Mr. Gottfried, why so silly?  Surely you know democracy is something that Americans stole from the Iriqouis Confederacy!

The only thing more grating than being lectured on “freedom” and “democracy” by descendents of cultures with absolutely no exposure to these blessings is have these latter-day Platos try to eliminate what little freedom and democracy we have left.

Look at what’s become of Europe, where these traditions were first conceived and nutured - and tremble.

The relentless, groundless campaign for “tolerance” and “anti-hate” is the silent dog whistle of the progressive coterie. Toot it, and would-be freedom fighters everywhere prick up their ears, loll out sticky tongues and start looking for a barricade to piss-mark.

Relentless demands and crippling legislation to protect “special groups” from monstrous honkeys are oppressing the rest of us. The tipping point is reached when enforceable laws are passed. Anti-hate speech measrures are endemic in Europe and Canada (and already under fire there). How could we wish such inquisitions here? A democracy cannot designate specially protected groups without contradicting its compact with the balance of its citizenry. Yet here and in Europe, there are constant calls to police the Internet, control speech, contain “hate” and promote “tolerance”, all to protect these self-cherished groups from… what? Phantom storm troopers? What’s astounding is that these “anti-hate” campaigns are at their most frenzied in societies where there are absolutely no elements of officially sanctioned “intolerance” – excepting, of course, routine malice and stealth containment aimed at Christians and whites.

In this country, these calls come most emphatically from groups like the ADL and SPLC, who have managed to insinuate themselves as semi-official Tolerance Patrols for government and media.

Enough!

As Richard Weaver predicted over 50 years ago, democracy has become the “god-word” of our time.  (And he wrote this long before the neocons arose!) Woe to those who question the superiority of this regime.  And yet monarchies were often more tolerant than the human rights tribunals of modern-day democracies.  A revolutionary thinker like Freud still felt at home in Catholic Austria for most of his life.

Having looked at Pat Buchanan’s latest book, which he sent as a gift, I expect that
its author will be pummled for suggesting that Germany in 1913 was not a proto-Nazi
state. Pat merely repeats a comment that George Kennan had made on the German Empire,
which sounds like the one that Richard Spencer placed on this website. In my view,
one should be honest in declaring that “democracy” is not about self-government,of which
the Germans had more in the nineteenth century than they do now. What we really mean
is having egalitarian universalist gibberish being forced-fed to submissive subjects
as part of a vast social experiment.

All people, to the extent that they are capable of government at all, are capable of self-gov’t. But that is not to say that all people are capable of, or want any part of, electoral democracy. Electoral democracy works well in certain situations, and not at all in others. Where the fundamental differences within a nation are small, electoral democracy works well; where they are large, it tends to collapse into an armed factionalism and civil war.

Tribes and creeds that lived together in peace for centuries have dissolved into hatred and bloodshed with the untimely introduction of American-style electoral democracy. So did America, for that matter; our greatest war is still our own civil war.

Democracy implies consent of the governed, but it is not necessarily true that annual or bi-annual polls are the best proof of that consent. In other cultures and situations, other methods may be used, and usually are.

I would rather live under the Austrian and German Kaiser, but for two things, the draft and the military traditions of both empires.

The ‘opposite of freedom and self-government’ sounds somewhat ephemeral for a de facto dictatorship. But perhaps you underestimate the Germans. Anger is growing, slowly but surely.

That all people, in principle, are capable of democracy is as much true as that all people
are capable of reading and writing, and doing math.

But as you do not expect people to read and write without books and paper and ink to write
with, you do not expect people to practice democracy without their proper tools - in this
case a civic culture, a willingness to see the general interest above the particular
interest of family, ethnic group, religion, or social class, and a willingness to debate
differences in a civilized way, to seek to convince others, and to accept being convinced.

If people cannot master those basics, then, until they do, they cannot have democracy - w
what they will have will be a chaotic period between despotisms (and despotism will be
embraced because it is more peaceful, and things can get done).

I can recomend “Why Democracies Fail” by Norman L. Stamps, who described the
process very well - basing his studies on the European countries after World War I.

I can also recommend “Building democracy in Ireland” by Jeffrey Prager, where he describes
the one glaring exception to the panorama described by Stamps, and how it got that
way.

The problem is not with a particular people. The problem is that democracy is difficult to
master, and when we try to spread it, quite often all we get is a cargo cult of
democracy, which of course, fails.

It would be nice if one could expect people to adhere to the preconditions Ariana sees as necessary for a successful democracy: “a willingness to see the general interest above the particular interest of family, ethnic group, religion, or social class”. If we could expect this, then even communism would work fine. We have to come to understand, as the founding fathers obviously did, that people act out of self-interest, and that their interest diminishes, the more the other members of the group differ from oneself. That’s why they did not endorse democracy as a suitable form of government for the Union and limited voting rights to people, who had shown the ability to carry responsibility by caring for a family without relying on the largesse of others. While one can argue if their restriction to land-owning males is the best measuring stick for this, one can agree that people will inevitably vote themselves benefits, when allowed to do so, and ultimately this will end in the looting of the public treasury and the pockets of their neighbors. Somehow I feel that Europe is already there and we are getting close.