Every time I question either the policies or character of the “reformers” in the former Yugoslavia, there’s guaranteed to be at least one letter accusing me of sympathies for the nationalists, nationalist-socialists, etc.
My disdain for democracy really gets people’s goat. It doesn’t seem to matter if I link to my arguments against it (rather than interrupt my current text for a lengthy explanation). Since I don’t intend to explain the issue over and over again, here it is, in a nutshell:
The argument I’ve adopted is very simple. Democracy is a tyranny in which individual and property rights are subject to decisions of the majority. It cannot be restrained by laws, as laws themselves are subject to revision by vote. Even a virtuous society that respects life, liberty and property rights is not guarantor enough, as it can be subjugated by the force of government (which itself is subject to democratic procedure). Therefore, it is impossible by definition to have both democracy and liberty.
Democracy and peace are also mutually exclusive. There are constant internal conflicts between political groupings in any given democratic country. Democracies can and do start external wars (think of what happened in Kosovo, or Iraq), and once begun, these wars are extremely hard to terminate, because of popular support (“patriotism”) they draw on (think Vietnam).
That’s the essence of it. Now, here are several links to my articles that have dealt with this theme previously, as well as several other explanations I have found useful.
The most comprehensive scholarly examination of democracy versus liberty can be found in Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s Democracy: The God that Failed .
Tibor Machan makes a good case as well, today on LewRockwell.com.
For my position on the subject, see “Democracy triumphant” and “Triumph of the Will”.
As for its role in stimulating conflict, it is explained by James Ostrowski, and I applied it to the Balkans in “After ‘Liberation,’ Democracy”.