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.
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.