The Failure of Modern Western Democracy

In my humble opinion the problem with the current system in the USA, and also Western Europe, is the introduction of too much democracy at the state and national level, and too little at the local level. Mencken once said, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”

In 1910 the first US state used the primary system, and within a few years almost all states used them for both the Democrats and the Republicans. This is not part of the Constitution or the law in any way. It is just the way that the states and the two largest political parties decided to select their candidates.

Before the primary system, the state parties would elect representatives to go to the national convention, and those representatives would smoke a lot of cigars and drink a lot of whiskey and then they would decide upon who would win the nomination among themselves. Only after the national conventions were finished did the national elections begin. Was this system democratic at the party level? Most certainly not. But the results were far better than what we see today.

The USA was designed to be a representative republic not a direct democracy. As such the people should not control the state and national governments, but instead they vote for local leaders who will represent them at the…