Quote:
Originally Posted by Rip
BTW How in the world can you use the hypothetical of "The People" electing a person that would advocate taking their right of self rule away?
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several possibilities, some of them are:
- lacking nowledge and awareness of the true nature of the party or person,
- wanting to bring a strong leader to power that must not necessarily be a defender of democracy - people can prefer a king, a tyrant, a clergy, a plutocrat, an ideologist, and they can prefer these for very many different reasons, obviously.
That you claim it to be an Amerian mission to democratise the world does not mean that all rest of mankind necessarily sympathises with that - not to mention that America supported and supports regimes that are anything but democratic, that it even has hindered and fought against democratic movements or decisions democratically made if they are an obstacle to American economic interests, and that it repeatedly did not care if it messed up a situation in a far away country that got democracy enforced onto it by american efforts, the experment failed, and afterwards the situation was worse than it was before. The claim over democracy is often not more than a shield behind which to hide the pushing of it's economic interestes and advantages, dominating other markets by establishing monopoles there.
In fact there are several cultures and ideologies that get supported by the ordinary people that have not much in mind with values that usually are attributed to "democracies". Islam is such an example. For many people, Sharia is much more important as a basis for a state, than this strange Western obsession called "democracy". If you think that all world is just craving for getting blessed by American missionary spirit and US democracy, than you totally overestimate and overrate yourself. Some want that, others not. And it is not only the tyrants and leaders not wanting it, but often it is the ordinary population. For many people in the world, there exist more important things than western values and democracies, like it or not. Not to mention that the state our western democracies are in is far from being a convincing representation of our idealistic claims about ourselve.