Rana Mitter began last week’s symposium on “The Arguments Against Democracy” (4 March) by inviting his listeners to smell the roasting beef, so convinced was he that a sacred cow was being slaughtered in their presence. And certainly, his collection of guests – two academic political scientists (Duncan Kelly and Patricia Thornton) and two writer-journalists (David Runciman and Tim Stanley) – were able to mount a convincing demolition of a political system that, as somebody pointed out, has only obtained mass appeal in the last couple of decades.What was wrong with expressions of collective will, and why did large numbers of the world’s (mostly) bygone political leaders and philosophers have such a down on them? A Chinese Communist, we were assured, rega