Democracy has its points but it isn't Everything

[cthulu2016]

Democracy is only as good as the Culture within which it exists. Simply holding votes does not magically improve people.

The idea is that certain rights and values are embeded in culture and safeguarded from the possible mal-effects of democracy before you start voting on everything. and that requires a long organic process of, among other things, self-secularization. It cannot just be dropped from an airplane.

Case in point—I find myself not much caring whether 51% or 49% of Iraqis favor the child-bride bill.

A draft law before Iraq's parliament that would legalise the marriage of girls as young as nine and restrict women's rights in matters of parenting, divorce and inheritance is a political move to define the identity of the country's majority Shias before next month's election, officials say.

The law, which was approved by Iraq's council of ministers two weeks ago, has generated widespread debate in Iraq six weeks before the first national poll since US forces departed. International human rights groups have described it as a disastrous regression in the status of women.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/20/iraq-child-marriage-bill-human-rights?commentpage=3

[CJCRANE]

1. What happened to the neocons' claim they were spreading "liberal democracy"?

This doesn't look like liberal democracy to me.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

2. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Lord Acton

Even when that power is held by a democratically elected majority.