There are problems with democracy. “Democracy” and “freedom” are not necessarily the same thing. In some cases, democracy could become a tyranny of the majority. In Russia, the majority of voters are happy and far better off than they have been for decades, but without a free press that addresses events and opinions from across the political spectrum, whether they are popular or not, and when dissent is brutally suppressed through arrests, assassination, and harassment, it is certainly not free.

In Iraq, democracy has become a recipe for anarchy. How can a nation that is so deeply divided that they must settle their disputes with guns and bombs ever learn to solve their differences in orderly elections?

In the West, we face a different problem. The schism between the political left and the right is more or less fifty-fifty, so that the only way to tip this balance seems to be by cheating. In Canada, the left- right divide has almost paralysed our parliament, and in the USA the people in power are ignoring the concerns of half their population. I will write more on this dichotomy later.

Of course, it is hard to dispute that democracy is the best possible system of government there is. Dictatorships, whether hostile or benevolent, left wing or right wing only make things worse. Communism is an experiment that failed on a global scale. However, our society is in a deep state of denial of the problems that the world’s democracies are facing. We have to recognize them if we are to ever solve them.