Is democracy truly the intrinsic good most Americans believe it to be? Is it even, as Churchill put it, “the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried”? Jason Brennan, in “Against Democracy” (2016), makes the case straightforwardly. Sure, he admits, “the best places to live right now are liberal democracies, not dictatorships, one-party governments, oligarchies, or real monarchies.” But that doesn’t mean democracies are better. “Democratic governments tend to perform better than the alternatives we have tried.

Source: Wall Street Journal November 24, 2017 21:22 UTC