Was watching the Timcast with Milo on and thought this point in particular deserved seperate discussion given not just recent but years of events.
The point Milo raised was that the ammendments in America can only work with a Christian society, the 2nd only works if you value life and the 1st only works in a society that regularly attends confession. He obviously has a bias but I want to expand that.
We can see that there's two aspects that is really damaging western society, constant attacks on Christianity and not really any other religion (Jew's get few but quickly slapped down by establishment) and a more individualistic view of the world.
For Democracy to work you need everyone to have a stake in it, everyone to share the same morality and everyone to want to improve their communities. On all fronts we've seen either a decrease or an abandonment of each of these values thanks to education policies, media and mass illegal immigration from conflicting cultures.
So the questions, can Democracy only exist in a fully Christian society, should the West no longer be a democracy and if so what system should take it's place, obviously not communism as no matter what that never works.
I think Christianity is central to civil liberties as given by god, it's a standard of western principles of law.
But experts and technological takeover of the most minute details of daily life have crowded out traditional existence and human experience and replaced it with data manipulation and junk science.
I will never take the black pill, but I remember when Ted Kazinsky was being hunted and captured, the news was screeching his mad manifesto about tech and data controlling our lives ... and I thought what he had to say was profound. He might be crazy, but he's not wrong.
The tech is too embedded and too necessary and too addictive now. Humanity hardly has enough room in their lives for church anymore; besides you can Zoom your favorite church service at home while toasting in your Amazon delivered jammies during lockdowns.
So is it tech itself that has enabled this disintegration of values or an active push to do so using technological advancement as a cover to implement this erosion of faith?
Thought I'd ask as I'm firmly in the camp of Nietzche in that if you kill God (religion and it's moral structure) you better create a new moral structure to work from otherwise you'll end up with chaos (see current times)
So it turns out there really is no replacement for God and trying to replace God with modernism is trying to shove a square peg into a round hole. Tech is a morally neutral entity that is being used as an instrument for more efficiently deploying man's depravity.
Mail-in voting fraud only happened in the first place because entire generations were programmed by Amazon and door dash to expect the convenience of home delivery in all aspects of life.
Voting should be difficult. It should be restricted. Only Men with skin in the game need to vote.
Grandstanding and religious jerking off aside, democracy originated, and lasted hundreds of years, believing in Jupiter and/or Zeus.
So the real question is, can democracy only exist in a Greco-Roman-theist society, since it existed there first, more successfully, and for longer.
But the answer is a tentative "no", as we've seen inklings of something approaching democracy in Christian nations as well.
I think what you're trying to ask is if democracy only works in a monoculture. Which is a much more valid question, as mass influx of diversity is also what caused issues in Greco-Roman democracy.
Probably more likely how many Caucasians rather than religion or culture.
Behavior en masse is largely genetic and so democracies forming in many different European cultures with different religions seems to indicate it was something else like inherent traits.
We'll never know more than correlation, but whether democracies in South America, Korea, Japans last will be telling, although the ones in SA could certainly be unstable because we've destabilized them...
American democracy being in the worst danger it's ever been (half of voters think elections are a sham) and also at the lowest level of Europeans is another data point.
I mean I hope that's wrong because if so it doesn't look good for America...
it probably also has to do with averages iq as well, the closer the average iq is to 100, the closer you get 50/50 on votes, the lower the average iq of a nation, the higher the rate of voting leftist policies (double whammy because you'll have higher population that needs government welfare and also not enough intelligent population to produce the tax revenues needed to support the system) and the faster the democracy fails
True, I used Christianity in this case as it was the predominate religion that was built on in the west for centuries. Going further back within ancient Rome and Greece there was democracy without requiring this religion.
I don't know if a monoculture is enough for Democracy to work as for example look at the left, if there existed a nation of just their values and beliefs then I fundamentally believe they would never choose a democracy as it requires some individualistic thought to debate which path forward than just follow the leader.
Democracy never works, anywhere. It immediately devolves into a dictatorship. granting the vote to everyone, making it a democracy, just means the poor and stupid vote to take the productive people's money. which quickly crashes the economic system, which requires an steel-fisted authoritarian to come along and murder the parasites in work camps.
you get to watch it play out in real time in the USA. welfare is a handful of years away from crashing our economy. we'll be 100% authoritarian regime in less than 10 years.
