The Crumbling Dream of Global Democracy

I, like the increasing majority, read my news online. I am disturbed by my callous indifference to the latest report of terrorism in the Middle East. Afghanistan, Pakistan,..... today it was Iraq.....over a hundred dead in a suicide bombing. As a South African I have developed the ability to assimilate shockingly tragic news without flinching, because you hear the same type of report again and again.

But c'mon, it's absolutely crazy over there!

This last terror attack was motivated by the desire to disrupt democratic elections in the near future. It's amazing how people with a religio-cultural fervour do not want the masses to have their say. (or they don't believe in the accuracy of the process.)

The question rises in my mind: Is democracy going to win out in the end? Is the future of our planet democratic? Is democracy the best form of government for all the people of the earth?

My choice would be to spend the rest of my days in the center of the democratic universe: America. I, like most Westerners, have a healthy mistrust of office holding leaders. I have confidence that I won't abuse my own personal liberty. I am also prepared to accept the challenge of living amongst those who abuse their liberty and as a result create related socials ills. (materialism, greed, pornography, drug abuse...)

The American invention of democracy was in reaction to the collision between the European rights of kings, nobles and lords and the awareness of the rights of the individual sparked by the enlightenment and renaissance. The notion that I don't have to be a faceless peasant at the bidding of the local lord or an expendable pawn in a prince's army emerged out of a distinctly European experience.

Admittedly, world exploration and colonization exported these mindsets around the globe, but as the influence of the West diminished in places like the Orient, Middle East and Africa, it emerged that the villages of our world still valued the paternalistic leadership of elders and wanted to restore strength to their chiefs and kings.

You see, the awareness of the individual is not a given in every culture. I have observed the unity of the African community. (My apologies here if the weakness of my African anthropology proves offensive.) The village acts as one, if the chief is strong, then the community is strong, so the chief eats first and the women and children last, and nobody objects.

African democratic processes often miss the spirit of a private, secret ballot, because no other decision is made that way, why should we vote as individuals? Who gives me the power to decide to empower our traditional decision makers? I often feel that traditional African communities enshrined a desire for democracy in their communities simply on the basis of their majority over the controlling colonial communities. Where it not for the debt and trade links to their previous colonial masters, I think they would abandon the insanity of democracy altogether.

Is the middle east not in a similar struggle against our democratic idealism? Even moderates would probably be more confident in benevolent autocratic religious leaders than submit to the uncertainty of constitutional elections.

Biblical prophecy seems to predict the rise of a strong global autocratic leader with the power to reign in civil liberties and enforce conformity to sinister policies in the pre-apocalyptic period. Whether democracy is the mechanism used by such a leader to gain control is unclear, what is clear is that the spirit of liberty and democracy evaporates during the time of their rule. Further predictions indicate that this sinister power isn't broken by free and fair elections, but by the arrival of a liberating army under the command of King Jesus Christ.

Democracy will be dead and the all the people of the world will live in peace and justice. Go figure.