“Don’t blame democracy, that’s not the problem. Not letting people really know they are free to vote themselves greater freedom without reprisals: That’s the problem.”

That’s one of the most garbled statements I’ve ever read. It makes literally no sense. Like something from a spambot.

I don’t know where Americans got this Trotskyite mania for “democracy” in their foreign policy. For much of its existence, the voting franchise only extended to a minority of Americans, as befits a large republic, as opposed to the Swiss cantons or Greek city-states.

At bottom, democracy just means we count up each sides’ rifles, and the ones with fewer agree to go home. This can be good or bad depending on the democratic majority. Places like Zimbabwe and South Africa are anarcho-tyrannies under the rule of their democratic majorities. Syria will be too, once all the crazed, ignorant Salafists get the run of the place.

Does it not strike you as ironic that the rebels’ biggest supporters are two hereditary monarchies that have zero tolerance for any political dissent?

If it ask me to do something like that I always hist CTRL-A and CTRL-C just in case. It has saved me a few times.

I had this really great reply, but lost it when it needed me to fill in some details. I’m not typing it again.

It is shameful, but not surprising, that the U.S. government has taken a “hands off” approach to the suffering of Christians across the globe. The U.S. is a post modern secular country that only seeks to appease the Islamic hordes to avoid further attacks on the homeland. Helping poor and suffering Christians will not produce one barrel of oil, nor will it calm one iota of the irrational Islamic hatred anywhere on the earth.

Pray that the U.S. finds its soul in this election year, or many more will suffer across the globe.

Harry, there is no “forward” if America is supporting Muslim radicalism, which is what we are doing in Libya, Egypt, and Syria. The notion that an “Arab Spring” will flourish by the removal of these men is clearly not happening, in fact the limited freedom enjoyed by Christians is being destroyed and the many Christians along with it. This is not an endorsement of a dictatorship, but a repudiation of the notion that these dictators were holding back political freedom when in fact they were holding back a radicalism that threatened the lives and livelihoods of Christians.

So America (and other western powers) have introduced the plebiscite, and the men voted into office will become worse than the ones thrown out.

It’s time to revisit Jeanne Kirkpatrick’s Dictatorships and Double Standards.

There’s a difference between supporting democracy and the Wilsonian importation of it in different parts of the world. Obama, Hillary, the whole crew are Wilsonian. Obama displays the Carter naivete with an army behind him. Dangerous stuff.

Second, dictatorship is, was and always will be a very bad idea in any society that is broadly educated and beyond the city-state size– plainly this is so as the population under a dictatorship needs must survive and grow or suffer and die according to the limits of the vision of the dictator: as it changes from moment to moment, era to era. Democracy is what allows the educated locally take local decisions. Democracy is the only system known that allows for success to not be burdened by political whims, courtly intrigues, pressured ‘in name only’ courts, judges.

Really I can’t believe I’m reading this at aoi.

That the Christians in Islamic countries generally were among the better educated, and so more wealthy, more productive isn’t so different than the Jews in Nazi Germany. Easily identified, easily made into objects of envy, easy to make a ‘them’ to mask over the really awful policies of their authoritarian ‘I have a vision from God’ uber-menchen overlords. In this case swap Islamic radicals for Nazis, but it’s the same story.

A dictator as ‘the way forward’? That dictator knew the Christians would return his support in exchange for being left alone, in Syria that man was not the of the most populous ethnic tribal origin. When he lost support, the role of the Jews of the WWII era is being played by the Christians there– what with no Jews left there to beat up upon.

Don’t blame democracy, that’s not the problem. Not letting people really know they are free to vote themselves greater freedom without reprisals: That’s the problem.