I agree that its better. Would you say its a coincidence that if that question was posed to the warlord he would give a similar answer? "better than starving to death, growing up in a chaotic anarchistic hellhole with no stable values imposed, or being murdered by a warlord because of who you are rather than what you did"
One can advocate for terrible things by comparing them to even worse things. That doesn't make it ok to violate people's rights, it just means we can find even worse examples in history. Here we have an example of a democracy violating people's rights. Someone said government nowadays is unaccountable. I suggested that government has always been largely unaccountable. Someone said I was cynical and that democracy was good because that allows us to wrest control back from the elites. I suggested (in the form of a question) that the people in a democracy are just as capable of violating our rights as the elites. Someone else pointed out that's better than a warlord. I observed that the warlord is also better than what he replaced. Certainly we can agree that violating people's rights is bad, and just like we came up with something better than a warlord, we ought to be able to come up with something better than a democracy.
> One thing can be better than another, even if that other thing is better than something else.
We can keep coming up with better things.
Better than a warlord forcing their values on us, even if the majority often seems lacking and with the exception that you are the warlord.
I agree that governments could do a better job at letting people pick their values themselves, especially with the current Victorian approaches
edit: Well technically a authoritarian warlord doesn't care about your values, only a totalitarian one would require that you tell everyone how much you love him. Maybe the latter is worse, but what would it matter at this point.