MacArthur On Democracy

At least according to William Manchester in his biography of General Douglas MacArthur, American Caesar, which I'd read many years before but forgotten about until seeing this quote..  I've written of the ups and downs of MacArthur's career before.  I ran across this quote, which I found surprising, on the twitter feed of Nemets who has a wide variety of history posts.

During the war, the general was at a dinner with his subordinates.  MacArthur's chief of staff argued that America should abandon democracy in wartime, elections should be abolished and a dictatorship proclaimed.  According to Manchester's account:

General MacArthur listened for a while and then told Sutherland he was wrong: that democracy works and will always work, because the people are allowed to think, to talk, and keep their minds free, open, and supple.  He said that while the dictator state may plan a war, get everything worked out down to the last detail, launch the attack, and do pretty well, at the beginning, eventually something goes wrong with the plan.  Something interrupts the schedule.  Now, the regimented minds of the dictator command are not flexible enough to handle quickly the changed situation.  They have tried to make war a science when it is actually an art.  He went on to say that a democracy, on the other hand, produces hundreds and thousands of flexible-minded, free-thinking leaders who will take advantage of the dictator's troubles and mistakes and think of a dozen ways to outthink and defeat him.  As long as a democracy can withstand the initial onslaught, it will find ways of striking back and eventually it will win.  It costs money and at times does look inefficient but, in the final analysis, democracy as we have it in the United States is the best form of government that man has ever evolved. 

MacArthur's comments may be surprising to some who have cast him as a full fledged villain and autocrat.  They also reflect the confidence of mid-20th century Americans in the strength of their country.

The validity of the general's comment rests upon the definition of what constitutes the prime aspects of a democratic people.  If that definition changes, even if what remains is still referred to as a democracy, his comments may no longer be valid.