Saturday, May 10, 2014

Democracy

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
Sir Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965), Hansard, November 11, 1947

My 13 year old grandson wants to be a politician. He is a smart kid, widely read, but politics is not a profession I would recommend to him. He believes that he might be able to do good as a politician. Good luck to him. But he does not believe in democracy. Like Winston Churchill, he thinks that democracy is an imperfect system, but unlike Churchill, he does not agree that it is better than the alternatives. His political heroes over time as he read more widely ranged from Stalin to Robespierre. To me they don't seem to be good role models. Yet my grandson believes that people need to accept authority. We are yet to discuss the source of this authority, and in particular, its moral accountability. There are, and indeed were in fairly recent history, times when democracy failed. Failed because people abused of the system and the liberties it provided. At times like this an autocratic system, perhaps not as ruthless as Stalin or Robespierre, may be preferable to the rule of chaos. In the period between the 1920s and 1945 much of Europe was ruled by dictators of various shades of brutality: Mussolini in Italy, Franco in Spain, Salazar in Portugal, Horthy in Hungary, Antonescu in Romania, Metaxas in Greece, and of course, Hitler in Germany. My apologies to any dictator I omitted. Now the situation in Ukraine brings toi mind the threat of failure of a democratic system. The last two heads of the government in Ukraine were indicted or accused of large scale corruption or outright theft. It is not surprising that people lost faith in such a government and soldiers were not prepared to fight to defend it. Vladimir Putin is undoubtedly an autocrat, not on the scale of Stalin, but still someone who exerts his authority without bowing to democratic scruples. But if I were a citizen of East Ukraine, I am not sure whether I would prefer the corrupt and unpredictable rule of Kiev to the no-nonsense but predictable rule of Moscow. If I lived in Western Ukraine it would be different. I would want to live under Hapsburg rule and have nothing to do with Kiev.

1 comment:

  1. I myself I am not opposed to democracy merely the current way it is carried out. Simple fact is 95% of the people in the western world are not educated enough to vote on an important decision such as the ruler of a state. A dictatorship in it self is a good idea because it allows one group to control and guide a nation of sheep. Many dictators were benevolent Napoleon, Caesar, Augustus I Ivan III and Akbar the great were all dictators at one point yet some created some very powerful and stronger nations. You cannot have a thousand different courses, you need one will for one nation. It does not matter where authority comes from only that it is there. The rule of law is a cornerstone of civilization whether the autocratic ruler of hitler and stalin or the ten commandments. People must accept the rule of law for the sake of civilization. in the words of Mao Zedong "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun" which simply means that law is upheld by though who can enforce it. In the case of the Ukraine a coup against their leader, while corrupt, was their head of state, created a situation clearly many could not handle this so they chose Russia. The way I see Ukraine is that no one cares for the Ukrainian people except the Ukrainians. The Europeans want a puppet and the Russians want a buffer. In the long term if you look at the map I would chose the Russians as the Russians share a large border with them and Belarus which is a Russian puppet the Europeans seem unlikely to be able to help the Ukraine due to European leaders being old men afraid to make a decision. At least Putin can control his nation. The Ukraine should go over to Russia unless the west agrees to station a sizable number of troops and monetary aid which the west won't. Ultimately the world is run though who has the power to run it.

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