A republic can last as long as the only people making decisions are those with a vested financial interest in the republic i.e. The Elites.
Hell, democracy didn't work in its very birthplace. Athens lost the Peloponnesian War because the demagogue Alcibiades convinced the voters it would be a brilliant idea to open a new front against neutral Syracuse, ostensibly to help a minor ally (Segesta) but in reality with hopes of plundering the riches of Sicily and neutering a potential future rival to their hegemony over Greece, when they were winning against Sparta (their original enemy).
Even before the ensuing crippling defeat, the Athenian empire was hardly the benevolent force for liberation and mutual protection it pretended to be, being quite brutal to any who crossed it or tried to leave the Athens-led Delian League. Its ancient Persian enemy, which lent support to Sparta during the Peloponnesian War because Athens was hellbent on antagonizing them and fucking around in Ionia even after they had retreated from Greece itself, was at worst just as bad and at best might have actually been less shitty (certainly less hypocritical) than Athens & the Delians. Also it was the source of the Melian Dialogue, which boiled down to the reality that it was truly no less corrupt and oppressive than any more openly malevolent empires, in spite of all its leaders' claims to the contrary.
I don't put excessive stock in historical cycles repeating itself, but damn if it isn't tempting to substitute 'USA' for Athens, 'NATO/the GAE' for the Delian League, '(Post-Soviet) Russia' for Syracuse & Sparta both, 'China' for Persia, and 'literally everyone who has ever crossed the liberal world order and gotten bombed to slag for it, from Vietnam to Serbia to Libya & Syria' for unfortunate Melos. I don't think there's any chance for an optimistic ending (unless you're a weapons manufacturer or exporter of globohomo of course) to our latter-day Peloponnesian War either, not even for our 'Athens' should they win. (Had Athens won the Peloponnesian War, most likely its empire would still have eventually unraveled between internal dissent at the ruthless reality of Athenian hegemony and mounting external pressure from Persia and especially rising Macedon)
It's because you didn't define your terms or what form of government you really want. What does Democracy even mean? You can see from just the answers here that it ranges from an ideal that we never really were, to this or that specific form of state, to something that can't possibly exist, to something that is actively harmful and immoral. The modern definition promoted by those in charge is "Liberal Democracy" which is a fake gayop that coincidentally always aligns with GAE interests.
If I were to define Democracy, I would probably define it as voting in representatives to act in your interests in a place of authority. The idea of EVERYTHING being voted on by the entire populous is extremely retarded as people still need to work and maintain their communities.
That would at least represent the main democracies we see in the west.
Democracy is a shell game and universal suffrage is a farce.
I say this as an anti-theist:
Mostly.
First of all, Democracy, as a concept is fundamentally flawed. The perfect form of Democracy is Fascism: people are the state and the state are the people. The stateis the intertemporal and ethical represtative and vangaurd of the people through time. That is perfect political representation. That is perfect Democracy. That is the Leftist utopia.
The US is a Liberal Federated Republic. That is the only way to secure the "blessings of liberty". Democracy is antithetical to individual liberty because it requires the collectivization of the people into the state as it's representative. Liberal Federated Republics are representative by happenstance from local power.
So, in what type of culture can Liberal Federated Republics exist? Basically... Exactly where we came from: 1600's free market, Anti Establishment Christianity, in a 2nd Great Awakening Protestant, English, pioneering culture.
Islam is antitheitcal to any Liberal value. Islam is antithetical to Liberty. They can't co-exist. Worse: the Sikh Empire proves that the Islam can only be rebuffed by something akin to a Liberal-leaning Marshall Federation. I'm Sikhs are Liberal, I'm saying the government they had was never going to be powerful enough to repel the Mugal Empire themselves, and so required mass rapid mobilizaiton, which required mass armamentation of the general public, and required the highest strata of government be limited in it's scope to ensure the loyalty of the lower stratas. We see something similar with Switzerland facing off against the Hapsburgs.
