From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Thu Aug 01 2002 - 21:27:57 MDT
Randall writes
> > In other words, I'm saying that
> > while a nation is democratic (in every historical example)
> > it does not kill millions of its citizens.
>
> This would appear to be true, if you stipulate that you are
> not counting nations where the vote is fixed, or the citizens
> are coerced into voting a certain way, or few inhabitants can
> vote.
Yes, that's what "democratic nation" means to me.
> However, it also appears that democratic societies tend to
> slide into being less free, and eventually non-demcratic.
Is that really the case? Besides Weimar Germany, have any other
examples? Probably some Latin American countries that flip-flopped
a while, but are now finally democratic (only, of course, weakly
so compared to Western countries and Japan).
I would make the claim that the reverse is true: once a nation is
democratic---say for two generations---it doesn't revert. Whereas
autocratic nations which have been that way for centuries have
become and are becoming democratic by the score.
Lee
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