I really like Churchills sentiment here.

Democracy is very flawed in many aspects in my opinion, starting with the fact that it is the rule of majority over minority.

Yet all other systems of governance seem much worse to me (any rule of minority over majority system like monarchy or dictatorship for example). Monarchy for example is great as long as your monarch is a sensible, smart, and empathetic person - but terrible when the ones after them aren’t.

I really can’t come up with a better alternative to democracy (aka majority rule) even if I think many of the problems in contemporary western society stem from that majority rule.

Of course there are many more devils in the details and democracies can vary widely across the spectrum.

To me a socialist (as in social, as in having the interest of „the people“ as guiding principle) democracy seems to be the best system humans have been able to come up with so far - the best as in resulting in a good outcome for the biggest portion of people. The Nordic states seem to have gotten it right in most aspects, even if there are many problems even there.

I wonder if there are any other good propositions or systems of governance that have been tried and proven that I have been missing (Spain's anarchist or Mexican syndicalism comes to mind, but I know too little about them to pass any judgement - plus they have been very localised systems afaict)

>..someone said that believing in democracy is like believing in the metric system..

I have no idea whatsoever the hidden meaning here.

I found it, it was "dying for democracy..." instead. The meaning? Democracy is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Humans can die for freedom. Democracy doesn't sound as such an epic thing to die for.

Good. Replacing 'believing' with 'dying' gives meaning to an otherwise odd maxim.