D.Turtle wrote:Simon_Jester wrote:Is this such an obvious thing, that it's worse to have a state which periodically has its democracy violently reset to "secular" by a military coup, rather than having one that progressively turns out harsher and harsher on minorities and non-religious people in the community because of majority acquiescence in religious rules?
Why one or the other?
Well, I suppose you could have neither.
For example, you could have historical Britain, which hasn't needed military coups to prevent democracy from turning into rule by popular strongman.
Or you could have an outright tyranny that has always been a tyranny of some kind, and which just changes from theocratic tyranny to military dictatorship and back.
But if you have a country where, say... 30% of the population are fundamentalists, 30% are willing to acquiesce in the fundamentalists' program, and the other 40% want the right to a secular lifestyle... how do you prevent that from becoming a case of oppression against the secularists? Should you want to prevent it?
Or if a popular strongman consistently wins 55% of the vote, but is steadily undermining constitutional limits on his power and trying to set himself up as "president for life" with a network of cronies running the government for him... is that desirable, simply because the strongman keeps winning re-election?
These are realistic problems, Turtle, they're not just something I made up. I don't think I'm out of line in raising the issue.
Or, to make my point clearer: How the hell do you think democratic societies develop? Do you think military coups are a good way to develop a more democratic society? Or maybe, just maybe, a democratic society develops through the political struggle that happens when groups try to undermine/abolish that democratic rule.
Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. Democracies have collapsed before.