Before he faced the crowd to discuss the topic of Democracy is Not Worth Dying For, David Runciman – the celebrated podcaster and Cambridge professor of politics – joked to me and our fellow panellist, Masha Gessen: “The answer is obviously ‘no, it’s not’, so why don’t we all just agree and go home?”

Gessen, the formidable Russian-American journalist, smiled in agreement. We were about to address the Festival of Dangerous Ideas in Sydney. Most had come to hear these intellectual superstars define the limits of political self-sacrifice; I cheerfully served as a bolt-on historian.

Gessen described democracy as an indefinable “dream” and said that they agreed with Trump’s running mate JD Vance (“words I never thought I’d say”) that they’d only be willing to give their life for their children.

I sought refuge in Monty Python. “What did democracy ever do for us?” I asked the crowd, echoing the scene in The Life of Brian when members of the People’s Front Of Judea wonder what the Romans had ever done for them (aqueducts, roads, sanitation, medicine etc).

“Well, there’s the vote,” I said, a freedom that took centuries to gain. “And, um, free speech. And civil liberties. And equality before the law. And the freedom to worship and to fall in love with whomever we like.”

But, the most beautiful and obvious thing about democracy is the freedom to unelect rulers. Can you imagine being ruled by someone like Scott Morrison or Donald Trump for 40 years? Electoral democracies self-rejuvenate, injecting new blood and energy into government.

In short – and I couldn’t believe I had to say it – there’s no alternative to democracy; only ways of improving the democratic model.

Runciman is one of many famous intellectuals who think democracy is in palliative care: “Nothing lasts forever,” he warns in his book How Democracy Ends: “At some point democracy was always going to pass into the pages of history.” Similar alarm steams from How Democracies Die, by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. And portentous substacks (email newsletters) are ringing the doom........

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