Posted on 10/22/2019 4:28:40 AM PDT by Kaslin
What happens when democracy fails to deliver? What happens when people give up on democracy?
What happens when a majority or militant minority decide that the constitutional rights of free speech, free elections, peaceful assembly and petition are inadequate and take to the streets to force democracy to submit to their demands?
Our world may be about to find out.
Chile is the most stable and prosperous country in Latin America.
Yet when its capital, Santiago, recently raised subway fares by 5%, thousands poured into the streets. Rioting, looting, arson followed. The Metro system was utterly trashed. Police were assaulted. People died. The rioting spread to six other cities. Troops were called out.
President Sebastian Pinera repealed the fare hike and declared a national emergency, stating, "Chile is at war against a powerful, implacable enemy who does not respect anything or anyone and is willing to use violence and crime without any limits."
How does a democracy that has spawned within itself a powerful and implacable enemy deal with it?
Last week, tens of thousands of Lebanese of all faiths and political associations rioted in Beirut and Tripoli to demand the overthrow of the regime and the ouster of its president, speaker of parliament and Prime Minister Saad Hariri. All must go, the masses demand.
In Barcelona, Friday, half a million people surged into the streets in protest after the sentencing in Madrid of the secessionists who sought to bring about the independence of Catalonia from Spain in 2017.
In all of China, few enjoy the freedoms of the 7 million in Hong Kong. Yet, for five months, these fortunate and free Chinese, to protest a proposal that would have allowed Hong Kong residents to be extradited to China, stormed into the streets to defy the regime and denounce the conditions under which they live.
These protests have been marked by riots, vandalism, arson and clashes with police. "Hong Kong streets descended into chaos following an unauthorized pro-democracy rally Sunday," writes the Associated Press. Protesters "set up roadblocks and torched businesses, and police responded with tear gas and a water cannon. Protesters tossed firebombs and took their anger out on shops with mainland Chinese ties."
What are the Hong Kong residents denouncing and demanding?
They are protesting both present and future limitations on their freedom. The appearance of American flags in the protests suggests that what they seek is what the agitators behind the Boston Tea Party and the boys and men at Concord Bridge sought -- independence, liberty and a severing of the ties to the mother country.
Yet, because the Communist regime of Xi Jinping could not survive such an amputation, the liberation of Hong Kong is not in the cards. The end to these months of protest will likely be frustration, futility and failure.
Perhaps it is that realization that explains the vehemence and violence. But the rage is also what kills the support they initially received.
In 1960s America, the first civil rights demonstrations attracted widespread sympathy. But the outburst of urban riots that followed in Harlem, Watts, Newark, Detroit and 100 cities after Martin Luther King's assassination sent millions streaming to the banners of Gov. George Wallace in the campaigns of 1968 and 1972.
When the "yellow vest" protests broke out in 2018 in Paris, over a fuel tax, the demonstrators had the support of millions of Frenchmen.
But that support dissipated when protesters began smashing windows of boutique shops on the Champs-Elysee, assaulting police and desecrating monuments and memorials.
This reversion to violence, ransacking of stores and showering of police with bricks, bottles and debris, is costing the protesters much of the backing they enjoyed. In the trade-off between freedom and order, people will ultimately opt for order.
Yet, one wonders: Why are these outbursts of violent protests and rioting taking place in stable, free and prosperous societies?
Chile is the most stable and wealthy country in South America. Catalonia is the most prosperous part of Spain. Paris is hardly a hellhole of repression. And Hong Kong is the freest city of China.
If the beneficiaries of freedoms and democratic rights come to regard them as insufficient to produce the political, economic and social results they demand, what does that portend for democracy's future?
For, despite the looting, arson and attacks on cops in Hong Kong, Xi Jinping is not going to order his satraps to yield to popular demands for autonomy or independence. Nor is Madrid going to accept the loss of Barcelona and secession of Catalonia. Nor is the conservative Chilean government going to yield to the street rebels and revolutionaries. Nor is Paris going to back down to the "yellow vests."
Yet, one wonders: If the "end of history" and worldwide triumph of democratic capitalism thesis has, as most agree, been disproven, is it possible that the Age of Democracy is itself a passing phase in the history of the West and the world?
Democracies have been shown to be an unmitigated disaster throughout human history. That's why this country wasn't designed to operate that way.
Tripoli is not in Lebanon, Pat.
Dunno Pat.
