Will Democracy Fail (or has it done so already)?

Given the relatively short history of democracy and ideas such as individualism, freedom, human rights, it is my sincere hope that the current ugliness creeping up on Western democracies, and the fallout it is having across the rest of the globe, is but a blip on the historical radar. I'd like to hope that it's a kind of concerted last gasp effort by the forces of oppression (ie the psychopaths who can't stand the thought that anyone else out there has a thought or does something that contradicts their own narrow and constricting world-view. It's called 'tolerance' and 'sharing', penises! Look it up!). Since learning recently that the Conservative Party of Canada consists mostly of those educated in the warped, elitist views of Leo Strauss and his school of thought (as are Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and that happy bunch) and that their goal is regime change -and not just in dictatorships but here at home, especially here at home, insidiously using fear and lies to gain public support for policies that seek to homogenize society into uninteresting and lifeless forms- I have found myself looking at this 'annoying' election here in Canada a little more seriously. Wait. Who am I kidding? A lot more seriously. Sleeplessness type seriously. And being the one little person in the scheme of things that I am, I find myself seeking thoughts that can help counteract the darker ones that threaten to paralyze me with dread if they get elected. One of those 'helper thoughts' goes something like this: Even if this gets worse before it gets better, we can always hope that things have progressed far enough by now that we will see more clearly, and quickly, through the lies and spin when push comes to shove. That if individual freedoms continue to erode under such governments, that some threshold will be reached at which point most people will stop and ask what's going on. Let's just hope that we would do this before a threshold of a different sort was crossed and it was now too late without a bloody, disruptive civil war. Oops. Darker thought just crept up and stabbed poor, little, naive, helper thought in the back!

Okay let's go with some darker more paranoid ones then, just to get them out on the table and expose them to the light:

Question: Will Canada be hit by a terrorist event if the Conservatives are elected? If so, why? Because terrorists don't like conservative values? Yeah right! I guess what I'm asking: Does Canada need a terrorist fear-inducing event to create a similar milieu of fear that now currently exists in the US and allows the current administration and law enforcement organizations to trample on the constitution with no immediate repercussions? (Leo Strauss would think so.) And, if so, why would it happen when the Conservatives get elected? Hmmmm? (god I hope I'm just a bit paranoid and not right on this!)

What might be done by such a government for the sake of supposed fiscal reform, tax cuts, necessary spending tactics that would actually be a way of so eroding our society's ability to prosper and evolve socially, such that we may be incapacitated us from rebuilding what we lose? I don't have any answers for that, really. And besides author Jane Jacobs in her rather hopeful book, given it's title, Dark Age Ahead, can do it infinitely better than I ever could hope to, and without the taint of paranoia.

How will the very identity of 'being Canadian' be radically altered and denigrated on the world stage by the actions of a government who would have sent troops to Iraq, helped back missile defense and wants to scrap our commitment to Kyoto?

When I'm asking "will democracy fail" I'm not only or even specifically talking about this time in this election. What I'm wondering is if it will fail totally and completely in the future because of things we do now, because of what we allow to happen now, because of our laziness and stupidity even in the midst of such apparent freedom. And if it is heading toward failure, at what stage of the game are we today? Are we only at the beginning? Can what happens now determine the outcome no matter where we are at? Are things already very much in motion to see it mutated into something that is 'democracy' in name only? Is it too late? Was democracy a 'necessary evil' so that a new type of monarchy could emerge from out of the ashes of the dark ages? Or is democracy truly the ultimate challenge to the age old problem of tyranny? And the crisis stems from the fact that only the would-be tyrants have infiltrated the systems we designed to try to keep democracy from harm and have subverted them, surreptitiously, to their selfish, hateful, anti-life delusions? (Okay, so that was a loaded question bordering on rhetorical....)

Can't really think of how to end this so I'll just ask a question that's more of the moment: Why is it that when we get disillusioned with government we don't want to go over to the 'good', self-less side of the political spectrum but, rather, we get all angry and intolerant and freaked out or something and put up our collective "dukes" and vote conservatively!? It is so disheartening and, well, confusing. I mean just look at the recent polls! Sure the conservatives are ahead but their leader is almost the least popular (just above the guy who represents the party we're all sore at)! Now if that doesn't seem like a schizophrenic way of seeing the political landscape I don't know what is! We want change. W get pissed and our anger seems to breed collective intolerance, insecurity, and I don't know what happens exactly but we suddenly start to vote for the guys who seem angry just like us even though we don't actually like them or have much else in common. Christ we're stupid sometimes!