THE ANCIENT GREEKS WHO INVENTED DEMOCRACY WOULD BE SURPRISED AT WHAT WE DID TO THEIR INVENTION

Vince Dhimos answered a question on Quora.
 
IS GIVING SOME COUNTRIES VETO POWER IN THE UN AGAINST THE RULES OF DEMOCRACY?
 
https://www.quora.com/Is-giving-some-countries-veto-power-in-the-UN-against-the-rules-of-democracy/answer/Vince-Dhimos
 
As in Animal Farm, where “some are more equal than others,” democracy is defined variously from one system or country to another. It’s so complicated that Russia claims the US has no democracy while the US says the same about Russia.
 
They say that Greece invented democracy, but the United States invented Western democracy, and if Pericles came back today and saw US “democracy” in action, he’d laugh himself silly.
 
In the US, the presidential candidates are trotted out every 4 years before the TV cameras and asked questions about how they would run the country.
 
Now, as we all know, the most important issues the US faces are:

• An unwieldy debt that threatens the US, and the global, economy --

 

• Foreign wars that have been ongoing almost since the end of WW II --

 
And yet… and yet… ever since the first televised TV debate, no debate moderator has ever asked any of the presidential candidates how he or she would reduce the debt or how he or she would stop these endless wars. It’s not nice to talk about these things in a polite democracy. And it’s even more gauche to ask if such a democracy is really a democracy.
 
In other words, there has been an unspoken rule throughout the country that these two issues, war and debt — the most important by far, mind you! — may not be discussed by candidates. Therefore, while Americans are all urged to vote and blamed for everything if they don’t, they are not even allowed to know how the candidates stand on the most vital issues. In fact, in most cases, the candidates have nothing at all to say about these absolutely life-and-death issues for their country. Only in a few rare instances have candidates gone around the moderators and discussed them anyway.
 
Ross Perot bucked the system when he pushed for fiscal reform that would have paid down the debt. But he was forced to run as an independent because neither of the two established parties wanted the voting public to even consider this issue. He was considered a kook for his unorthodox views. And yet most Americans warmed up to his ideas. The problem is, the gatekeepers of the established parties were very adroit at making the public think the only candidate with a brain was an unbalanced misfit.
 
Ron Paul ran an excellent campaign (though many were disappointed when he went independent) and managed to persuade millions of Americans to send him their widow’s mite as it were in the form of what he called “money bombs.” He brought in millions of campaign dollars that way because he wanted to end the endless wars while also reining in the Fed, and the people in the middle warmed up to those ideas. Clearly millions of Americans were ready to vote for him and if the Republican Party had chosen him, he would have had a good chance of winning the election. Instead, the Republican candidate What’s-‘is-Name with the official stamp of approval lost to Barack Obama, who was expected to end war but instead dilly-dallied around in the Middle East pretending to wage a “War on Terror” but in fact capitulated to ISIS, which famously toured the Syrian and Iraqi deserts in their shiny new white Toyota trucks in broad daylight while Obama’s ordnance-packed A-10 Warthogs stood idle at the air bases as their pilots watched ISIS pouring into the big cities where they could only be eventually routed out at great expense of civilian life. Naturally, when the Russians and Syrians eventually got around to routing them, this fine Nobel laureate for peace blamed all the carnage on Assad and imposed savage sanctions on his hapless people while threatening to Tomahawk what was left of his military after ISIS got done with it. Only Russia, the country we accuse of not being democratic, saved the Syrians. 8 years later, the Syrians and Russians are still grappling with ISIS and a half dozen other terrorist groups in Syria’s Idlib, with the US nipping at their heels sternly warning them to lay down their arms and let Obama’s protégés, now backed by Caliph Erdoğan, have their way with the citizens of Idlib and Aleppo, using their now-famous methods of governance, ie, beheadings, kidnappings for ransom, sharia law with ample amputations of limbs, etc. [see Russian report: all Syrian opposition fighters are terrorists].
 
Ok, so the US got another of its famous black eyes in the Middle East, but folks, that’s democracy and it was the “will of the people.” Well, at least the will of the reluctant people who voted for the lousy choices as usual.
 
So what can we say about the veto rights in the UN for those who are more equal than others? It all depends on what you call “democracy.”
 
I imagine Pericles is laughing in his grave somewhere. 
 
So let’s see. Your question was whether the UN is complying with the rules of democracy. Well, as I think I have shown you, except for might makes right and survival of the fittest, there are no rules in Western “democracy.” So there is nothing to worry about. If enough people think a UN rule has been broken, the people in charge – and I don’t mean The People (o dhimos, as the Greeks called them) – can just make a new one to replace it.