re: "Honduras and Democracy"

Jerry Pournelle at Chaos Manor ("The Original Blog") captured the essential issues.

Money quote(s):

"The most important news is from Honduras, where the army, the courts, and the legislature are united in opposing a change in the Constitution that would allow the country to have a president for life as they have had in Cuba and Venezuela.

Much of the world seems to see the expulsion of the president -- Constitutional and done with a supreme court warrant so far as I can tell -- as an attack on "democracy." That raises the question of what is democracy?"

&

"(O)ne needs to think hard about what means by democracy. In Honduras there is an attempt to make it mean "one person, one vote, for one man for life." The Honduras Supreme Court, its army, and its legislature have said that it must not mean that. Given the location of Honduras it's probably inevitable that the US take a stand on this. Which side should we be on? And should we choose that by national interest or by some kind of political principle? And if the latter, what is that principle? Is it that a majority may choose whatever it likes? If there are to be limits on what the majority may choose, what shall those limits be?"