What is democracy? Classical Athenian democracy refused citizenship not only to newcomers, but to their descendants forever. If that sounds like an anachronism, look at today’s Japan where citizenship is practically restricted to ethnic Japanese. Less democratic but still acceptable examples abound: The United Arab Emirates, a model Muslim country, a paragon of economic liberalism, and a respected ally of the West, restricts citizenship to native Arabs; Indians and Iranians whose families lived in the country before it became a state lack political rights. Don’t like the United Arab Emirates? Take the United American States: the world’s most liberal country has ethnic immigration quotas, thus regulating the ethnic makeup of its citizenry.

Many Arab inhabitants of Israel are newcomers to this land; their families immigrated here from Sudan, Egypt, and elsewhere in the early twentieth century during the citrus boom. Their status closely resembles that of modern American immigrants, or at least the UAE’s Iranian residents. There are many Palestinian Arabs who have lived here for centuries. One problem is defining “here,” as they lived in the hills and in Galilee; much of Smaller Israel sits on previously uninhabitable land Jews developed from sand and marshes—to this particular area, Israeli Arabs are newcomers. But many generally accepted countries discriminate against native populations. We don’t need to appeal to the obvious example of Chinese Uighurs and Tibetans. Until a few years ago, France—an exemplary liberal democracy—banned Breton names, let alone Breton language.

Jewish symbolism in Israeli politics is unexceptional. Scores of European countries, including our nemesis Sweden, sport crosses on their flags. In almost every European country, Christianity is the official religion at least in the sense of public holidays and weekends. In Britain and Spain, church and state are formally integrated.

The Israeli Law of Return is not unusual. Germany encourages immigration of ethnic Germans from Russia, and so does Finland, among other countries.

Democracy cannot decide everything. A majority of Americans cannot vote to enslave the remaining minority, nor could a party which controls the congress vote to ban its opponents. Since Ancient Greece, all democracies are republican, meaning that some values are closed to democratic decision-making. In terms of democratic liberalism, there is no difference between a republic which bans voluntary slavery (selling oneself for a reasonable amount) and Shabbat work; in both cases, society restricts private voluntary actions for the ostensible public good.

Democracy is a method which can serve any goal. Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were reasonably democratic: had the communists allowed opposition parties, Stalin would still have won. Afghanis, who lost 1.5 million people in the American-sponsored mujahedeen insurrection, and Iraqis, who lost a million people in American-caused anarchy, might rightly be very skeptical about their democratic goals.

The “democracy” pushed on Israel by academic liberals and uncritical leftists is a utopia. That is the root of the problem. Nations have lived happily under almost every societal order: people work around restrictions, improve inadequacies, and generally make any societal arrangement workable. Jews can live under democratic rule just fine, but it has to be a real democracy rather than its fringe case of zero values. Society, by definition, is built around specific values; those values distinguish one society from another. A society which lacks non-negotiable values is bound to assimilate. Civil equality of Jews and Arabs is perfectly acceptable, but if they are equal politically then the state has no reason to call itself Jewish.

Again, this is not a problem of democracy as it is commonly practiced: France is a French state, and its constitution bars official status to minority languages. Egypt is an Arab republic despite a significant non-Arab population. Russia is named after the Russian people, though hundreds of ethnic groups live there. No matter how many immigrants live in Scotland, it is still named after the Scots. The Francs and Anglo-Saxons are long gone, but they left their names for their respective countries. Thus, the core group need not be a majority, it does not even have to exist as the state’s identity takes a life of its own. Often, national identities are fake to begin with: Basques and Catalans don’t identify with Spanish-ness.

Only recognition of the basic fact that a democracy need not be value-less—and particularly that it need not blind itself to the ethnicity of its core group—can prevent Israel’s erosion into yet another Middle Eastern state. Unlike liberal Jews, Arabs are not about to relinquish their culture or their attempts to bring it to the fore. If Jews decided to go ethnic-blind, Arabs would jump on the opportunity to write their values on the state’s tabula rasa.

Consider one example. Currently, Muslim countries are pumping investments into Israel’s sensitive areas. Saudis buy real estate in Jerusalem and Galilee and Jordanians pay for illegal Palestinian construction. When Arabs buy an apartment or two, Jews soon leave the building altogether, and the Arabs thus encroach on districts and entire towns. An ethnic-blind state cannot prevent Saudis from buying housing units in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City. The solution lies in recognizing the democratic reality and enforcing basic values on the entire state. Just like there is a dress code in the Vatican, so there must be one in the Jewish Quarter: Arabs are welcome to own apartments there, but they must dress like Orthodox Jews, observe Shabbat publicly, and refrain from building mosques. Just how outrageous is that? Imagine a muezzin waking up Boston residents at five in the morning. I bet that even the most passionate liberals would seek to shut the place down. France banned veils in public schools, what’s wrong with Israel banning them in public places? Israel’s core identity must be enforced to leave no room for cultural encroachers. Shabbat is a day of rest and Friday is strictly a workday, Hebrew is the only official language, state and synagogue remain symbiotic, and there must be no sharia for Muslim families—if they want to marry they must turn to rabbis. Muslim ceremonies must remain private, with no rallies or muezzin screams whatsoever. Animal slaughter must only be allowed at licensed facilities to prevent Muslims from making sacrifices and animal cruelty generally. And foremost—no autonomy whatsoever for minorities.

