"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others that have been tried from time to time." – Sir Winston Churchill
Though Churchill is among my top admired statesmen, I often wonder about the reality of this quote. Is Democracy the best out of the barrel of rotting fruit that is Government? Is it somehow destined to encircle the world and bring "freedom and justice" to all, Fukuyama's "End of History" ideal? Further, why do we Westerner believe that it is so great and that we are so free, willing to degrade any other country (such as Russia here on the forum often) that takes a different path.
The things we take as "rights and freedoms" do not occur in the traditions of other cultures or the early history of our own; they are the invention of the Enlightenment. This was a purely European phenomenon, is it not dangerous to force our novel ideas on other, far older nations just because "we know it is right."
Further, how free are we? This goes beyond the Patriot Act or any of that. Consider this quote for example.
“The press today is an army with carefully organized weapons, the journalists its officers, the readers its soldiers. But, as in every army, the soldier obeys blindly, and the war aims and operating plans change without his knowledge. The reader neither knows nor is supposed to know the purposes for which he is used and the role he is to play. There is no more appalling caricature of freedom of thought. Formerly no one was allowed to think freely; now it is permitted, but no one is capable of it any more. Now people want to think only what they are supposed to want to think, and this they consider freedom.”
The German philosopher Oswald Spengler wrote this in the 1920's, yet it still rings true with me today. So, which is better, Russia's and China's state television or Murdoch's Fox News and CNN? This is just one of our cherished "rights" that in the end does not seem worth preaching to the world.