Actually, general criticism of democracy isn’t such a big problem. It can make you look wacky and eccentric, but it’s unlikely to get you categorized among the truly evil people who must be consistently fought and ostracized by all decent persons. There are even some respectable academic and scholarly ways to trash democracy, most notably the public choice theory.
Criticisms of democracy are really dangerous only when they touch (directly or by clear implication) on some of the central great taboos. Of course, respectable scholars who take aim at democracy would never dare touch any of these with a ten foot pole, which necessarily takes most teeth out of their criticism.
That is true, but you get into truly dangerous territory once you drop the implicit assumption that your criticism applies to democracy in all places and times, and start analyzing what exactly correlates with it functioning better or worse.
I expect it depends on what distinctions you’re using for what corelates with how democracies do. For example, claiming that there’s an optimal size for democracies that’s smaller than a lot of existing countries could get contentious, but I don’t think it would blow up as hard as what I suspect you’re thinking of.
Actually, general criticism of democracy isn’t such a big problem. It can make you look wacky and eccentric, but it’s unlikely to get you categorized among the truly evil people who must be consistently fought and ostracized by all decent persons. There are even some respectable academic and scholarly ways to trash democracy, most notably the public choice theory.
Criticisms of democracy are really dangerous only when they touch (directly or by clear implication) on some of the central great taboos. Of course, respectable scholars who take aim at democracy would never dare touch any of these with a ten foot pole, which necessarily takes most teeth out of their criticism.
I think criticism of democracy goes over less well if you have something specific that you want to replace it with.
That is true, but you get into truly dangerous territory once you drop the implicit assumption that your criticism applies to democracy in all places and times, and start analyzing what exactly correlates with it functioning better or worse.
I expect it depends on what distinctions you’re using for what corelates with how democracies do. For example, claiming that there’s an optimal size for democracies that’s smaller than a lot of existing countries could get contentious, but I don’t think it would blow up as hard as what I suspect you’re thinking of.
Yes, of course, my above characterization was imprecise in this regard.
As a potshot, let’s just fucking spell it out: genetics, and “Race” in particularly.