Israeli democracy is drastically different from not-so-liberal European examples. No European country has a coherent hostile minority which numbers 34 percent among its young. No civilized country now has to deal with a minority that owned its land just a few generations ago, and whose wound is still bleeding. A minority which dreams of taking the land back.. Morals did not change, the situation did: Europeans no longer need to suppress their native minorities. They have long passed the stage of nation-building and can now afford liberalism. Israel’s situation with the Arabs is worse than England’s with Northern Ireland. At least Northern Ireland is a compact enclave which does not seek to take over London. Israel’s Northern Ireland runs from the Arab villages in the Galilee to Bedouin towns in the Negev; the entire country is boiling. Against the backdrop of such extreme unrest, liberal policies look decidedly unnatural.

But they look unnatural everywhere. Since Plato—and in modern times, Rousseau—proponents of social engineering have tested their academic chimeras on entire nations. The Communist experiment, ethnic-blind democracy, and the peace process are links in the same chain. Often the very groups which oppose animal experiments want to experiment on Jews: would that kind of democracy work? The societal order they demand for Israel is neither a typical democracy nor an exemplary one. Rather, it is an unworkable hypothesis which is not even idealist, but demonstrably counterproductive. By refusing a realistic Jewish democracy, their utopian ethnic-blind liberalism paves the road to an oppressive Arab regime.

Arafat had a chance to enforce order on his own and competing terrorist groups. More often than not, he closed his eyes to their terrorism but retained the ability to suppress any opponents. Hamas has only grown because Israel supported it against Fatah; without our support, Arafat would have extinguished it. Theoretically, Israel could have signed a durable peace with Arafat.

Since the US Administration pushed Shamir to allow Palestinian elections, the situation started to deteriorate. Arafat became accountable to his voters, who wanted no concessions to Israel. Several figures and parties competed on radical nationalist platforms, increasingly radicalizing the society. After Arafat’s assassination, no Palestinian leader has been sufficiently authoritative to enforce an unpopular peace treaty on the public. What the outsiders view as a mutual Israeli-Palestinian compromise, both peoples see it as national defeat, and are not eager to accept it.

Transparent elections allow fringe groups to compete in elections, and bring radical discourse into mainstream politics. At the very time, when radicals must be violently suppressed, they outshout the moderates in the Palestinian parliament. The fragmented political spectrum makes a dumper against Israeli reprisal attacks: each Palestinian faction blames the resultant suffering on the others, and no group changes its ways. Reprisals are not effective when people have someone particular to blame for them; now Fatah and Hamas blame the Israeli blockade of Gaza on each other’s actions.

Liberalism allows freedom of radical speech, newsprint, and broadcast. A relatively moderate government cannot torture terrorist suspects, summarily arrest them, and disband their front organizations.

Israel cannot remain unconcerned about Palestinian societal order. Unilateral disengagement from Judea and Samaria is not an option. Recall how Hezbollah used the pretext of the disputed Shebaa Farms to continue fighting Israel after her withdrawal from Lebanon. Palestinians, likewise, would keep attacking Israel because of this or that patch behind the Green Line. They would probably continue terrorism even if we sign an agreement with them and demarcated the border, but they most certainly will do so if Israel withdraws unilaterally.

The best choice for Israel is to expel all Palestinian Arabs to Jordan and help them overthrow the local monarchy. If Palestinians are allowed to stay in Judea and Samaria for the time being, the West must forget its liberal democracy nonsense and allow a strong, brutal leader to take power there—and perhaps we can make peace with him.

In the Middle East, liberalism does not leave peace a chance.

Already the ancient empires tend to be unprofitable. The Romans conquered the entire civilized world, yet poverty abounded in Rome. If the imperial ventures had been even slightly profitable, the smallest tribute from ten to fifty million subjects would have sufficed to grossly enrich every citizen of a tiny Roman city. The Greek and Persian empires similarly did not enrich the masses. The proverbial riches of the Persian court were insignificant: even by the standards of ancient sustenance economy, a few hundred golden plates cannot be described as the wealth of a nation.

Since the Renaissance, empires have turned staggeringly unprofitable, typically bankrupting their leaders. The condemnations of the third world notwithstanding, the British Empire spent more on guarding its colonies than received in income from them. Unsurprisingly, the commercial companies which initially conducted the conquests on behalf of the crown quickly surrendered their possessions to the state, being unable to bankroll the ruinous enterprise.

