Skip to main content

Democracy is not always the answer

When I hear pompous politicians like Obama, Cameron and their predecessors state that it's their duty to encourage nations to adopt democracy (by bombing them into having it), I feel a serious gromble needs to be expressed. It was Churchill who said “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” and then there's Thomas Jefferson who said “A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.

'Great' democracies like the UK, the USA and the world's largest, India, believe their system of government and periodic accountability at elections, work - because they exist. Ergo they work. But democracy means something rather more basic. Democracy is a voting system whereby minorities accept the decision of the majority about who governs them. Minorities in working democracies therefore do not feel sufficiently passionate about their differences with their new government to revolt. They roll over and accept that this time they didn't win. Maybe next time they'll campaign harder and persuade more people about their point of view.

But what happens where minorities feel oppressed. Where they feel they, or their family's lives are somehow compromised or maybe in peril. Perhaps they feel their god has been threatened - clearly a big deal for many of extreme faith. Democracy therefore cannot work, at least not effectively and calmly, where minorities do not accept the democratic process, or at least the results of the process (fair or otherwise) which returns 'the wrong government'.

So why do some democracies work, and others simply can't?

Simple. In the USA they killed the Indians and other minorities who wouldn't accept the rule of the majority. In India they killed or expelled the muslims. In the UK they suppressed all opposition to the sovereigns parliament. In Germany they murdered millions deemed to be a threat to the values of the majority. In Australia they killed Aborigines.... etc.

The only reason democracies survived was because all potential dissent to the process was ruthlessly exterminated.

So why on earth do we believe that implementing democratic processes in tribal war zones like Libya (32 tribes), Iraq (Kurds v Sunnis v Shiite) and Afghanistan (Mujahadin + Taliban + drug warlords + umpteen tribes like Pashtuns) can possibly result in scenarios where minorities accept the decision of their mortal enemies about the laws they are going to have to abide by for the next 5 years or so.

So what's the alternative? How do you get minorities to accept the will of the majority? Force and fear. Force and fear. It's the only language enraged people understand. And when it's their god that's threatened, even force and fear are barely sufficient to prevent daggers from being drawn to protect honour and salvation. So what sort of leadership works in that scenario? It would be great to believe a Gandhi could be flown in? Sadly not. Angelic Gandhi presided over vast ethnic cleansing of tens of millions of people at the appalling partition into two democracies. A Christ? Sadly he wouldn't (didn't) last long. Too nice. Too weak. Unfortunately its tough leaders like Gadaffi and Sadam who keep the peace. They knew how to prevent anarchy (until we bombed them both and killed countless of their citizens in order to impose far less effective ways of quelling violence between their hate-filled tribes).

Mark my words. Democracy will NOT work in Iraq. It will NOT work in Libya, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan or any other country where national borders encircle minorities who will never accede to the will of their mortal enemies. Let nature take its course and only step in if you KNOW that genocide is about to be committed (Rwanda, Cambodia, Liberia, Bosnia). Then hold elections if you must or simply give the crown to the nearest general, and quickly go home. It's going to get ugly again.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Phillips screws - yes I'm angry about them too

Don't get me wrong. They're a brilliant invention to assist automation and prevent screwdrivers from slipping off screw heads - damaging furniture, paintwork and fingers in the process. Interestingly they weren't invented by Mr Phillips at all, but by a John P Thompson who sold Mr P the idea after failing to commercialise it. Mr P, on the otherhand, quickly succeeded where Mr T had failed. Incredible isn't it. You don't just need a good idea, you need a great salesman and, more importantly, perfect timing to make a success out of something new. Actually, it would seem, he did two clever things (apart from buying the rights). He gave the invention to GM to trial. No-brainer #1. After it was adopted by the great GM, instead of trying to become their sole supplier of Phillips screws, he sold licenses to every other screw manufacturer in the world. A little of a lot is worth a great deal more than a lot of a little + vulnerability (watch out Apple!). My gromble is abo

Would we pay more for their stuff?

I'm confused. Brexiters argue the Germans, Italians and French will still want to sell us their cars, so continued free trade with the UK is in their best interests. But we'll have to negotiate this (with an EU unwilling to make leaving easy) by threatening to make their cars more expensive for British people to buy. We'll do this because WE need to make imports more expensive to try to restore our balance of payments. Are Brits prepared to pay more for their Audis, Fiats and Renaults in order to make British cars more appealing, or do Brexiters want to pay more in order to punish them for taxing our insurance and banking products? Either way, imports will cost more. While in the EU, we buy their cars because we like the choice and don't want our own government to tax them. Indeed it would be better for British car manufacturing if we went back to the good old days of being encouraged to buy cheaper British cars (made by foreign owned factories). Is that what Brexite

Addictions. Porn, Drugs, Alcohol and Sex. Don't prevent it, make it safer.

In 1926 New York, during Prohibition, 1,200 people were poisoned by whiskey containing small quantities of wood alcohol (methanol). Around 400 died, the rest were blinded. The methanol they drank was in the moonshine they had bought illegally. In fact it had been added by law to industrial ethanol in order to make it undrinkable. Prohibition existed to protect everyone from the 'evils of the demon drink'. However, people still wanted to enjoy alcohol. So bootleggers bought cheap industrial alcohol and attempted to distill it to remove the impurities the state had added, but the process wasn't regulated. The state was inadvertently responsible for the suffering - although it was easy for them to blame the bootleggers and to justify escalating the war. This didn't stop the bootleggers. In fact it forced them to become more violent to protect their operations, and even less cautious about their production standards. Volumes of illicit alcohol, and therefore proportionat