[hashbig]

> in democracies citizens are potential voters, foreigners don't matter

Not long ago, what determined whether you "mattered" or not was your religion and belief. We now replaced it with a state issued piece of paper and convinced ourselves that this is progress.

[sharikone]

That's correct from a "spiritual" point of view, but pragmatically it is possible to define a spectrum from tyranny to democracy based only on the structure of power. More precisely you can look at the number of people the ruler needs to benefit to get their way. Religion and belief are important, no doubt, but they can be separated a bit from each other with this kind of analysis. In this respect modern democracies with universal suffrage, equal rights, legal protection from state violence are a big deal. It's not necessary for them to represent "progress" to be very very valuable.

Also, "belief" has a propensity to produce circular logic (I believe in X because X is true), non-escapable rational traps (you don't believe in anything, so you believe in non believing, so you believe...), tribalism (we should convert the nonbelievers), righteousness (how can't they see it? It is the truth), wishful thinking (I believe that X is good and Y is bad so of course I will ascribe every good event to X and every bad one to Y), insincere debates, existential crisis caused by the lack of it, and so on... So as much as it's possible I in favor of leaving beliefs and religions out of the analysis.

[remarkEon]

I’m not following. Are you saying citizenship replaced religion and it functions in the same way as religion did for empires and kingdoms of yesteryear?

[int_19h]

It functions in the same way in a sense that it's the current criteria for "acceptable" dehumanization.