Sunset of the West

Interesting radio segment entitled Sunset of the West on the Brian Lehrer Show which is an interview with author Dambisa Moyo.  I had always thought that

1. democracy is not necessary for a thriving society,
2. democracy can not survive unless the masses are educated, and
3. the US has been pushing democracy as a way to allow US companies to enter foreign countries and exploit their resources.

Some notes:

• Numerous failed and failing democracies in South America and Africa and Eastern Europe and even India proves the point that democracy can not work overnight and can not be supported when the masses are uneducated.  The fact that the US continues to push democracy down the throats of other countries can only be explained by their need to get US companies into the country to exploit their resources.

• For thousands of years until the United States was formed, societies around the world advanced without democracy at all.  Thankfully democracy is not as incoherent and ruinous as Karl  Marx's communism and no one has taken an equally narrow-minded and ruinous "philosophy" of Ayn Rand's objectivism on a large scale (well unless you count Alan Greenspan).  But is it the only type of government that works?  You hear the phrase "democracy is not perfect but there is nothing better".  Although as a kid I accepted this statement, it seems to me now that it is plain rhetoric with  no substance.