What is better: a communist democracy or a capitalist dictatorship? I would say the latter. Yet, Democrats and neocon Republicans keep saying we have to support Ukraine because the “dictator Putin” is invading the “democracy Ukraine,” and we need to spread more democracy in the world — as if democracy is some great and noble ideal.
What makes America great is not its citizens' democratic government, but its citizens' freedom from the government. American freedom did not come from its democracy; it came from its economy: free market capitalism. That is why America used to be great but no longer is. America has been embracing evermore communism each year since its inception, deteriorating individual freedom along the way. Today, America is more communist than Russia: it has more government regulations on the economy and more socialist programs.
Technically Russia is also a democracy because Putin was elected via vote. But even if you're a Russian election denier and still call Putin a “dictator,” that should not warrant condemnation in itself. I would rather live in a dictatorship with free market capitalism than a democracy with communism. This is not to say Russia today has pure free market capitalism, or that I would rather live in Russia than the US (they could both use much more freedom).
I am merely using the US and Russia as an example of the propagandization of the words "dictator" and "democracy." We have been trained to associate one with good and the other evil, but neither is inherently good or evil—it depends on how the system is implemented. Citizens will have more freedom under a dictatorship where the economy is free than they will in a democracy where the economy is heavily socialized and regulated (as it is in the United States today).
America doesn't need to spread democracy or “protect” precious democracies from dictatorships; we need to spread capitalism and protect the free market from communists. If a dictator (like Kim Jong-Un) is preventing free market capitalism from flourishing, he should be overthrown. But if a democracy (like the US) is also preventing free market capitalism from flourishing, its government should be overthrown as well. Americans cannot liberate foreign countries until we liberate ourselves. Fix the economy in America by getting rid of all the communist programs and needless regulations, then maybe we can start worrying about helping other countries do the same.
Contrary to the propaganda taught in schools and propagated by the media, there is such a thing as a benevolent dictator—not that such a leader would be perfectly moral and selfless, but the ruler's self-interests can be aligned with the masses. It has happened in monarchies of the past. I would welcome an American dictator or “Caesar figure” who could get rid of all the communism in the US government and use his authoritarian power to uphold and protect the free market economy. That would produce much more liberty than a democracy where people continually vote away my freedoms and force me to subsidize more communist policies.
Just as a dictatorship is not always bad, neither is a democracy. A democracy could produce a free economy as well—the United States did originally, after all. A democracy will only uphold the free market if its citizens appreciate capitalism. However, in our current democracy, students are taught more Marx than Mises.