Democracy is feared now because of the notion it was responsible for the rise of Hitler. By the way, Hitler invaded 14 countries. The U.S. has attempted about a hundred regime changes and nearly 500 military interventions

Historian David Starkey talking to John Anderson, the former deputy prime minister of Australia, explained that fear of another Hitler had made democracy suspect.

'I mean, John, what we've got to understand is that the left has captured words and when it captures words, it inverts them. It stands them on their head. The word democracy no longer means. You and I know what democracy means. It means majority rule. Oh no, it doesn't. This new-fangled thing called liberal democracy, which is neither democratic nor liberal, you know, like the Holy Roman Empire. What it means is the control of the majority in favour of the minority. You stood the thing absolutely on its head. And the explanation of course is the notion that democracy was responsible for the rise of Hitler.

'Therefore you have to do everything you can to limit direct democracy. Of course you need it as a kind of symbol. You need it as a fig leaf but what you do in practice is deliberately limit it in two ways. You transfer as much power in one direction to the judiciary and quangos and in the other direction to deliberately irresponsible, unaccountable committees of experts. And that is what the Blair years did in an astonishing fashion.'

Hitler again.

He is much more obsessed about today in the West (not in Eastern Europe) than in the 1970s, when most adults had lived through the war. 

Why?

I said this in this blog a few years ago.

<The history of the Western world after 1945 is essentially a meditation on Nazism and Hitler.

The history of Eastern Europe is not. It is a meditation on the nation, freedom, Marxism, Christianity, what Unamuno called the tragic sense of life, on many things but not on Nazism or Hitler.

This is why a highly intelligent Romanian woman from an old boyar family recently complained to me, "I am tired of hearing about the Holocaust. It was 70 years ago."

The reaction against Nazism after 1945 is the theme of Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West by R.R. Reno, Editor of the wonderful First Things Magazine. I have so many books I must read and this is another for my list.

He writes,

"The violence that traumatized the West between 1914 and 1945 evoked a powerful, American-led response that was anti-fascist, anti-totalitarian, anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist, and anti-racist. These anti imperatives define the postwar era.">

Opposing Hitler is the reason America constantly goes to war and seeks to rule the world, something Hitler never hoped to do. 

Uncle Sam is the anti Hitler who has paradoxically come to resemble his enemy. 

Opposing Hitler is the justification for American wars, Israel's wars and the justification for the resistance to Israel's wars. 

You will probably have decided, gentle reader, which of the sides in Gaza and Lebanon most resembles Hitler. 

Opinions are divided. 

By the way, Hitler invaded or took over 14 countries. The U.S. has attempted about a hundred regime changes, according to Jeffrey Sachs, and carried out nearly 500 military interventions according to the Military Intervention Project compiled by Tufts University.

Admittedly the USA has had 250 years to do so but it seems at least as aggressive as Hitler.

China's last war was a brief but very bloody one with Vietnam from February 17 to March 16, 1979, in response to Vietnam's invasion of China's ally Cambodia, run by Pol Pot. Vietnam started that one and the UK and USA sided with Pol Pot too.

Iran or Persia last started a war in 1775, but the Shah did seize an island in the Strait of Hormuz.