For democracy (or at least mass-democracy, which is what most self-described proponents of democracy see as the only "real democracy") to work as intended, you'd have to make a world of saints. Or rather: it can work, roughly as intended, for a few decades. But it deteriorates very quickly.
If you safe-guard it to have a stake-holder system (meaning any variation on: "those who put something into the system get a vote in how it's run, the free-loaders don't get a vote"), stability and durability will increase.
Unfortunately, in a system where your personal success as a politician is based on convincing the largest mass to vote for you, the easiest way to power is to expand the franchise to include more people. That is: people whose vote you can secure by promising them free stuff, and/or other benefits.
For this reason, even basically functional stake-holder systems tend to gradually deteriorate into mass-democracies, which inevitably collapse into internal conflict when the "free goodies" run out. (Which they always do, because the whole thing's based on legalised plunder.)
So then the elite loses the support of the "voting cattle", and they impose ever more restrictive means to retain their own power. So the very elite that created the mass-democracy then murders it when it turns against them. On the flip-side, the discarded masses turn to a faction of militant demagogues, who eventually succeed in overthrowing the old elite in a bloody conflict.
On a civilisational scale, that's the advent of Caesarism. Which is what we have to look forward to. We now live in the early days of the last eight decades (or so) of "modernity". And what we call democracy will not make it to the end of that period. What will replace it won't be mch better either, because this "Caesarism" is simply the continuation of the tradition that has initiated modernity (Napoleon!), has appeared in the middle of the period as well (Hitler!), and will finally dominate the end of the period in similar fashion.
But when those violent days of retribution are behind us as well, when we arrive in "the world after modernity", things will get a lot calmer again. In some part because there will no longer be a democracy as we commonly understand it nowadays. (Meaning that if there are representaive bodies, they'll be local, and the vote will not just be given to anyone.)
That's because all the established parties are just different masks worn by the same elite. Democracy is a puppet-show, and we live in the time where the masks begin to slip, and the deception is revealed.
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An excellent post! (I'm just quoting the above bit because your posr includes a big quote, and trying to quote the whole thing in turn doesn't seem to work.)
I'd like to add that what you describe really captures the mechanisms by which the "national empire" fails. There are variations, of course; your analysis is mostly about Britain, whereas (for instance) the French case was similar in the basis, but obviously different in the specifics. We do need to keep in mind that the universal empire functions by different rules, because its premises are different. You compare Britain -- and current America -- to Rome, but at some level, this is unfair, because they are both national entities, not civilisation-encompassing ones. They can't be Rome, unless they transform themselves in the way Rome transformed itself. (After all, the Republic became the Empire in the way it did, in paet because the Republic was unable to oversee the emerging Imperium properly.)
On the plus side for the Americans; the situation they're in is much like that of Republican Rome in its last century, so there's plenty of time and incentive to become the Empire. And as I've argued here: that's something I expect to happen.
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This is an issue common to modernity: it tries to ignore or even erase the past and its traditions and lessons. The modern mind-set is based on the self-absorbed premise the the world can be re-made by the hands of man. This kind of arrogance if typically mis-placed. (In fact, you achieve more when you recognise your limits. As Bacon phrased it: "Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.")
A system that only works if human beings change their nature to fit the system's assumptions is aways going to crash and burn.
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Will you not learn? Will you truly never learn?
I'm trying to explain to you that the mass-democracy that you defend is the mask of a highly elitist system. In reality, by defending this kind of thing, you are propping up the elite. Every single time that you fail to grasp this and keep whining about "the evil Tories!!!" that you imagine to be the most baddest of them all... every single time... you are perpetuating the very system that put them in power and keeps them in power. (Even if you rotate parties once in a while... Labour is just a different mask worn by the same elite.)
You serve the elite. I'm trying to break that elite, and I advocate for a system that will give the elite far less power than it enjoys today.
Yes, your refusal to engage with what others actually say is by now well-documented. Note that, as before, I have diligently answered every single point you raise. You, also as before, hypocritically refuse others the same courtesy, and answer only with straw-men 'arguments' and cherry-picking.
You'll have to be more intellectually honest, if you want your arguments to be in any way respectable.
However, as I said above: the core issue is that you are a servant of an elite without understanding it, and you simply cannot accept the truth of the situation because that would wipe away your whole world-view. It's pointless to argue further, if you're so bent on deceiving yourself.
But as before, I must request that you actually engage with what others say, if you insist on participating in a discussion. You clearly don't want to do that, so then please just go have some oher discussion elsewhere. Because at present, it's just an endless repetition of you straw-manning, others responding in detail, you explictly ignoring the response, and just deliberately straw-manning a bit more.
That's troll behaviour.
