Is there too much democracy in the world? And are "we" -- the naifs who think like Sharansky and Bush -- part of the problem for having spread it?

Jonathan V. Last seems to think so, and he provides examples of bad democracies. Beginning with Lebanon:

Until a few weeks ago, Lebanon was regarded as one of the successes of the Bush Doctrine. Even in June 2005, there was trouble on the horizon, when the Lebanese held their free elections: The terrorist group Hezbollah won 14 seats in the 128-member parliament. More worrisome, Hezbollah fared best where turnout was highest.

At the time, all that could be hoped was that democracy might reshape Hezbollah. Now it is clear that, having hijacked Lebanon's foreign policy, Hezbollah has reshaped Lebanese democracy.

In an instructive essay in a recent New Republic, Annia Ciezadlo writes, "I live in a mixed Beirut neighborhood, not heavily Shia or even exclusively Muslim." But when Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah spoke on TV announcing a Hezbollah attack on Israeli ships, she heard from all around the neighborhood "a surround-sound rustle of cheers and applause. Outside, caravans of cars rolled through the abandoned streets, and the drivers honked their horns." It will come as little surprise if Hezbollah gains strength in the next election.

Throughout the Middle East, elections have produced gains for Islamists, whose vision of democracy is at least a challenge for and perhaps antithetical to liberalism, tolerance or peace. In the Palestinian territories, the terrorist group Hamas swept to power last January. It, too, shows no signs of having been subdued by the burdens of democratic responsibility. In June 2005, 17 million Iranians cast their ballots for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a man who has declared that "Israel must be wiped off the map."

What really takes chutzpah, though, is to cite the Ahmadinejad "victory" as an example of democracy. Iran is not a democracy. It is a religious dictatorship which subordinates the election process to oligarchical rule. All candidates must be vetted and approved by an unelected board of religious clerics called the "Guardian Council" -- which not only precludes any possibility of real opposition running for office, but which has the power to nullify election results and veto parliamentary decisions!

It is one thing to decry democracy where it has clearly failed, but surely Last can find a better example than the Iranian mullahcracy's shell game.

Well, to be fair, Last does offer additional examples:

There is a whole list of democracies that have turned to war: In 1995, Bosnia fought Serbia after nationalist parties won elections. Peru and Ecuador, two other young democracies, went to war in the Amazon.

In other words, democracy isn't bulletproof. Instances of disastrous democracy extend back to ancient times. Athens voted to attack Syracuse in 415 B.C. It was a grinding, terrible defeat that spelled the beginning of the end for Athens in the Peloponnesian War. And, to leap to the 20th century, let's remember that the Germans voted the Nazi Party into power; we all know how that turned out. (I'm drawing no parallel between contemporary political movements and Nazism - simply giving one more instance of free popular elections', meaning democracy, getting the wrong answer.)

Please, please. Stop. Right. There.

The Germans did not vote the Nazis into power.

This is an often-invoked canard that will not die. The Nazis never were voted into power, and the only election they ever "won" was a one-party farce of a referendum held after their seizure of power. Before Hitler took power, there was an electorial impasse in which neither the Nazi Party nor the German Communist Party could receive a majority, and of course their two parties could not possibly rule together in any sort of coalition. Ironically, the Nazi Party was losing strength. Seeing the possibility that power would elude them, the Nazis resorted to extralegal intrigue and cleverly managed to pressure the senile Paul von Hindenburg to "appoint" Hitler as head of the government (with well-known consequences). This has been meticulously documented by numerous historians, and in this case, Wikipedia (which I'll rely on here mainly because it is so hated by Andrew Keen and his ilk) has an accurate summary:

At the July 1932 Reichstag election the Nazis made another leap forward, polling 37.4 percent and becoming the largest party in the Reichstag by a wide margin. Furthermore, the Nazis and the KPD between them won 52 percent of the vote and a majority of seats. Since both parties opposed democracy and neither would join or support any ministry, this made the formation of a majority government committed to democracy impossible. The result was weak ministries governing by decree. Under Stalin’s orders, the KPD maintained its policy of treating the social fascist SPD as the main enemy, creating a fatal division on the left. The KPD, by its tactics at this time, and indeed by its very existence which terrified the middle class into supporting the Nazis, bears a heavy responsibility for Hitler’s rise to power.[7]

Chancellor Franz von Papen called another Reichstag election in November, hoping to find a way out of this impasse. The result was the same, with the Nazis and the KPD winning 50 percent of the vote between them and more than half the seats, rendering this Reichstag no more workable than its predecessor. But support for the Nazis fell to 33.1 percent, suggesting that the Nazi surge had passed its peak – possibly because the worst of the Depression had passed, possibly because some middle-class voters had supported Hitler in July as a protest but had now drawn back from the prospect of actually putting him into power. The Nazis interpreted the result as a warning that they must seize power before their moment passed. Had the other parties united, this could have been prevented, but their shortsightedness made a united front impossible. Papen, his successor Kurt von Schleicher and the right-wing press magnate Alfred Hugenberg spent December and January in political intrigues which eventually persuaded President Hindenburg that it was safe to appoint Hitler Reich Chancellor at the head of a cabinet which included only a minority of Nazi ministers, which he did on 30 January 1933.

Citing one of history's most regrettable instances of elitism run amok as a "free popular election [...] getting the wrong answer" is not only wrong factually; it is profoundly wrong in the moral sense.

That is because what led to the decision to install Hitler was grounded in precisely the philosophical argument Last makes now. (That democracy is not the solution.) I'm not saying that democracy is not extremely frustrating and often problematic, nor that democracies haven't participated in wars. Last could have cited the American Civil War, and countless other examples of bad decisions made by voters.

But if anything, the examples of Ahmadinejad and Hitler provide arguments against elitism, not democracy.

Sigh.

When I read the column, I thought these errors were so egregious as to be almost self-Fisking in nature. I thought, why bother? Aren't Inquirer readers smart enough to realize that Last simply got a couple of major historical facts wrong?

But what about the people who don't know their history? I mean, most of us are familiar with Santayana's warning about such people being condemned to repeat the history they don't know.

But what about the people who do know? Or the people who might just want to know?

Don't they count too?

Or should knowledge of history be in the hands of an aristocracy posing as a meritocracy?