"[W]hy are people who are already free, and who are by any relative measure materially and politically better off than those in more repressive states, attacking their own systems of government?"
Tom Nichols offers a punchy answer: We are unhappy because we have what we want. (This is meant to apply to those of us who live in Western democracies.)
In the book Our Own Worst Enemy, Nichols makes the case that many citizens in the West expect their governments to provide them with constant material comfort, solutions to every personal problem, and protection from any discomfort or inconvenience.
Nichols writes that perfection can't be a measure against which we should measure governments (though of course it's important for citizens to voice their complains, and to demand certain standards). Appropriately, he asks whether "liberal democracy has somehow failed us on its own terms, and made life less free, less prosperous".
I think it would be useful to probe empirically what exactly citizens are expecting and demanding from their governments, how they are benchmarking the state of the economy, and similar questions. (I tried to answer "when are citizens satisfied with the economy?" in the first chapter of my dissertation.)
It seems quite important to understand to what extent democratic governments are failing to deliver what they realistically could vs. being asked for the impossible.
I'm generally on board with the argument that democracies' vulnerabilities are self-inflicted and it's indicative of weakness when democrats are blaming external "threats" for their own problems. As for internal challengers, Nichols writes:
Political entrepreneurs have taken a dangerous mixture of entitlement, social resentment, and the natural human fear of change and fanned these emotions into ever larger flames of anger and dissatisfaction. After surviving multiple global conflicts (including the Cold War), after defeating oppressive institutions like slavery at home and totalitarianism overseas, after weathering multiple depressions and recessions...
His conclusion, if true, is striking: "it seems that the only challenges democracies cannot overcome are peace and prosperity."
Tom Nichols offers a punchy answer: We are unhappy because we have what we want. (This is meant to apply to those of us who live in Western democracies.)
In the book Our Own Worst Enemy, Nichols makes the case that many citizens in the West expect their governments to provide them with constant material comfort, solutions to every personal problem, and protection from any discomfort or inconvenience.
Nichols writes that perfection can't be a measure against which we should measure governments (though of course it's important for citizens to voice their complains, and to demand certain standards). Appropriately, he asks whether "liberal democracy has somehow failed us on its own terms, and made life less free, less prosperous".
I think it would be useful to probe empirically what exactly citizens are expecting and demanding from their governments, how they are benchmarking the state of the economy, and similar questions. (I tried to answer "when are citizens satisfied with the economy?" in the first chapter of my dissertation.)
It seems quite important to understand to what extent democratic governments are failing to deliver what they realistically could vs. being asked for the impossible.
I'm generally on board with the argument that democracies' vulnerabilities are self-inflicted and it's indicative of weakness when democrats are blaming external "threats" for their own problems. As for internal challengers, Nichols writes:
Political entrepreneurs have taken a dangerous mixture of entitlement, social resentment, and the natural human fear of change and fanned these emotions into ever larger flames of anger and dissatisfaction. After surviving multiple global conflicts (including the Cold War), after defeating oppressive institutions like slavery at home and totalitarianism overseas, after weathering multiple depressions and recessions...
His conclusion, if true, is striking: "it seems that the only challenges democracies cannot overcome are peace and prosperity."