Sounds like typical democRATs to me.
(democracy is mob rule)
It is if the Left gets its way. In fact, George Orwell’s nightmare will become reality.
Adolf Hitler’s thugocracy is alive and thriving in the “progressive” movement and the Democrat Party.
Looked at a map lately?
That is precisely what a democracy looks like. Which is why we have a Republic.
Actually they did, Pat. Didn't you write in plain English that the government repealed the transit fare hike that triggered the riots?
Sad that I won't live to see the second great awakening that will inevitably follow. It's not sad that I likely won't live to see the worst of it either.
Yes, it is. There is also one in Libya, but there is a Tripoli roughly 40 miles north of Beirut.
The Left and Leftist press are Despotic:
Despotism (Encyclopedia Britannica film, circa 1946)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaWSqboZr1w
“A community is low on a ‘Respect’ scale if common courtesy is withheld from large groups of people on account of their political attitudes.”
“...in a downright despotism opposition is dangerous whether the despotism is official or whether it is unofficial...”
“A community rates low on the ‘Information’ scale when the press, radio, and other channels of communication are controlled by only a few people and when citizens have to accept what they are told.”
“See how a community trains its teachers”
“...these students are being taught to accept uncritically whatever they are told. Questions are not encouraged.”
“And if books and newspapers and the radio [and facebook and youtube and...] are officially controlled the people will read and accept exactly what the few in control want them to. Government censorship is one form of control. The newspaper that breaks the government censorship rule can be suspended. It is also possible for newspapers and other lines of communication to be controlled by private interests...”
Democracy (Encyclopedia Britannica film, circa 1946)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx25aMPvbJo
“The newspapers of a real democracy meet these tests...”
Newspaper checks.
1. Balance of coverage
2. Disclosure of source
3. Competence of staff
The rise of globalist “Woke Capitalism”(i.e. Fascism)is a sure sign that so-called “Post-War Liberal Democracy” has failed miserably.
Watch what happens apres Trump.
I think we're seeing the problems of post-scarcity societies. People have "stuff". People have "time on their hands". But they want more. They may not exactly know what they want. But they are dissatisfied with their life. They aren't struggling (which tends to occupy the mind) but rather they are somewhat bored and sulky.
I see it in the US. The young Leftists hate Trump. Why? Do they even know? What are his crimes? But none of that matters. People just sit in Starbucks sipping their lattes and dreaming of rioting in the streets because they think life ought to be so much better.
I have no idea how this gets better. The devil makes work for idle hands and I think the world will see more and more idle hands.
Various forms of governing work in varying degrees of success or failure.
100% of which depends on the super majority spirit of the people in that country. 51% doesn’t work. Godless societies will always implode into despot hell holes regardless of the government. The most powerful person can be destroyed with the introduction of just a few toxic microbes. A minority of truly evil citizens can destroy the whole of the country. Right Hillary?
Just from the title, we can only hope....
KYPD
> “Democracies have been shown to be an unmitigated disaster throughout human history.”
Yes, students of history going back centuries have known governments run by pure democracy end up in disaster which is why the American Founders modeled our government as a Republic.
The only places democracy worked well were found in Ancient Greece in city-states where the population was small and homogeneous. The Founders knew that democracy needed to be kept very local but the wider nation needed to be a Republic.
In a nutshell, when ambitious persons aiming for power can’t get their way within a democracy, they become belligerent, what we might call fascist. Then, within the construct of democracy the same ambitious persons will bribe, bully, assault, compromise, control all aspects of life outside elections to get their way. This leads to loss of freedom and loss of representation. Eventually a mob takes control and the democracy is run as a criminal enterprise like a mafia. The idea of democracy becomes a joke, a false emblem of something that sounds good but is rotten to the core.
If democracy is kept small and confined to local districts, it serves a purpose. Even if a mobster gains control of the local district, that mobster runs into the brick wall which is the Republic. Hence, the evolution of the local mobster is to grow power within a local jurisdiction such as cities like Chicago, NY, LA, Baltimore, etc, springing what Obama called the ‘Urban Archipelago’ which becomes in certain instances powerful enough to control entire states. Now we see such controlled states forming Voter Compacts which aim to do end runs around the Electoral college which is a construct to protect the Republic. In this context, democracy is a poison that must infect and kill the Republic which is in its way to controlling power.
“Tripoli is not in Lebanon, Pat.”
Yes it is. It is also in Libya.
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