ORIGINAL: General Quarters
These are interesting points. Majorities can be in favor of terrible things. But it is interesting that your examples are hypotheticals. It is hard to name an actual democracy that has engaged in anything like the Holocaust or ethnic cleansing.
Yes, my hypothetical examples were hastily conceived and not very good (except perhaps for the Yugoslavian ones). But I'm sure there must be real examples of democracies that have failed to protect human rights in particular ways. For instance, all sides in the Second World War committed deliberate mass killings of innocent civilians (mostly by bombing). I seem to remember that the USA imprisoned Japanese-Americans during the same war for no good reason.
Wasn't Serbia a democracy throughout the unpleasant wars it fought in recent times? Including ethnic cleansing, massacres, rapes, etc.
However, yes, I accept that democracies tend to be relatively well-behaved compared with other forms of government the world has known.
Regarding British democracy, it may be worth noting that the British constitution is unwritten. People don't do certain things because, well, those things are just not done. Amazing, really, that it seems to work after a fashion.
ORIGINAL: General Quarters
I guess we do disagree on whether democracy was vulnerable in the 1860s. I do not understand why you assume that it was already so established a success that the coming apart of the world's most notable (and almost only) experiment in democracy would not undermine it. The past always looks inevitable in retrospect. But it can usually go either way.
Firstly, I don't think that the successful secession of some American states would have destroyed American democracy. It is possible, I suppose, that the USA and CSA might have gone on fracturing into smaller parts, that the small parts might have fought with each other, that dictators might have arisen, and that things might have got very bad indeed. But that's just one of many possibilities, and I'm optimistic enough to think that it wasn't very likely. Another possibility: the CSA plods on for a decade or two, probably seeing its standard of living decline with respect to the USA; decides in the end to fall in line with the rest of the world and give up slavery, and then applies to rejoin the USA.
Secondly, I think progress towards democracy in other countries had its own independent momentum. Even in the worst case, in which democracy completely failed in America, I think other countries would merely have determined to do democracy in a somewhat different way -- as they have in fact done anyway. The British style of democracy has older roots and isn't based on the American way.
