After visiting South Africa, Eli Kedourie, “noted student of nationalism,” wrote in the South Africa International:
“If majority and minority are perpetual, then government ceases to have a mediatory or remedial function, and becomes an instrument of perpetual oppression of the minority by the majority. … The worst effects of the tyranny of the majority are seen when parliamentary government on the unalloyed Westminster model is introduced into countries divided by religion or language or race. Such for example was the case of Iraq … where an extremely heterogeneous society came to be endowed with constitutions which made no provision for diversity, and where the result was tyranny of one groups over the other groups in the society.”
Kedourie was not the only sensible scholar who pointed out the obvious. But that’s history—South Africa is history.
Why are such voices not heeded today? America’s make-up is changing. Through mass immigration, it too is moving toward becoming a racially and ethnically stratified country, in which democracy will be ever ruthlessly wielded as a weapon of the usurping majority. Yet the din for democracy grows among the conservative and neoconservative cadre.
From “Exporting Democracy”:
Political democracy on the other hand, is a “leftist” idea. Why? Because it inevitably leads to a massive consolidation of power, centralized especially in the national government.
Democracy, like leftism, is un-American. It is, in fact, a foreign pollutant that wafted over the Atlantic from the French Revolution. And like a wild weed, it took root in the republic’s soil, growing out of control.
Update I (July 2): The post addresses a specific aspect that makes democratic mass-society unworkable. The premise of Mr. Kraus, hereunder, is that all cultures are equally prone to the principles of the Enlightenment. Nothing a little show of Western pride won’t fix. I vehemently disagree. The historical population of America is becoming progressively more ignorant of the principles of freedom by the day. But dissolving the American people and electing another—which is what America’s centrally planned immigration policy aims at—will ensure freedom is never revived, as immigration policies privilege Third World immigrants. Please refer to my immigration archive. Democracy, for what it’s worth, works in small, relatively homogeneous societies, like Denmark (although that country too is becoming too riven by religious and racial strife to work).
Update II: Mr. Kraus, there is nothing “unorganized” about the “multicultural noise machine.” Identity politics is highly organized and emasculating. If the latest affirmative action case tells you anything it is that by nature, the Anglo-American WASP tends to go quietly into that good night. He is expected to so do. (In fact, others of their ilk on this blog have reprimanded Ricci for daring to seek redress, instead of doing what WASPS do; hunker down and get used to losing.)
Empires have been decimated by the barbarians from within and without. You can’t do much about your own barbarians, except try and educate them. But why import more?