How to understand western capitalist democracy and its democratic output?

First of all, the landlord, you can say the word "western capitalist democracy", which shows that there are some inherent prejudices in your mind. I suggest you put these prejudices aside when thinking about this problem.

Many people know more about the origin of modern democracy than I do. To put it simply, first of all, the European Renaissance and Enlightenment spread the idea of equality, freedom and fraternity to all aspects of society, thus changing the way of thinking of the whole European people. Many great changes have taken place in history, because all people as a whole have produced a new idea. This can be seen in the book Mob. However, because the traditional feudal forces were very strong from the beginning, the whole society had no other forces to compete with them, so even if people had the view that all men were created equal, they could only continue to endure this oppression for a long time. However, with the advent of the era of navigation and the beginning of the industrial revolution, some people quickly accumulated a lot of wealth, mastered a lot of social resources, and formed a new force, which is what we now call the bourgeoisie. After economic success, people in this class found that the traditional feudal forces were a great threat to them (to put it bluntly, an unconstrained king or Lord could easily find an excuse to kill you and rob you of your money), so this class began for a long time.

From here, we can see that the emergence of democracy is first because people realize that they are equal to others and that they should be born free. However, people also find that their freedom is so fragile in the face of power (the absolute power of individuals or groups may lead to tyranny). If they can't make their own voices in social decision-making, their freedom will soon be deprived by various excuses. This was most obvious in the early days of the founding of the United States. Because the early immigrants in the United States were deeply influenced by the European Enlightenment, many people were treated unfairly in Europe for various reasons and went to the New World, so they were particularly sensitive to their own freedom. After the War of Independence, there was no central government in the United States 1 1 for fear that the big government would damage freedom, and the states were divided. Until 1787, due to the pressure of various domestic and foreign firms, the States did not send representatives to attend the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention. At the same time, they established a federal government, and through a complicated system of decentralization and checks and balances, ensured that every department of the government would not be monopolized by a family. The direct consequence of this people-oriented system is that administrative efficiency cannot be guaranteed, but it can protect citizens' freedom to the maximum extent.

At the same time, we will also notice that the people-led country basically adopts the representative system, that is, a group of people with the same interests elect their own representatives to form the lower house, and then some people with higher social status, education and qualifications form the upper house to form the legislative branch. Instead of implementing direct democracy for the whole people like the ancient Greek city-States. To a great extent, this is to prevent the confusion caused by people's short-sightedness, impulsiveness and incitement in the early days of the French Revolution, which led to populism and "group tyranny". I quoted Linda, who said that the freedom of a few people could not be guaranteed when such "big shots and grandfathers" came during the Cultural Revolution.

Therefore, we can sum up that the root cause of "western capitalist democracy" is that people are carefully worried that their precious but fragile freedom will be deprived. Although the democratic system has its drawbacks, in terms of protecting everyone's rights, I quote a sentence from Churchill: Apart from those systems that have already been implemented, the worst social system invented by mankind is democracy. Including McCarthyism in the United States in the last century, it is precisely because of the new thing of * * * productism that Americans are very careful that their accustomed free lifestyle will be threatened, and they will lose their ability to distinguish rationally. Coupled with the deliberate incitement of politicians, their emotions will be out of control. This idea has developed into a trend of thought called neoconservatism in western countries, especially in the United States. Neo-conservatives believe that the United States should export democracy to the outside world to ensure that its democratic system will not be destroyed by foreign forces. This is definitely two-sided, and its spread among the people is also a very important reason why the United States has been waging wars abroad in the past few years.