Industrial economies left the states with great surpluses of concentrated wealth. Suddenly they could afford imperial ambitions of hitherto unimaginable magnitude. The Napoleonic wars, WWII, and the American campaigns from the Barbary Coast to Korea to Iraq are not unlike Alexander the Great’s wars. Why is he Great? In the twisted minds of human beings, greatness goes hand-in-hand with mass murder. Common people are not allowed to kill, and those who do must be great.

Speed makes modern imperial enterprises different. It took America just months to invade Afghanistan, halfway across the globe.

Conscripted armies made wars relatively inexpensive. If the WWII powers were forced to pay their soldiers to join the slaughter, no country could have afforded its army. At the prevailing casualty rates, even the United States wouldn’t be able to induce over 10 million men into the army with pay corresponding to the risk involved.

The power of taxation made wars hugely profitable for states. Whereas hundreds of years ago WWII would have bankrupted a country like America, in the twentieth century it ended the Great Depression. The government used the war to expand its taxation powers; the ratio of federal income tax payers surged from 10 percent before the war to 100 percent afterward. Massive government expenses bailed out the economy. The war was also a boon to trade unions, as the government pushed employees to recognize them in order to avoid labor strikes. The draft sucked up unemployed youth and put upward pressure on wages. Bureaucracy, the real power in large states, also supports wars, as they increase government regulation.

Imperial wars are indispensable for large heterogeneous states. Lacking a common ethnic basis, they fall back on the concept of nationality, which rests on jingoism and xenophobia, both of which are boosted by wars. Nationalism and wars reinforce each other.

Advanced states guard their affluence. They are sensitive to any encroachment which threatens their wealth or position. When they can fight without much risk to themselves, they do so with hysterical aggression, often pointlessly. When they cannot fight, like Sweden, they convince themselves that everything is just perfect, and submit to multicultural (culture-less, actually) hordes.

The corporate world exhibits a similar imperial drive. Large corporations had long lost profit as the objective. Instead, they have embraced growth. Both managers and shareholders love grandeur, managers for obvious reasons and shareholders because it bolsters share price through price-to-sales ratio. International specialization made corporate imperialism profitable; instead of opposing foreign invasions, the locals welcome foreign-owned factories.

As the corporate analogy suggests, imperialism is changing its face, becoming more economic than military. Advanced countries buy influence rather than fight for it. They have grown so fearful that they pay even defeated enemies; witness the American reconstruction efforts in Iraq. During the 2009 G-20 meeting, Western leaders pledged a trillion dollars in aid to irrelevant countries such as Latvia and Ukraine. The donor countries get no benefit from the aid: logically, they would benefit from other economies crumbling rather than springing up. Western leaders create their private empires by funding alliances with countries useless to their own nations. This is not unlike the monarchs’ habit of waging imperial wars unrelated to their subjects’ interests.

While the entire world redefines imperialism, Israel abandons her tiny core, Judea and Samaria.

The American values guarded by republicanism are far from universal or self-evident. So far are they from self-evident that a little more than a century ago slavery was rather popular, and only decades ago the blacks were discriminated against and women had no voting rights. Nor are their economic values universal: Swedes and communists chose social guarantees over private enterprise. The exact balance between social and private needs is a matter of societal preference. Even in the Soviet Union, private enterprise lingered in cottage industries, and even the wild capitalist societies of the early nineteenth century had basic welfare programs.

Religious values play an important role in most democracies. Some, such as Britain, do not even separate church from state. The United States’ legislation appeals to God rather than to the idols and deities of America’s indigenous population. In Sweden, which is now full of Muslims, holidays still follow the Christian canon. A significant portion of the United States’ citizens are polytheists (Hindu), given to ancestral worship (Chinese), or idolatry (Puerto Ricans), but it is still inconceivable for an American president to erect idols in the White House just like he pompously celebrates Jewish Pesach.

The ethnic-blindness of modern democracies is a fiction. Many of them have ethnic repatriation programs: Japanese, Greeks, Germans and other nations welcome back their compatriots on terms highly preferential compared to other ethnic groups. Many countries perform low-profile discrimination: the United States has different immigration quotas for various parts of the world; as you can guess, the African quota is low. Interestingly, many countries substitute economic for overtly ethnic discrimination; thus, Canada admits immigrants of particular professions not common in sub-Saharan Africa or among African immigrants in the West in general. The EU strenuously opposed Turkey’s bid to enter the union: naturally, Europeans resist being swarmed by Turkish migrants, although they are okay with Polish hordes.

Liberalism similarly has its boundaries, at least for the time being. Perfectly consensual polygamy and bestiality are banned, though their functional equivalents, adultery and homosexuality, are allowed. Courts won’t uphold someone’s right to sell himself into slavery or commit assisted suicide. Public nudity, a harmless activity, is universally prohibited. Wartime censorship abounds, terrorists are denied due process that would make conviction impossible for the lack of firm evidence, and hate-mongering against hostile states is pervasive.

