Democracy is dying; We need not mourn it

By Rory Miller and Jeff Alldritt

Governments are instituted among people in order to provide security in business, life, and thought. This security varies from the purely economic, to the social. Modern society worships the democratic republic as the ultimate form of governments that are instituted among people. However, democracy is not the ultimate form of government, and is destined to be destroyed.

Democracy is, by nature, tedious and unresponsive to a certain extent. Since it allows all to be heard through representatives, all must be heard. Since all have a vote, each vote must count. Decisions in a democracy are formed by committees and through compromises. How can such a form of government survive a severe threat? It cannot. Democracies are too weak to withstand the pressures from internal groups, all seeking to maximize the protection that the government accords them, even though it can be at the expense of fellow citizens.

History gives us many examples of these exploitations. The first democracy, Athens in ancient Greece, quickly reverted to tyranny in the face of an external military threat from Sparta, and later from the Macedonian general, Alexander the Great. Democracy was destroyed, replaced by authoritarian rule that was more apt to deal with the problems presented to the nation. The next great outpouring of popular rule was Republican Rome, where in the later years, the common citizens and the aristocrats held equal political power. The Roman Republic fell due to a combination of internal threats from powerful individuals such as Julius Caesar, economic turmoil, with the lower classes destitute, landless, and starving, and foreign threats, such as the Parthians in the East and the Celtic Gauls in the still unconquered regions of northwestern Europe. The Republic was replaced by a military dictatorship which was able to address, and for over two hundred years, control these problems. Under this dictatorship, the Mediterranean area experienced the most peace and prosperity for the area, ever.

During the years after World War 1, in the Weimar Republic of Germany, people were starving and factories sat idle, all of their workers unemployed. The country hinged on the brink political chaos as roving bands of National Socialists and Communists battled each other in the streets. As inflation deemed the German Mark worthless, citizens readily discovered that it took several wheelbarrows full of money to buy a single loaf of bread. In at least one case, a person pushing such a wheelbarrow was robbed, and the thief, instead of taking the currency, took the wheelbarrow! It was during this period of socio-economic crisis that one man who lead a faction of extremely radical fascists, promised the German people a future of hope and prosperity. As the crisis worsened in 1933, the German people were willing to take any chance. They elected this man and his party into office. Six years after his election, this man started a second world war, a war which ultimately destroyed Germany and murdered millions of innocent people.

However, these dictatorships are not the ultimate form of government, either. There are as many flaws in them as there are in democracies. Dictatorships, resorted to in crises, cannot exist in periods of prosperity and security any more than democracies can exist in periods of turmoil and war. The authoritarian British were unable to keep their colonies under control during the Revolutionary War, when the American economy was thriving.

Today, we see Communist China struggling to retain power in the face of prosperity. In a last, feeble attempt to stop the flow of history, China has resorted to massive crackdowns on the people that it is supposed to protect and represent. (Remember the invasion of Tibet and the massacre at Tiananmen Square?) Once instituted, a dictatorship will struggle against the very same historical forces that swept it into power. People who are secure have more leisure time. People struggling to survive do not have enough time to need freedom of assembly. They first need only to meet their basic survival rights. It is when people become prosperous, and therefore need to do less work to survive, that they yearn for greater freedom.

So, is the world today swinging toward prosperity and democracy, or to turmoil, unrest, and dictatorship? The answer lies around us, engulfs the daily news. Economic troubles in the greatest markets in the world. Terrorist bombings across the globe. Nuclear weapons appearing in the hands of so-called "rogue states." Is this a world of security?

Democracy may survive in such an environment. But the question is whether the people want democracy to survive or not. It might take years, but all of the democracies of the West are doomed, including our own beloved United States. Some will fall by violent revolution, and others will die through neglect and ignorance. The form of the dictatorship for the twenty-first century will not be the genocidal fascism of the twentieth, or the utopian plotting of Marx in the nineteenth. The dictatorship of tomorrow will blend capitalism with socialism in an attempt to appeal to as many of the dispossessed people as possible. Think of it as Sweden with a secret police force keeping order.

Democracy is a flawed system that is inherently unstable and unsustainable for any considerable period of time. Dictatorship, of one form or another, is the product of the fall of democracy. Dictatorship, however, also cannot survive for any period of time, and will be overthrown and replaced by another democracy. History is cyclical, and we, members of the Western civilization, are on the cusp of one of the cycles beginning again. Soon democracy will collapse and a dictatorship will rise in its place.