By Bret Ludwig. Copyright 2008 Commodore Bret Ludwig.
Democracy works in Switzerland pretty well. This is to say,
Switzerland functions well, and it is a highly democratic society.
Singa****e works, at least by certain standards, very well too. It is
not much of a democracy, and though there are people there working to
make it more democratic, they are viewed by the government and the
powerful residents the same way Libertarians and Progressives and
people campaigning for, say, jury nullification or teaching Esperanto
in schools are here: not with brutality but essential disinterest, as
eccentric and foppish people of no consequence. The status quo-single-
party rule by the PAP-is seriously objected to by no one, not so much
out of terror as the general feeling that monkeying with a functioning
social system might be bad.
Still other societies: except for the nations of Western Europe, the
North American continent north of the Rio Grande, and Japan, most of
the remaining 100-plus technically sovereign nations on the planet, in
fact, simply don't function very well at all. Democracy has not
improved them, and in some is simply incomprehensible as a
governmental system: to steal a line from perhaps the most brilliant
academic of the Twentieth Century, they _can_ no more comprehend the
functioning of such a society than could the leopard in his cage at
the zoo.
What differentiates these societies?
Singa****e in many ways is similar to Switzerland. One critical
difference is its population. It is a biracial nation, composed of
Chinese and Malaysians, two groups who elsewhere get along poorly.
Other societies with these two groups all have the Chinese as an
overclass, numerically smaller, but generating the vast majority of
the gross economic product of the nation. Resentment simmers on both
sides, the Chinese considering the Malaysians lazy and stupid, the
Malaysians considering the Chinese of being underhanded, unethical,
ethnically cohesive, and disrespectful of tradition and manners and
custom. (This of course exactly mirrors the complaint raised against
another minority ethnic group throughout the history of the West.) In
Singa****e, everything works-but at a cost. Virtually every possible
behavior or activity is either mandatory or prohibited. One may do
nothing not preapproved of by the State, own only that expressly
approved by the State, spend one's money only in ways the State
considers good. Those who don't like it are invited to leave.
Violators are swiftly and brutally punished, and most citizens are of
incapable of regarding any accused offender as othar than wrong, would
never do what displeases the authorities.
Yet this authoritarian state has no exodus. Singa****eans are quite
happy in this land, where dirt and crime and the typical street clamor
of a Bangkok or a Manila are absent. Business goes on smoothly, and,
just as in Franco's Spain or Mussolini's Italy, smart, ambitious (but
within the prescribed limits) people can do very well. Still, the
flavor of "Logan's Run" permeates the place.
Switzerland, by contrast, is a different kind of high-functioning
society. While law enforcement is efficient and respected,
transgressions do not end in whippings, canings and executions. While
possession of firearms is prohibited in Singa****e and violation is a
potential death sentence, Swiss citizens-entirely apart from the
mandatory selective fire battle rifle in every male's closet-are the
most highly armed civilian population on earth.
In Switzerland, which has not been at war for half a millennium,
despite the intensity of weapons distributed throughout the society,
decisions are made by the ballot and not the bullet. Switzerland is
thoroughly democratic, radically more so than the nation that loudly
brays about and occasionally invades faraway nations to ostensibly,
and ludicrously, impose it at the bayonetted muzzle of its inadequate .
223 assault rifles. While the United States is a mildly democratic
republic founded by an aristocracy-of-quality of Constitution-drafters
who were almost all born here of three to five generations of
ancestors who also were, at a time when the country had the lowest
percentage of immigrants in what was to be its history, and who were
indispudibly far more aristocratic than democratic, who clearly and
rightly feared democracy in its pure state as though it were anhydrous
sulfuric acid, Switzerland is a genuine democracy-the most functional
and successful since the ancient city-states of Greece.
The causes and consequences of this are well worth considering.
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