Democracy Vs. Liberty

Ralph Peters says something that doesn’t drive me up the wall (for a change):

Our instinctive response is to praise the results of Sunday’s balloting in Venezuela and question the same day’s results from Russia. But, dirty politics notwithstanding, democracy worked in both places: It just worked differently – because the two electorates wanted different things.

It’s a shocking idea, I know, but it might just catch on.  He then goes on to make this a vindication of a thesis of global democratisation, which I find less compelling.  This seems not to take account of the billions of people who are not living in functionally democratic states.  Further, it seems to take no account of the understanding that global democratisation is generally a very bad thing for political freedom.  Also, the willingness of authoritarians to ratify their policies with plebiscites and elections is hardly new, and represents the easy coexistence between democracy and despotism.  Democracy may or may not sweep the world, but if it does the chances for real political liberty in the world will have gone down dramatically.  This is one reason why I have never understood the enthusiasm for democratisation, and why those who have dubbed it the “freedom agenda” have always been on the wrong track (assuming, that is, that they were ever genuinely interested in promoting liberalism, which I don’t assume).  Even if democratisation “works,” liberty will typically be the loser.