You can lead a horse to water...

nationalreview.com

It is easy to export the outward symbols of democracy — constitutions, elections, parliaments, and the like — but you cannot export the centuries of experience and development that made those institutions work.

Is Democracy Viable?

Mar. 2, 2011
Thomas Sowell

We cannot take liberty for granted — even here.

Those who see hope in the Middle East uprisings seem to assume that they will lead in the direction of freedom or democracy. There is already talk about the “liberation” of Egypt, even though the biggest change in that country is that a one-man dictatorship has been replaced by a military dictatorship that has suspended the constitution.

Perhaps the military dictatorship will be temporary, as its leaders say, but we have heard that song before. What we have also heard, too many times before, is the assumption that getting rid of an undemocratic government means that it will be replaced by a freer and better government...