Treanor is talking about Democracy *and* democracy, and extends his critique he the pre-capitalist era:-
"....The issue is the composition of the demos, the decision-making unit in a democracy: it is a recurrent theme in the ethics of democracy. Democratic theory can legitimise a political community in the form of an island of prosperity, and then legitimise the selfish decisions of that community. This theoretical possibility corresponds with the real-world western democracies. Millions of people are dying of hunger and preventable disease, yet the electorate in rich democracies will not accept mass transfers of wealth to poorer countries. They will not accept mass immigration from those countries either. A causal relationship has developed at global level, between democracy in the rich countries, and excess mortality elsewhere (famine, epidemics, endemic diseases).
"This is not the only such problem with democracy. Despite its quasi-sacred status, democracy has many ethical defects which are either evident in practice, or easily illustrated by hypothetical examples.
"The treatment of minorities is perhaps the most recognised defect of democracies. Between the mid-1930's and the mid-1970's, the Swedish government forcibly sterilised thousands of women, because of 'mental defects', or simply because they were of 'mixed race'. Yet Sweden has been a model democracy for the entire period. The democracy worked, the problem is that democracy offers no protection to marginalised and despised minorities. The usual answer of democrats is that excesses can be prevented by constitutionally enforced individual rights. There are two problems with that.
"First, no constitutional rights are absolute: President Bush showed how easy it is to overturn constitutional protections. Simply by redefining American citizens as 'enemy combatants', he was able to intern them......... The Australian government detains asylum seekers in internment camps in the desert: its hard line accurately reflects the attitudes of a racist electorate. The detainees can't vote, can't engage in political activities, and have no free press, but Australia is still considered a democracy.
......"Supporters of democracy refer to Hitler and Fascism, to imply that anyone who opposes democracy is "like Hitler". That is usually intended as an insult, rather than an insight into the nature of democracy. However, political theorists do contrast democracy with dictatorship, authoritarianism, and totalitarianism, and the last of these is indeed based on the Nazi regime, as a historical model. The theory of totalitarianism was formulated in the United States in the early 1950's, in a climate of anti-Communist hysteria. Its central claim is that the ideology, regimes, and social systems under Hitler and Stalin were more-or-less identical. In the Second World War the United States and the Soviet Union were allies against Hitler, but the 'reversal of alliances' at the start of the Cold War made the theory of totalitarianism attractive.
"By the 1960's the theory was out of fashion, although the comparison Hitler-Stalin is still used by liberal propagandists. And 'totalitarian' is still the word most democracy theorists would use, if they were asked to name a political system opposite to democracy. Second would probably be 'authoritarian' - and terrorism would not be named at all. Although President Bush may speak of a 'war on democracy and freedom' by terrorists, that does not mean he sees terrorism as a system of government. It is possible to speak of a totalitarian regime, or a totalitarian society - but it is difficult to imagine a permanently 'terrorist' society or a terrorist parliament."
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