Was Democracy Just a Moment?
The global triumph of democracy was to be the glorious climax of the American Century. But democracy may not be the system that will best serve the world -- or even the one that will prevail in places that now consider themselves bastions of freedom.
by Robert D. Kaplan
1. What does Tocqueville say about despotism? Can you cite examples around 9/11?
2. What did Benjamin Franklin mean in saying that man is a “tool making animal”?
Democracies are Value-Neutral
3. What is the “necessary foundation for democracy to exist in the 21st Century” according to the author?
4. What are some examples of the weaknesses of democracy?
5. Why is morality insufficient in relation to democracy? Why has Europe worked, yet many nations in Africa and other areas have not?
6. Why would free elections in Saudi Arabia be “frightening” for Americans?
The New Authoritarianism
7. What is historical inevitability?
8. Explain the Pakistan hybrid.
World Government
9. What is the role of corporations? Revisit this question at the conclusion of the article.
10. The following is the final paragraph of the section on world government: “The level of social development required by democracy as it is known in the West has existed in only a minority of places -- and even there only during certain periods of history. We are entering a troubling transition, and the irony is that while we preach our version of democracy abroad, it slips away from us at home.” Why?
The Shrinking Domain of Politics
11. Are we conformists? Are we alone?
Umpire Regimes
12. How long will suburbia survive? Using the article, what are the vices, pitfalls and traps of suburbia?
13. Answer the question posted by the author: “Given the surging power of corporations, the gladiator culture of the masses, and the ability of the well-off to be partly disengaged from their own countries, what will democracy under an umpire regime be like?”
The Return of Oligarchy
14. What does Aristotle say about the rich and poor and power?
15. Is mass prosperity now the real engine behind governance, politics, and the new democratic ‘ideal’?
16. Will Western democracy meet the same fate as the expression of the Romans, Greeks and Christians? What lies ahead?