Democracy and liberalism are both viable and convenient if we consider their practical implementations rather than academic varieties.

Democracy plays a trick on peace-loving Jews. As various polls indicate that the vast majority of Palestinians support a two-state solution and Israeli Arabs are overwhelmingly okay with Israel’s designation as a Jewish state, the assumption is that the deal is done. Wrong. What matters is not a democratic majority, but the extremely hostile minority of 25–35 percent who would fight Israel no matter what. In crises, the most determined group prevails, never the majority.

At any rate, the democratic solution is closed in Israel: Arabs and leftists make the majority.
Conservative Jews—and we don’t count the Likud supporters among them—just cannot prevail by democratic means. But could they revolt? A frog does not jump out of hot water if boiled slowly. Not annexing Sinai in 1956 and Hebron in 1967, being expelled from Yamit and Gush Katif, conceding to Muslim pollution of the Temple Mount and the banning of Jewish worship there; concession after concession has beaten Jewish conservatives into unconsciousness.

Add to that the conservatives’ traditional laziness. Leftists seek to change society, and are active. Conservatives seek to preserve, and are passive. Even Meir Kahane failed to collect money for his campaigns. Out of his hundreds of thousands of supporters, he could not muster eight thousand poll watchers to prevent the left from stealing his votes.

On a positive side, democracy is very weak, unsuitable for wartime or a perpetual conflict like the one Israel finds herself in. A major upheaval such as a victorious war, or perhaps a revival of Torah Judaism, could allow the conservatives to prevail over public institutions. I imagine that many centrists (people with no values of their own) would sigh with relief if military putschists would take over the government and impose a pro-Jewish, anti-Arab agenda on society, without the need for the majority to make that welcome but uncomfortable choice.

So the real question is not what political system can exist eternally? None can. The question is also not what political system outlasts all others? There is nothing inherently wrong with societies changing their system of government. The question is what political system conforms to our best goal right now?

Our goal in Israel cannot just be safety, for we would never be safe in a sea of Muslims. Even if we totally submit to them as dhimmi, Muslims are unlikely to offer Jews the relative protection we enjoyed with them for centuries. Modern Muslims are experiencing the death pangs of their failing civilization, or rather their way of life, as they have failed to develop a civilization. They are desperate, and desperation often makes people aggressive.

Our goal in Israel is a kind of Jewish state, vaguely defined as something between the Left’s “state with a Jewish majority” and a religious Jewish state. The “Jewish majority” definition is evidently unworkable: even before Arabs reach a majority, they have already been proven to exert considerable influence over Jewish lives. Israeli Arabs side with Jewish defeatists in the Knesset, attack Jews and threaten riots throughout the country, and even judge the Jews, especially the thousands of Jewish women who married the Arabs. Also, the “Jewish majority” goal is actually a means: the majority is supposed to vote the Jewish way.

What is a Jewish way? Like any other people except for religion. There is no Jewish blood, culture, or cuisine worth fighting for. Jewish people are only distinct in terms of religion. Now, many might think the prohibition against using an elevator or turning on a light on Sabbath is silly, but there is no argument that work is prohibited on the Sabbath. The Israeli state needs an ideology, a raison d’etre, like any state, and only the Jewish religion offers such ideology. When we fight the Arabs, it is evidently more inspiring to fight for “cities of our God.” When we claim our right to the land, it is simple enough to assert that God gave it to us—without dubious and humiliating references to the UN resolutions. When we want to live without Arabs, we can easily justify such policies by the religious commandment to expel the aborigines. Judaism offers valuable suggestions on dealing with the Amalek from Gaza, on cleansing the Temple Mount of the Aqsa abomination, for refusing to give away the Promised Land.

Goals of divine service and comfortable life are not mutually exclusive. In every country, people accept upon themselves certain prohibitions in order to live comfortably. We don’t turn on loud music at 3 a.m. even if our mood is great and we would love for every neighbor to know it. Comfortable social life is, first of all, the realization that all your neighbors share your way of doing things, if not your way of thinking. Comfort lies in knowing that your neighbors are like you – and they are likely to like you, and you like them. You wouldn’t want your children to socialize with the homosexuals next door, or learn from defeatists in school, or encounter missionaries on the streets. I’m not a haredi, but always feel an almost physical wave of comfort upon coming to their Mea Shearim or Bnei Brak neighborhoods. I know that I have more in common with them than with the commies from the kibbutzim.
So the question is if we can accept a degree of religiosity as a common denominator for Jews? In very basic terms, the requirements are quite simple: we don’t eat pork and rabbit, refrain from going to the office on Shabbat, keep short fasts and go to synagogues once in a while, and refuse to give up the Promised Land to Arabs within or without. In my experience, just about all the secular persons who started observing commandments in their most basic form eventually accepted upon themselves the Yoke of Heaven. Such progress is, however, voluntary. Society doesn’t look into your home fridge, but it would also not tolerate Tel Aviv restaurants serving pork. No one checks to see if you have read the Kiddush on Shabbat, but at least you’re expected to refrain from driving on Shabbat; you can drive on Sunday, which would also be a weekend holiday. Believe me, after a year of not driving on Shabbat you will start reading Kiddush, too, if only to justify your not driving. The society where all the people share basic religious values and act coherently would be fantastically comfortable.
The Jewish law in Israel would make her a very strong society. Pressing a religious society to give away the holy land is pointless. Our Arab enemies would only remain outside the country, and they will know that Jews fight the biblical way, so there is no point provoking us.

