Reply to Peter

Most of us observe in history a persistent, if unsteady, trend towards enlightenment. It delights us to contemplate the extent to which human freedom has expanded since, for instance, the seventeenth century, or the extent to which it had by then already expanded since the seventh. But I can't see that democracies have had any more hand in spreading that enlightenment than other sorts of governments. If grounds exist to think that systems like ours produce abominable regimes less often than the alternatives, I'd love to hear them. For my part, I just see various regimes, some admirable, others abhorrent and many in-between, scattered between the different forms of government.

The Nazi party came to power through a popular election; Stalin's regime through maneuverers within the executive. Would it have mattered if it'd happened the other way around? Would the former somehow have perpetrated even greater abominations or the latter lesser ones? To take a current example, could the foreign policy of the United States somehow become even more barbaric if, for instance, some ancestral dynasty ruled it as a kingdom?

One sometimes hears that our system supplies the twin benefits of including us in the governance of our nation and compelling our leaders to respond to our wishes¹. In my own case, for instance, I find that little could stray farther from the truth. Instead the process amounts to a triennial alienation ritual through which the electoral commission reacquaints me with the knowledge that,

1. No party for whose candidate I've voted has ever formed government


and


2. No party that even entertains the hope of installing members in either house represents my views on basic questions².

Footnotes:

1. A misapprehension that one presumes they'd resent (just as the country magistrate would resent it if his townsfolk thought he might handover a prisoner to them whenever a majority of them got into the mood for a lynching).



2. 1. Like many, I believe that the foreign policy of the USA has become so heinous that as a nation we should oppose the USA irrespective of the consequences for Australia
   
   
   and (to echo the same conviction in more general terms)
   
   
   2. If Australia must choose between doing the right thing and its survival then we should do the right thing and die with honour.
   
   I concede that in our current climate opinions like this one qualify as contentious. More than half the friends to whom I've confided it disagree, but I've never received the impression that they find the idea outrageous. Yet for all the political endorsement it receives, I might as well have as my representatives a parliament of owls.