I find it funny that a lot of my well-meaning, lefty friends from Vancouver constantly extol the virtues of democracy while simultaneously talking about the divine nature of human rights. As I see it, democracy is antithetical to the very concept of rights. A person's rights exist regardless of popular opinion - that's kind of the point of rights.
In a goverment where everything is dictated by the will of the majority, there can be no rights. People can only have privileges which they enjoy as long as the majority allows them to. The rights which we enjoy, therefore, exist not because of democracy, but in spite of it. And, importantly, they protect us from the excesses of democracy.
I note this because there is a tendency (in Canada, the US and all the other Western countries which are currently trying so hard to bring the 'peace of democracy' to the world's many troubled regions) to assume that democracy is the supreme good - that once that is achieved, everything else will fall neatly into place. On the contrary, democracy, if established before the establishment of a strong tradition of the observance and protection of human rights will only lead to tribal warfare and mob rule. I wonder if the policy makers have considered this and accounted for it in their democratic crusade. I hope so, because the alternative is altogether too depressing.
1 comment:
Isn't a constitutional democracy the balance between a majority rules democracy and people having inate human rights recognized by the law? I would assume that's what most people mean when they say democracy.
I agree that democracy is not a flawless system, but I think most people would agree that it is better than a dictatorship. That being said, I don't know that we have the right or obligation to "bring democracy" to war torn nations... It's really a tough call though. We can't know what's the right choice to make and not doing anything is still a choice in itself... I dunno...
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