This is all good, but this is particularly good:
Before we settled into peaceful, democratic nations, power was decided by Kings, swords, and armies. Power rested with bloody battle and bloody victory. Democratic politics replaced battle and war in the West, but it has always been understood that democratic politics is war by other means and that if democracy is removed from politics then we can only go back to bloody battle and bloody war.
Read it all.
Deep thanks to Stephen Green of Instapundit, for Instalaunching it.
Maybe you don’t agree with the Brit who wrote the piece I’m linking to, and with me, that the Democrats are now attempting an in-your-face coup d’etat. But about half of America does now believe this. If they are trampled over, rather than a decent chunk of them being genuinely persuaded … Well, like I say, read it all.
For a long time I have accepted the idea that democracy prevents civil war. But is that true? It didn’t prevent the American Civil War for example. Or the Irish Civil War. Or the Spanish Civil War. Similarly, democracy did not prevent the outbreak of the Troubles.
The history of England is littered with examples of domestic conflict despite the existence of Parliament. I appreciate that Parliament is not synonymous with parliamentary government or democracy. But… maybe it’s relevant.
It occurs to me that the universal f….
Oh hang about. We need to define our terms. Can you have democracy without the universal adult vote? If so, why “adult” and what is “adult”? Can you have democracy without freedom? I don’t think so. What if people vote to dispense with freedom? The key thing is that those institutions created by democratic procedures have the ability to use the coercive force of the state. It’s kind of a case of you know it when you see it.
An alarming thought. Democracy only works when it reflects the underlying power structure. If some people – think the barons of old – are vastly more powerful than everyone else then democracy is not going to work. The barons will not accept the outcome and they have the power to snuff it out. Maybe this is what we are getting to in this day and age. The powerful: the press, academe, tech, bureaucrats etc just don’t think they need the little people any more.
Maybe they are right.
I didn’t want to complicate my post, but I think your last point, about how we may be back to a world where the elite always wins and doesn’t need the masses is a really important one.
Following up that point, this piece is (a) by a Marxist, but (b) quite good.