A Critique of Democracy

Is “anything and everything” too broad of a topic for a web log? I suppose that’s what my blog name implies, but after writing mostly about animation and the occasional novel or graphic novel for a couple years, I’ve felt odd writing about works of history in the last month, and now I’m branching out even further.

Well, I’ll consider starting a second blog or something if people complain.

Anway, the twelfth book of the year is the rarest thing of all for me to cover: a new release. Michael Anissimov published his e-book A Critique of Democracy: A Guide for Neoreactionaries only about a week ago. Since I’ve already finished books on the Habsburgs, Hohenzollerns, and an e-book collection of Sir Robert Filmer’s works, it seemed on-topic enough to take a detour from The Guns of August. The book is short (about seventy printed pages), and offers an overview of some of the basic arguments against democratic government. Anissimov maintains an even tone throughout and frequently refers to other authors and scholars, including several who wouldn’t agree with his own position, so the book reads more like a good textbook than a work of polemics. For example, though the enthusiasm for democratic government began in the Enlightenment, he doesn’t take a dogmatic stance on that movement as a whole. He writes, “The Enlightenment was an experiment. Some parts of that experiment did well, like the Scientific Method, others not so well, like democratic government.”