Jewish theocracy closely parallels original, unadulterated democracy. Early democracies had an electoral barrier: not everyone could be elected, but only the people whose age and status offered a good chance that they would lead society wisely. So Jewish democracy is based upon Sanhedrin rather than the Knesset. In practical terms, that means that only rabbis can be elected. Messiah, of course, doesn’t belong to Shas, but even the Shas rabbis are much more intelligent and decent than the average MK; rabbis are certainly preferable to Meretz or the Arab MKs.
Religious parties exploit the system of government, but all the parties do likewise and often squeeze much more public funds and for much more useless purposes than religious Jews do. In a Jewish theocracy, the ruling rabbis would be constrained by halacha, just like constitutional monarchies are constrained by basic law. Jewish theocracy makes for a very decent society with a laissez-faire economy with 10 or 20 percent non-military taxation.

What is the alternative to religious ideology? Zionism was the idea to bring Jews to a state of their own; that idea is fulfilled and is not moot. Zionism as seen by Herzl is irrelevant today. In post-Zionist Israel, conscription will become increasingly unfashionable, something for the lower classes. This process is known from the USSR and USA: military service, once an attraction and a matter of pride, suddenly becomes unattractive. No amount of propaganda in school can stem that development: Israeli children would soon laugh at the empty militarism: stupid people fight the Arabs, and smart people do business with them or conduct peace talks. The army would have to accommodate religious Jews, and they will change the army and become actively involved in the state’s affairs.

Eventually, even such a state would deteriorate. Religiosity would become unfashionable. The observance will become automated, and the sense of religious identification will diminish. First-century Judea retained attributes of a religious state while actually becoming an assimilationist hotspot. Its Temple, built by the non-observant non-Jew King Herod, could not possibly attract the Divine Presence. Judea was polluted—and controlled—by idol-worshiping foreigners who erected their altars throughout the country. Jews were content with shrinking the Land of Israel’s sanctity to Jerusalem, which was the only city relatively free of paganism. The dissidents fled to Qumran. Judea was not ruled according to Jewish law. The country’s destruction saved the Jews by sending us to semi-isolated Diaspora communities rather then allowing Jews to assimilate in their own country.

Theocracy and a halachic state wouldn’t last forever, but would be the best thing for now.

But the secular Jews’ hate goes nowhere. Suppose it takes two weeks to evict the Arabs; what’s next? Freeing the economy of bureaucratic ropes would be a great program for the middle class, but not for lower classes who are sufficiently intolerant to support expelling the Arabs. Thus, a month after coming to power Kahane would have lost both his religious and secular supporters. He would not have time to educate secular Israelis about the majesty of the Torah and the plain comfort of basic Jewish traditions before they started demanding increased redistribution and government jobs rather than Jewish values.

This underscores an immensely important point: revolutions are not accomplished by democratically supported rulers. Kahane’s only chance would have been to seize power by democratic means and switch to authoritarianism immediately thereafter. He would have had to suspend democratic process for a few decades until ultra-orthodoxy crashed and a new generation had been raised in the values of moderately observant Judaism.

Democracy is not alone in being an expensive social good. There is also due process, which reduces the conviction rate of innocents only by expending tremendous resources to punish criminals whose guilt is anything less than self-evident. The efficiency of any engine―or social system―is reduced at the margins of its operating range, and marginal improvements in due process come at a great cost. Only very wealthy societies can afford it.

Wealthy societies are more tolerant of the economic inefficiency of democracy. A high growth in GDP makes the detrimental effects of democratic policies less pronounced. Very complex economies are harder for democratic governments to regulate to the benefit of interest groups―which in the wealthy societies are many and have conflicting demands.

Wealthy societies are largely immune to a major political drawback of democracies, their militarism. In order to unify public opinion, governments readily embrace national ideologies. Such ideologies are most simply built around common enemies. Democracies, thus, tend to be hateful and aggressive―the militarism mitigated by the risk-aversion of wealthy. When there is no risk, as in the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, military campaigns run for years without significant objection.

