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This emotional argument ignores the evidence and misses the point. Unfortunately, democracy is a minority taste. The Founding Fathers in their Enlightenment glow certainly considered liberty a universal principle. They also considered the emerging U.S. as a model of liberty for the rest of the world. But they had no illusions about how easy it might be to establish democratic governments elsewhere. Jefferson questioned whether democracy could flourish in all circumstances, suggesting that it might be effective only at certain times and places where conditions allowed. Today in most parts of the world it does not exist or is not understood. It is difficult to achieve in tribal, rigidly hierarchical or other traditional societies. It requires a sophisticated calculus of tolerance: the notion that if I take away my neighbor's freedom for some immediate gain today, he may take away mine tomorrow. It requires an ability to compromise, to restrain religious and racial passions. It requires a highly unusual view of authority, which in many places is seen as necessary for order and national survival, for national morale and even pride. In a democracy, authority is something to be suspected and checked unless it serves people rather than only those in power. Finally, democracy requires elites willing to give up power once they have gained it. In fact, elites often use these cultural difficulties as an excuse not to give up power.
Despite all these obstacles, democracy has maintained itself, however fitfully, in all sorts of cultures: in countries as poor and chaotic as India (though oddly enough not in Pakistan, which received the same political stamp from British rule); in a macho nation with deep economic disparities like Venezuela (while in the past eluding many countries in the same area); in a small, underdeveloped country like Botswana (while much of the region lives under one-party rule). But to assume that we can bring democracy to other lands by throwing a switch or withdrawing support from a dictator evokes the image of the divine-right monarch ready to "give" a constitution to his people. Democracy can be helped and nurtured, but it cannot be given. It was imposed on Japan and to a lesser extent on West Germany by American occupation ! forces, but that happened in the exceptional and transforming circumstance of crushing defeat. Democracy must grow organically, in its own soil. Rebellion against arbitrary rule is relatively easy, but it is extremely difficult to organize a free society. Freedom, as logicians might say, is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for democracy.