Democracy and its Discontents
Read my article Democracy and its Discontents in the new issue of the American Conservative. Here are a few paragrpahs: Democracy & Its Discontents Voting doesn’t produce peace—much less desirable outcomes—in societies that lack the foundations of a liberal order. by Leon Hadar As the Nazis were about to capture power in the aftermath of the last democratic parliamentary elections in Germany in March 1933, there was no indication that the German Communist Party was mounting any concerted response, reflecting the belief among its leaders that the new Nazi-dominated government was the “dying gasp of moribund capitalism” and that Hitler’s government would create the conditions for a “revolutionary upturn” and accelerate the momentum toward a proletarian revolution. The expectation that the Nazis would help ignite a Communist revolution made sense at that time, if one was a Marxist believing in a doctrine that assumed that realities were predetermined by political and economic forces—