Democracy, thus, is a luxury good for wealthy societies. When installed artificially in poor countries, the results are devastating. Israel and India are two countries where theorizing politicians implanted democracy amid poor economies. Immediately, socialism ensued. In economically primitive societies, the predominantly poor population cannot resist the urge to redistribute other people’s money through the democratic process. The inequality is huge, the consumption level is close to subsistence, the needs are pressing―and the people exploit their political freedoms to the fullest. Democracy turns their right to non-violent expression into the right of violent redistribution through police-enforced taxation. In line with Marx’s predictions, even wealthy societies slowly descend into socialism through powerful redistribution schemes and increased regulation; poor societies slide into socialism immediately.

Very slowly, meager economic growth in pauper democracies creates a small class of businessmen. There is usually no middle class: in Israel and India, white collar families struggle for economic existence; they are not a comfortable middle class in American sense. Through corruption of incumbents and donations to economically liberal parties, businessmen slowly pressure their socialist governments to open the economy. Socialist societies are highly entropic: their internal energy source (economic growth) is weak and energy consumption (regulation) is huge. They can only fail in their quest for socialism and reappear as less regulated societies.

The transition is painful. Great numbers of people are accustomed to welfare. The majority of citizens are satisfied with political freedoms―though the establishment silences the most extreme views―and are not up to revolution or significant protests over economic matters; there is general complacency. People habitually depend on the government for paternalistic care and handouts, and are not eager to rebel.

Poor societies can be more democratic than wealthy countries. Democracy means unrestrained jurisdiction of citizens. Only the existence of institutions for rule of law distinguishes democracy from all-out ochlocracy, the mob rule. In pure democracy, the majority must be able to tax the productive minority to death. Under the guise of democracy, affluent societies embrace a totally different political order, republicanism, under which a set of values and freedoms is closed to democratic decision-making. In such way, the societies guard their affluence and personal rights from being squandered through democratic process. In every country which is nominally democratic, stability is maintained by the balance between democracy and republicanism, the right to express one’s opinion and the protection against that opinion actually being carried into policy―at least carried too far.

The absence of fixed republican values makes Israeli democracy fatal. At some point, Arabs and leftists will muster enough votes, or rely on renegade conservatives, to repeal the attributes of Jewish state. And there will be no Supreme Court, as there is in the United States, to tell them that some values are above democratic process.

Modern political theory applied democracy to nation states where all members (citizens) have equal claim to the country and therefore equal political rights. Nothing could be further from the classical system. Mere residence in a town-state for countless generations did not confer citizenship and the right to control the state and define its character. Only descendants of the original inhabitants had those rights. Classical democracy served to preserve the cultural core of a community rather than benefit its current residents. This difference is important: modern societies praise democracy because, allegedly, it is best for people; the ancients used it because it preserves values best. Thus, two completely different societal orders with different goals are called by the same term, democracy.

The simplistic idea of democracy long ago overtook the masses. Around the same time, two other notions gained currency: equality (just how equal are smart and dull, beautiful and ugly?) and social justice (equalized incomes). Democracy is not about justice, but equality: in this case, the equality of votes. Is that just? That depends on your definition. I’m inclined to understand justice in terms of marginal utility—a natural order of things slightly tempered to avoid extreme suffering. Such an approach is both biblical and liberal. In the Torah, only matters of extreme importance are regulated: basic food for widows and orphans, court access for resident aliens, public violation of religious duties, monarchic abuses, and permanent injuries to slaves. In liberal theory, events are allowed to run their natural course, and government intrusion is kept to a minimum to prevent extreme abuses. Similar logic applies to the voting process and the control of state affairs generally: voting rights need not be equal or universal, but all people must have a say when they want to. They need not vote every five years, but must be able to vote at any time if the government veers too far from their interests. Such systems do exist. In Egypt, for example, people vote periodically on the need to hold presidential elections. By far, most prefer stability to unfounded hopes.

The extremely low voter turnout in developed countries suggests that citizens are not interested in the routine affairs of their states. And why should they be? Even senators do not read the bills they vote on. Work overload is one reason, and lack of competence in myriad matters is another, but most of all it is about complexity: the issues being legislated are too complex for any meaningful decision. The free-world countries defeated those with planned economies; but as often happens, the victors adopted the customs of the vanquished. In recent decades, the West has seen an explosion of economic regulation which only quantitatively differs from that of countries with planned economies. Every piece of regulation presumes planning: regulation is enacted only insofar as its proponents expect certain outcomes. Western economic regulation plans for economic outcomes just like the Soviets did. Instead of allocating resources directly as communists used to, Western governments twist the workings of their economy so that these resources will be allocated in the desired manner. They do implicitly what the Soviets used to do explicitly.

When legislators are not interested in legislation—and a strong case can be made that intelligent legislation in complex societies is altogether impossible—it is ridiculous to expect common voters to take much interest in legislation or in electing legislators.

