[puranjay]

I've found that the west has a democracy bias. It assumes that democracy is intrinsic to people and it's only a matter of "liberating" them from tyranny.

But as history is proof, there is nothing intrinsic about democracy. Democratic revolutions were hardly organic in much of the world. Most countries have known nothing but monarchy and/or dictatorships. To impose democracy on them would perhaps be as cruel as letting them be ruled by dictators.

I know this isn't a popular opinion, but I'd say that people should be allowed to manage their own affairs. If a country is better off with a dictator, then so be it.

[admax88q]

> I'd say that people should be allowed to manage their own affairs.

> If a country is better off with a dictator, then so be it.

Those do not mesh. Democracy _is_ allowing people to manage their own affairs.

[puranjay]

Not when that democracy is imposed by an external force. There is nothing organic about, say, a US-sponsored democracy in Afghanistan or Iraq

[aaaaaaaaaab]

Democracy is indeed.

But when external forces try to impose democracy on a society not ready for it, typically all you get is a civil war netween local mini-dictators. E.g. Lybia, Egypt, Afghanistan, Iraq, countless African nations, etc.

[everybodyknows]

Well-meaning Westerners like to imagine that all one has to do is put on a fair election, get the "good people" in power, and all will be well thereafter. This can be effected by Western occupiers when they want to wash their hands as they exit some troubled spot.

The occupiers don't want to hear that democracy is sustained by values and habits taught by parents to children who are still young enough to listen. Once the boys are old enough to hold a gun, that kind of learning is pretty much over.

[puranjay]

Doesn't help that in any democratic setup, the people with the means to fight elections are usually the people who are already close to, or embedded in the previous dictatorial setup.

This is the post-colonial story across the world. The people who came into power after the colonizers left were direct beneficiaries of the colonial rule

[nkrisc]

Usually the country is "better off" as a whole on the backs of the few who will suffer tremendously in order to achieve that.