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by rayiner
15 days ago
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> What's unique about the nations for which democracy isn't the best form of government? What's unique about their people? It’s the other way around. Countries that are well suited to democracy are the exception. You need to have a state, rule of law, etc., before you have democracy. Then you need generations of people socialized in the ideas that allow democratic societies to function. For example, in many places in the world, people are socialized to put their trust in leaders of extended kinship groups and clans rather than in neutral institutions. You can’t effectively have a democracy under those conditions. On all those fronts, Americans were standing on the shoulders of giants. England has offices of civil government (like the Chancellor of the Exchequer) that have been in continuous operation for over 800 years. Many of the concepts of the constitution date back to the Magna Carta 800 years ago. There’s also the non-religious aspects of religion. Protestants were developing decentralized church governance 500 years ago. American democracy is the product of an 800-year long process where you’re slowly and incrementally molding the structure of society and the mindset of the people generation after generation. Read De Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” where he describes the organic, bottom-up self governance that prevailed in America 150 years ago. That description bears no response to how an Indian or Iraqi village is governed. Those societies, like most, are structured and hierarchical. An individual owes obedience to the layers above (father, clan or tribe elders, all the way to the top). And those at the top have obligations flowing downward, to care and feed their subjects and maintain order. These societies are much better suited for benevolent dictatorships. |
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