4/1
There was an article on the web that caught my attention. It describes how many people across Asia have become frustrated over their democratic systems/governments, and how this resulting disappointment can possibly threaten the democracy in Asia.

For example, the article states that in a recent survey of political attitudes only 41 percent in Taiwan think that democracy is the best form of government, and only 49 percent of Koreans think that it is the best alternative.

The article goes on to state that in countries like Thailand and the Philippines there is so much hostility towards the democratic process that many people favor having some form of authoritarian type of government.

This attitude is not new, historically speaking, there has always been a segment of the population that thinks democracy is the most dangerous type of decision-making institution.

For example, in history class we recently finished discussing the four types of government found in ancient Greece, and one of the things students learned was that the people were sometimes too easily influenced to make bad decisions, and because of this danger other earlier forms of government, like tyranny and oligarchy, were favored by some its citizens. In other words, democracy is not always seen as the end all by everyone.

After reading the article I couldn’t help but think how divergent our attitudes of government our compared to those in Asia. In the US we may complain about politicians and our system, it is practically a national pastime, but no one seriously considers getting rid of what we have and replacing it with some type of dictatorship.

However, in Asia it seems that some people would be perfectly content to have this type of arrangement in place. China is able to function and even prosper with a government that severely limits civil liberties. And as the article points out, Asian countries do not have the same history with democracy that people in western countries do.

Moreover, this brings up a hot topic right now, which is whether western style democracy is the best system government for everyone. The current administration seems to think so, everywhere President Bush goes you can hear him say how democracy is “on the march”, etc.

The link to the article is
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12016837/site/newsweek/