Democracy is neither good or bad in large societies. It simply does not exist. What passes for democracy is rule by interest groups, and most citizens just do not care. To claim that they have a right to vote is akin to saying that everyone has a right to be a millionaire. They do not qualify to vote; they lack the necessary information, they do not have time to form opinions on myriad matters, and they are plainly disinterested. Their lack of interest in political life is just as sensible as a lack of interest in soccer or ballet. Okay, soccer does not bear on their lives, but monetary policy and military intelligence do. Should they vote on the central bank’s interest rate or publicly review intelligence information? Politics is not a straightforward commonsense enterprise. It would be impossible for common citizens to evaluate Bismarck or Richelieu. Politics touches on more complex issues than the economy, and it is far from Joe the Plumber’s domain, and immensely more complicated than monetary policy. Few people are competent in monetary policy; far fewer can claim expertise in politics.

Neither is democracy sustainable in its classic form. The power is quickly usurped by classes of professional bureaucrats and politicians. That those classes are not hereditary is irrelevant: they are still coherent groups distinguished from the masses. In the social sphere democracy erodes into socialism as all political candidates have to make bigger promises than their predecessors or competitors to interest groups who are the only interested voters around. The middle class, the victim of redistribution, is too busy with mortgage and college to defend its interest through politics against predatory taxation.

Government senses that voters long for immediate security and comfort, which it provides—to the detriment of long-term objectives. Democratic policies thus maximize short-term gain without much thought given to potentially negative consequences—as happens, for example, when Keynesian governments set out to regulate business cycles—and by removing fear from markets they leave unbridled greed, which leads eventually to mega-crises.

Contrary to common wisdom, democratic governments are typically aggressive on the international scene because foreign policy is so removed from the daily affairs of average citizens that they know almost nothing about it and cannot form sensible opinions; so they agree to whatever course the government charts for them. Political leaders, long disconnected from the masses, are close to their foreign counterparts, and love foreign policy. The only restraint on them is affluence, rather than democracy: complacent societies do not like dangerous wars. America thus fought the Soviet Union in scores of proxy wars which did not endanger the mainland, instead of tackling the enemy directly.

Democracy is oddly incompatible with politics. Strictly speaking, democracy only provides for executive power, and even that in culturally homogenous societies. Theoretically, people hold opinions and express them through voting, at which point the government must rush to implement those opinions. Two things interfere with this ideal. Politicians are necessarily activist: unlike bureaucrats, they want to form policies rather than implement someone else’s (voters’) decisions. Moreover, various groups of voters hold different, often conflicting opinions, making it impossible for politicians to know which opinion to implement. The President, for example, is elected based on his position on myriad issues. Different voters agree with different points in his platform. The fact that a majority of voters agreed with the bulk of his propositions tells us nothing about their attitude toward any specific proposition. Some theorists have attempted to solve that conundrum with functional voting: citizens would vote on every issue of significance to them. That cannot work, either, because in order to vote, citizens must be presented with a question, and formulating a question—really, a complex issue rather than a simple yes/no dilemma—is a sure way to lead the public opinion. For example, voters are likely to respond very differently to “bailing out the American banking system” than to “providing government subsidies to investment bankers.” Government, therefore, unavoidably leads public opinion in the desired direction. That would be a legitimate approach in a theocracy, where the higher goals are clear and the population must be tricked into adhering to them, or a meritocracy where the rulers know the truth and have to convince the populace of their wisdom. Democracy is different. Democratic rulers cannot lie to the voters even for the voters’ good, just like an attorney cannot lie to his client even to win his case. But lies have become a cornerstone of democratic governance: wartime censorship, peacetime PR-friendly packaging of policies, and hidden redistribution of income through minimum wage and healthcare regulation create a full-blown alternative reality for voters far removed from the objective facts. To that end, government resources are immense: it doles out precious information to friendly media, subsidizes friendly interest groups, finances friendly academics, employs speechwriters and PR managers, and enjoys a reputation for wisdom. Far from implementing the will of the voters, the government imposes on them the will of a ruling elite, and only uses the voters as dummies for legitimizing that will, using the voters’ own tax money to brainwash them.

People want freedom from oppression rather than democracy. They want to be spared significant injustice rather than participate in all affairs of state and voice their opinions on all matters. They are not capable of judging or forming meaningful opinions on matters far removed from their areas of expertise. An average person’s house is a major investment for him, but he does not concern himself with the many details of its construction; he cares only that the house is comfortable. Likewise, he wants a comfortable community rather than an entitlement to vote on its issues. Private jurisdictions are most suitable for populations. People must be able to choose a mini-jurisdiction the size of a township for themselves. People choose a particular TV model rather than vote on what models each company should produce. Likewise, they must be able to choose, freely and inexpensively, among many competing jurisdictions, essentially private communities with their legal systems, rather than vote on what a countrywide legal system should be. Jurisdictions must be offered as final products: if you like the jurisdiction of New York City, settle there; if you prefer a more conservative jurisdiction such as Louisville, they will welcome you there. Private mini-jurisdictions are not necessarily anti-democratic: some may belong to their residents and be governed by democratic vote.

