Comment on Open Thread Feb 29 - March 6, 2016

Mon, 07 Mar 2016 16:35:23 GMT

I am not a neoreactionary, so you'll have to find somebody else to argue their side -- shouldn't be a problem, since you mentioned that they can't shut up :-P

However I'll explain why I find their ideology interesting. The thing is, in contemporary political discourse in the West democracy became a sacred cow. One could talk about better or worse implementations, point out issues with specific governments or policies, etc. but the notion that democracy is the best and you should always try to have as much of it as possible seems to be sanctified, enshrined, and maybe even embalmed :-)

And that is a bit of a problem. It's a problem mostly because democracy (even in an idealized state) is not perfect and has systemic faults and shortcomings. Discussing those is... difficult because of the sacred-cow status of democracy. Trying to mitigate and ameliorate them is also difficult because that usually involves something other than "moar democracy!" and publicly suggesting it can be less than wise.

Note that debates about the merits of democracy were common in the XVIII and XIX century, but are almost extinct now (again: in the West. Asia is quite different in that respect).

And me, I don't like blinders but I do like sacred-cow steaks :-)

Discuss