Catholicism can not co-exist with Liberalism either. The Founding Fathers were extremely concerned about this because the bureaucracy of the literal Cathedral, and the creation of an asserted ethical order from this international bureaucracy, meant that the Catholic Church would always seek to undermine and conquer individualist dissent from the proscribed international order they established. Social Justice as a concept wasn't even created by the Left, it's origins are in Catholicism itself.
And what of other religions? These other moral perspectives do not lend themselves well to cultural mechanisms of Liberal Federated Republics. Fundamentally, the basis of Americanism is to try and make sure a Cathedral doesn't form. The great American Experiment that the founders had as a question was: who really could be American as ideology? This is why they were concerned that germans, scotts, irish, blacks, and indians couldn't really be American because of their cultures not being able to integrate into Americanism.
However, as we've seen the absolute dominance of Americanism over the centuries, and the fact that even in their time these different ethnic groups did integrate into Americanism; it's clearly evident that any person can become American as part of our propositional nation, and loyal to our culture and ideology. HOWEVER, that integration requires the abandonment of nearly all other ideologies, moral systems, and older traditions. It its the demand of every propositional nation: the people can integrate. Any person can. But most cultures can not.
To be American, you must be fully individuated (not atomitized). You must have a pioneering and entrepreneurial spirit. You can not wait for God/Truth to be explained to you, you must have God/Truth reveal itself to you. You must demand the absolute respect for your property, as it is the work of your labor, not to be involuntarily taken or "shared". You must be the builder of your community.
This concept isn't something you can find in France, Germany, Russia, China, India, Peru, Portugal, Finnland, Moroco, or Yeman. In fact, you won't even find it in England anymore. It's a dream in England to have that place, that the English think exists in their hearts, but doesn't. It's the quintessential "Little England" that has long since disappears. The idea only exists in America now, and only to a degree because it is under serious threat.
That concept only lends itself well to Christianity as a religion, and only specific kinds of Christianity; and none of those kinds are Catholic or Anglican. They're not even Morman. It's a pioneer Christianity that has God/Truth reveal itself to you if you are prepared to listen, and then allows you to thrive when you understand God/Truth. This framework can not be achieved with Islam by any means.
So, can Americanism (Liberal Federated Republicanism) work with only Christianity? For the most part, yes, but it still requires everything else and most of Christianity to adopt American values first.
I personally don't think so. Without common morals and values to rally behind, it's almost impossible to unite a nation. That's why things have gotten so bad. People are now several generations out of any kind of church or religion, and their morals have drifted so far they don't even see things like abortion, homosexuality, or lack of freedom as wrong anymore.
Most people aren't smart enough to decide right and wrong on their own, and the government is most certainly not going to have the right answer for them.
Benjamin Franklin once said that "Only virtuous people are capable of freedom". Where are the masses going to find virtue, if not through religion and God? The government? Pop culture? The mainstream media?
Religion is essential to a free country, and without it I don't think America, or any other country for that matter, stands a chance.
Correction: for democracy to work, you need every voter to have a stake in it. I don't believe giving every resident voting rights is a real criteria for democracy. Simply restrict voting rights to some desirable qualifications (no I don't want to argue about those qualifications right now).
I think we'd be fine if we had a stratified citizenry. It can just be two tiers. The ones with political power (voting rights) take on additional responsibility to help ensure they have skin in the game. The ones without political power should be kept very comfortable and sheltered so they leave the adults to run a nation.
Example: a lot of the people pushing crazy political shit now would probably be okay to chill if we just gave them a bunch of drugs and porn. They might take a handful of cash in exchange for castration as well.
Some of them would pay you.
I'm not disagreeing with you but that's essentially a Starship Troopers form of governance or this more modern take on it
I do think the flaws were widened when voting was given less requirements, we can't even go back to many of them as we have too corrupted the system as for example, we can't go back to landowners only thanks to how much of western land is foreign owned.
Starship Troopers did seem to have a mighty fine society, but I thought it might be asking too much to reach for the stars like that.
The qualifications for voting rights is a HUGE mess, and we'd probably argue for days over it. The founding fathers were really clever guys, but they couldn't predict some of the future developments, so I'm not comfortable saying land ownership is sufficient in an age where non-citizens are allowed to buy our land (also non-individuals..imagine corporations having voting rights).
