Democracy works?

Democracy works only if the country has well informed, educated people

Don’t expect to see democracy flourish in places like Afghanistan, Iraq or Saudi Arabia. I even question whether democracy can survive in America. I have seen the Teabaggers, Birthers and Republicans in general and the crap they accept as fact. What they actually believe is devoid of truth or fact and that is disturbing. These people are for the most part intellectually challenged.

In some countries like Afghanistan half of the population is relegated by design to second class status and is deprived of an education (women) the remainder is at best composed of functional illiterates. This is not a foundation in which you can establish and nurture a democracy.

I have often said that the more ignorant and backwards a people are the more religious and superstitious the country is. This is a fact, and it fits those who govern just fine because a meek and obedient population is a lot easier to govern and subjugate than an educated one would be.

We can easily see why it took humanity a great deal of effort and struggle to see its way out of the Dark Ages and into the Renaissance. We see also why the Muslim clerics and religious leaders are trying to impose a fundamentalist, rigid theocracy in those countries. Never mind education and freedom of expression and individualism. This would be by nature contrary to the survival of their religion and is to be discouraged at all costs. The Muslim religion still has to go through a reformation similar to that which the West underwent in the 14^th and 15^th centuries. Then it became possible for progress and ideas to flourish. Then it became important to foment the concept of democracy which was invented a dozen centuries earlier by a very enlightened group of people: The Greeks.

But democracy was not to take root in the West yet for another thousand years. The populations had to catch up and become worthy of it. They had to abandon the mud puddle of superstition and ignorance they were waddling in.

Even as the general population became more educated, there were the necessary growing pains and the conflicts that enlightened people would produce. We saw in the West revolutions and widespread killing, ethnic cleansing and atrocities, crimes committed by man against his brothers and a general disarray of society in general. The forms of government would often change, like the French Revolution and the Russian only to be replaced by more odious and awful regimes. We continued to have wars, some would never end the conflicts and the resentment but eventually mankind started to emerge as a more rational, pragmatic and educated sort of being. There is hope, and there is hope for those countries plagued by religious ignorance and theocracy.

Hell, there is even hope for America. If only we can contain the ambitions of the Fundamentalists.

Mankind will only flourish and thrive when religion becomes an irrelevant factor in society; then the human race will have a crack at achieving greatness and be able to pursue higher and more productive endeavors than just survive.