democracy

My first thought on waking this morning: what a disaster it will be if the house of lords becomes a democratically elected body!
The principle of democracy has become a demagogue which nobody dares to question. The extreme form of democracy is the USA where most states have capital punishment, penal systems that Gengis Khan would have been proud of, a legal system riddled with corruption and excess, little state health care, and an enormous number of people who live, either in an underclass, or well below an acceptable poverty line.
Far from being a solution to all of these basic social problems, over-democracy exacerbates them.
The concept of 'people ruling' is based on an idealised notion that those people are thoughtful and objective about their politics. Oftentimes this may be the case, but every now and again, when the chips are down and everything seems uncertain, a wind of change can sweep through a population like a raging hurricane sweeping all common sense and thoughtful wisdom before it. Even in my life I have seen many examples of this. It is at such times that democracy stops being a 'good thing' and becomes a dictatorial tyrant. I am thinking of two examples: the election of Tony Blair in 1997, and of Margaret Thatcher in 1979. There are many more. In both cases, the overwhelming mandate handed to the new government for changes in policy were often successfully checked by a House of Lords which had not been drastically altered in shape by the raucous voice of the people. If however the House of Lords had also been democratically elected then that same raucous voice would have swept into that chamber a rubber stamp for every drastic policy change that the new government was advocating.
One reason why our democracy has 'worked' over the past couple of centuries is because of the way in which the Second Chamber acts as a stopper against an over-powerful government. Were the lords to be elected isn't it all too clear to see that it could no longer work like that?
I repeat: when things are chugging along nicely and everyone feels ok democracy can and does work. (any system would probably work come to think of it.) When things go wrong - as they frequently do - the Voice of the people will become negative, eager to overturn any status quo, and determined to elect a bright young thing who promises the earth. When the bright young thing is then given the enormous mandate for change, it often turns out that people realise, all too late, that they had never understood what that bright young thing intended to do in the first place. The bright young thing is turned, overnight, into a potential tyrant by the very people who voted for him, not because they understood what he or she was about to do, but because they were sick of the mess they had previously been in.
The role of the house of lords. (and I cannot see any other) is to prevent an overwhelmingly powerful government from getting its way too easily. It is an essential buffer. That is its sole purpose in life.
My great fear, in the current crisis, is that people who haven't read their history books carefully enough, and havent fully understood the role of the Lords (and no government will want to do that because of way in which it blocks their power) will make sweeping changes that can never be undone, and the balance of democratic power in Britain will be seriously damaged, perhaps permanently.
I am a democrat. Churchill said that democracy was the lesser of two evils and I think he was right. Someone must be given power to do things and obviously it is better if the people feel that they have had their say. But democracy is not a perfect solution to all ills. Like a great sea, a gentle happy crowd can turn into an angry irrational mob given sufficient provocation.