The whole "magic dirt" thing is nonsense to me, as well. Citizenship should be a privilege, not a birthright. But Starship Troopers beat me there too, I think.
I just wanted to point out that part of the premise might be getting taken for granted on what democracy has to be built on top of.
I don't disagree, in the series I linked they came to the same conclusion in the epilogue (warning if you watch it you may become patriotic to a fictional state)
One of the big problems we have not just in the west but many cultures is unearned inheritance, that our predecessors struggled and toiled for something and we inherit it without fully respecting the sacrifice it took to get it. Because of this lack of recognition, it is just wasted than valued.
Only? Hard no.
Communal values and self-sacrifice can exist without Christianity, and in fact I believe the degradation of modern Christianity's fire and brimstone side in the US is basically what precipitated the failure of the wider population to defend their values and the bloodless corruption of American style democracy we've seen today.
Old-school Christianity worked pretty well, it wasn't warmongering enough to cause undue suffering and the accountability story of Heaven and Hell kept the common man from descending into an everyone for themselves scramble too easily. For those that needed someone else to tell them right from wrong it gave a healthy set of moral guidelines that promoted selflessness and communal good that allowed cooperative societies to flourish instead of coercive ones.
But old-school Christianity didn't completely throw out the more hardcore elements of the old testament like modern Christianity has done. It wasn't just blindly turning the other cheek forever to let god sort it out in the afterlife. Holding to both old and new testament carried some contradictions but looking at everything we know about humanity, those who need someone else to hand them a moral compass clearly have no problem ignoring cognitive dissonance.
If an outsider poked the community hard enough they would crusade the fuck out of them, and feel good about it whilst they did so. And if their neighbors started abandoning their more charitable values of Christianity to take advantage of the community, the old testament taught them that if they didn't do something about those bad neighbors before it got out of control, then god might just flatten their whole city or flood the whole damned planet.
Old-school Christianity knew how to put the literal fear of god even into non-believers, and because there will always be non-believers that was the only reason it succeeded. It did lead to some oppression of benign or even benevolent non-believers and some unnecessary stake burnings (I say some because even if they weren't actually cavorting with the devil, if the whole village agreed they were evil, maybe the community really was better off without them. Although there clearly were a bunch of false positives through hysteria or jealousy). But corrupt authority figures also didn't mark Christian cultures as easy pickings for taking advantage of, they would still retaliate as a community like every other culture. It isn't my ideal solution but I can't argue with the net results for fairness and happiness, compared to some of the ills of other cultures in history.
But I don't think that balance can ever be re-obtained now with Christianity specifically. The veil has been lifted, almost no-one would believe god would start dropping nukes from orbit anymore, and too many people need that belief to hold society as a whole more on the cooperative side of that balance.
For democracy to become viable again, people need to learn to personally take responsibility for and take part in policing their communities again. And that absolute pacifism is as much a vice as any other form of intellectual laziness or responsibility dodging. And maybe, to stop pretending you can't put a value on human life and start actually trying to properly weigh that value on your own terms, rather than letting those in power decide implicitly on the value of your life without ever saying it out loud, people need to learn to decide for themselves if a few dozen old people's lives are worth a million lifetimes of suffering and forced servitude. Only once the bad fear the good as much as the good fear the bad will mutual cooperation become more viable than taking advantage of people. You don't actually need god to sanctify righteous vengeance for that, you just need a shared moral system held sincerely and the will to cost effectively weed out those who would take advantage of your community.
Christianity is the only religion that allows separation of church and state where democracy can exist.
Shall we shift some goalposts?
Democracy can only exist in an country ideologically unified under a non totalitarian ideology.
The existence of the regressive left is a threat to democracy that cannot be tolerated.
A fully christian country would be a Theocracy. As far from a democracy as can be. It'd also be doing full identity politics to cancel/excommunicate hate speech/blasphemers who are not *insert ideology/religion" here.
Historically this is a falsehood. There were plenty of fully cultural Christian countries, and even with explicitly religious rulers (England for example) that did not automatically become theocracies and use identity politics as we understand them. Do try and understand the past a bit better than a leftist does.
A Christian leader is far different from a leader who is a pastor.
For more on the subject, read The Devil and Karl Marx by Paul Kengor.