“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others,” insisted Winston Churchill. Less famously, he went on to say that the best argument against it is a five minute conversation with the average voter.
The Church has never expected from democracy more than it can deliver, but it has valued it for the freedom of conscience that is a usual by-product of it.
Not everyone is starry eyed about it as a system: “democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve,” wrote George Bernard Shaw.
