WORLD TROUBLES

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 59, Issue 4219, 4 December 1939, Page 4

WORLD TROUBLES

WHY BLAME DEMOCRACY? CONDITIONS ANALYSED. The following appearing in a contemporary seems to have ai particular application just now:—Nio doubt we hzyve too many members of Parliament, no doubt we are really amazing blunderers, no doubt we are financially unstable and mentally unsound, but why blame democracy? When things don’t go quite as we think they should we straightway look for a victim. The “Government” and “vested intertests” are the timehonoured and easiest of marks, for they are so beautifully vague and nebulous. _ However, in our new deep knowledge of governmental systems, gleaned from “Special Commentators” and similar experts on world affairs, we delve even deeper into the mystic, and find “democracy” to be the cause of all evils, past, present and io come. Its conception is the vaguest of all, and inane criticism really can’t do much harm, although a wonderful outlet is provided for pont-up repressions and dislikes. You can blame anything on it from armament to Armageddon. I don’t uphold democracy as an end in itself—l agree )that it is only a road by which, iwe travel but, though it is full of ruts and potholes and false turnings, it is, nevertheless, ?, serviceable and reasonably comfortable road. Under autocracy, aristocracy, tyranny, liberalism or anarchy, we should sftill have the same evils and grievances that we have now. In all probability we should have many more with them. It is not our democracy that is responsible for our troubles—it’s the democrats.