the administration that George W. Bush plans to address the OAS today.

In rejecting this idea, the OAS is going against the very logic of its creation at the initiative of the United States to serve as a legitimating body for U.S. hegemony in the hemisphere. Although the United States has had some difficulties dominating the OAS in times past, by the early 90's, it seemed to have established complete control. A decade later, that control is in tatters; the organization won't even approve something as seemingly legitimate as monitoring the exercise of democracy – because they understand this is code for removal of Chavez and other leaders the United States finds offensive.

This says a great deal about both the decay of U.S. hegemony in its historical heartland and the emerging democratic sentiment in South America. Yet I still find myself torn. Perhaps the OAS actually should create that committee – to monitor the exercise of democracy in the United States.