Offering jurisdiction as a final product is more honest than the current pseudo-democratic arrangement. Today, voters do not know how their elected politicians will act, and these politicians’ actions frequently diverge from their electoral promises. Voters also cannot know how their elected office-holders will interact among themselves and settle the conflicting interests of their constituencies. In effect, voters cannot predict the outcomes of elections. Votes, therefore, are given not for platforms but for the personal characteristics of the candidates, the only aspect which the voters may reasonably imagine that they can know. That is why the personal lives of candidates has become so prominent in elections. The situation can be compared to a man who asks his friend to purchase a TV set for him. In current democracies, he chooses a good-looking friend for the task, gives him no binding instructions, and hopes that the TV model chosen by his friend will be a good one. In a private jurisdictions, he would go and buys himself the exact model he wants.

But how do mini-jurisdictions fit into globalized world where everything from trade to pollution is on grand scale? The answer can be seen in the Church’s history. That institution had powers comparable to those of sovereign states, and it kept expanding until it became too big to control its subjects. Within short time, many Christian groups sprung up under the Church’s nominal control. Likewise, mini-jurisdictions won’t immediately make nation states redundant. Rather, all the state’s functions which have no significant external effects will be relegated to townships. Today, nation states found themselves too small to tackle the global issues, anyway. Their associations remain inoperative because nation states are too unequal: the United States and Colombia cannot have the same voting power. Associations of mini-jurisdictions will be much more efficient in global affairs because every such jurisdiction is very small compared to the association.

In developed countries, the role of a leader’s personality is very small. Established states are ruled by laws and bureaucracy. No elected politician whose term of office is short can hope to change the vast body of laws and reorient the entrenched bureaucracy. Voters sense that policies do not depend on electoral platforms and party differences. Thus the near-random choice of a president from between two candidates in the United States.

Voter alienation is only bad from the perspective of idealistic pundits who believe that nation states can practice participatory democracy where almost all citizens are involved in the political process. No, people care only for local affairs. Generally, they have no interest in the affairs of an abstract monster called, the state. Their disengagement from politics signals that they are comfortable with the current situation by a large margin and do not expect the insignificant changes to be made by prospective leaders to make their situations intolerable.

A good quasi-democratic state would allow an elected leader an unlimited term in the office while periodically polling the voters to see if they want to hold elections. Far from theoretical, such a system operates in Egypt, vastly contributing to its stability.

But worse, voters are apathetic even about pressing matters. Several factors contribute to that phenomenon. Elections in large nation states require a great deal of money, and donors do not flock to controversial politicians who would likely jeopardize their business by changing the status quo—which is comfortable enough for the donors, since they are able to earn money in it. Also, individuals in a crowd always hope for someone else to solve their problems, or even to vote to solve them. State paternalism and ultra-long education have built a culture of infantilism among voters. But when the issues are irritatingly pressing, straightforward, and easy to understand, voters jump into action immediately. Thus, for example, the Swiss constitutional ban of minarets came into being.

With the Islamic presence in Europe—which just got rid of its Jews—becoming a real annoyance, support for right-wing parties rarely breaks about 15%. Historically, that seems to be a norm. The Nazis had a hard time reaching 18%, but once that resistance level was broken, they quickly became a dominant force. The phenomenon had to do with passion. Those who oppose radicals are usually nice, inactive people, and in terms of action one radical is equal to two or three of his opponents. Consider that the Swiss minaret referendum produced only a 53% voter turnout. Tolerant people did not bother to vote, and the radicals were disproportionately represented at the polling booths. If history is any guide, Austria and France are on the verge of radical nationalist explosions.

States are strong today, unlike Weimar Germany. Radicals will be challenged in courts with libel suits, and their legislation will be blocked on vague constitutional grounds. They either need to recruit their country’s high court judges or attain somewhat larger constituencies than 15–18%, perhaps about 25–30%. Radicals benefit from the growing infantilism of their opponents and the political establishment’s tendency to discredit itself through impudent toleration and mad foreign policies. In that sense, consider the European reaction to Israel’s assassination of Mabhouh: instead of praising the liquidation of a dangerous terrorist, they condemned Israel’s minor blunder in using forged EU passports. Armies, no longer conscripted, increasingly are becoming the refuge of the lower classes, and are thus detached from the political establishment and ideologically close to the radicals.

For the last three centuries, European warfare has not been conducted for booty or good pay for soldiers, but for nationalist reasons. Silly as those reasons were in the first place, tolerance, political correctness, and globalization make them entirely irrelevant. Armies will become increasingly less capable of meaningful actions against national enemies, but also against domestic radicals. Security services, fed up with cleaning up the ethnic gangs and terrorists whose activities are made possible by misguided politicians, might well side with the radicals, at least to the extent of harboring them.

Popular will always triumphs over political aberrations, but it rarely maintains the form of an orderly democratic process.