I think democracy is a means to preserve good government/stability. A means to guarantee sanity. With a perfectly functioning authoritarian government there's

I think democracy is a means to preserve good government/stability. A means to guarantee sanity. With a perfectly functioning authoritarian government there's always the danger of it going to hell. A good king replaced by bad king, or what ever. With no checks and balances there's no guarantee things won't go crazy. And obviously authoritarian governments are almost never good, because they are by definition not accountable. But a functioning democracy, which functioning institutions and laws above individuals, that's a difficult system to achieve. In a very troubled part of the world, democracy is not something that just naturally wins over armed strong men.