The Degeneration of Democracy

 by Steven D. Laib  

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What has happened to American social and political culture reminds me of a fable written by James Thurber called “The Bears and the Monkeys”.

Science fiction author Robert Heinlein has earned both my admiration, for his philosophical content, and my wrath for sometimes presenting certain aspects of that philosophy in plots of dubious value; especially when they contain excessive sexually oriented subject matter that adds little but titillation to his writing. One such book was "Glory Road". But what really stuck in my memory of that book was a scene where the protagonist, Oscar Gordon, attends an intergalactic social event where an alien asks him if America had given up its experiment with democracy. Clearly, this individual was a monarchist, and Heinlein does make a case, of sorts, that such a system has its advantages. However, that was not what eventually struck me as the most the important point. What I eventually realized was that a monarchy, or a similar authoritarian system is often desired by a large portion of a population simply because they don't want to take responsibility for their own lives and their own destinies. This becomes fairly obvious when we consider how the United States has shown a consistent increase in national government power often driven by an apparent desire by on the part of a significant segment of the public for government provided security. Of course, those who are willing to sacrifice freedom for security will eventually have neither, to paraphrase Ben Franklin. But today there are all together too many Americans who don't see it that way. If they did, there would be no social welfare agenda pending in Congress, and President Bush would not have to repeatedly veto the SCHIP bill. His rationale? That it would lead us further toward nationalized health care, which has already been shown to be a bad deal in Canada and England. This is one of the times when Mr. Bush has it right. It is a shame that he didn't take the same attitude on education a few years back.

The sad fact is that the majority of nations, and other similar political entities that have existed on this earth during recorded history have been governed by authoritarian systems, exercising more or less power depending on the time, place, and the inclination of the population to put up with it. Democracy, as we know was first practiced in ancient Greece, and later in the Roman Republic, after which it virtually disappeared for many years. Its first significant reappearance was in 1215 when the English nobles forced King John to sign the Magna Carta. This document required the king to renounce certain rights, to respect specific legal procedures and to accept that he could be bound by the law in the same manner as any other person. This document set the stage for the eventual decline of monarchical power in England which culminated after the death of Queen Victoria centuries later. It also provided a distant, yet solid foundation for the rebellion of the American colonies and the establishment of a democratically governed nation that became the United States of America.

What is so attractive about democratic systems appears, in many instances, to be the idea that somehow the majority of the population will act in a responsible fashion, elect the right people to office, and somehow those people will govern wisely and in the best interest of the nation. In retrospect, this appears to have been another of the idealisms that political philosophers have propounded over the years; an idea that is, over the long haul, perhaps as impractical as Plato's Republic.

As my colleague, Selwyn Duke has pointed out, it is often stated, perhaps most recently of note by Natan Sharansky that democracies don't attack each other.  At the same time, he points out an even more important truth; "that democracies don't always remain democracies: They descend into tyranny.  Then they may go to war with one another." Many of us tend to forget that this was what happened in Germany and Italy during the 1930's, while Japan was essentially a democracy dominated by a militarist political faction. The Emperor possessed significant power, he rarely used it, and allowed the war government to do what it wished for many years. Thus, we had three different nations that devolved into militarism out of three distinctly different settings. Germany smarting from its defeat in 1918, Japan lusting for power and resources, and Italy seeking to recreate the old Roman Empire. Fortunately, their more modern democratic systems seem less likely to take that course.

Again, Mr. Duke points to Mr. Bush's remark that "all people want freedom." Sharansky also said the same thing. Mr. Duke's analysis is impeccable. "Technically … Bush is correct: All people do want freedom.  What's overlooked is that wanting and being able to acquire are very different things." There is another issue of how people perceive freedom, and in some cases there are actually those who don't appear to want it, hence the photos we occasionally see of the masked islamist with a sign stating "to hell with freedom" or something similar. Still, it is hard to determine whether such individuals are interested in being enslaved to an anachronistic ideology, or believe that they will hold positions of power within such a system, so freedom is denied them less than it is to others. Simply, those who hold the power in an authoritarian system can afford to say to "hell with freedom". Then there are those who are willing to trade in freedom for security, or who believe that a nanny state will always be benevolent. Or, perhaps they believe that American socialists are somehow superior to those in other nations and that they will never allow a socialist system turn totalitarian. If so, then they have more faith in humanity than I believe it deserves.

What has happened to American social and political culture reminds me of a fable written by James Thurber called "The Bears and the Monkeys". Thurber's bears lived happily in the forest stealing honey and buns from nearby cottages. Presumably, everyone was happy with the arrangement, except, perhaps, the cottagers, whose side of the story was not addressed. Unfortunately, all was not perfect in this society, for the bears eventually fell under the influence of two monkeys named Monkey Say and Monkey Do. When the monkeys finally had the bears chained together and led around by nose rings it was explained to them that "now you are free to say what I want you to say" and "now you are free to do what I want you to do". It sounds just a bit like the modern degeneration of freedom of speech into something that allows you only to say things that other people don't find offensive; something David Horowitz (among others) has had to deal with on many a college campus. The bears were fortunate in that they eventually came to realize that it is better to have the ring of freedom in your ears than in your nose (Thurber's moral) and they broke the chains of the monkey's pseudo-freedom and went back to their old life.

It is a sad testimonial to the grand plans of the authors of the American experiment in democracy that many of us are now unworthy of their efforts. Forgetting our past and the lessons of history, they are to willing to give up genuine rights for a false promise of security. They ignore the reality of likely enslavement to a government that will be less benevolent than that of Stalin because it will posses the technology to be even more brutal than he was. But the origen of this is our present unwillingness to accept standards of right and wrong and of what constitutes civilization. When we see radical feminists ignoring the brutality lavished on women in, for example, Iran or Sudan, we see how far our moral foundation has decayed. When their behavior is considered civilized because "who are we to judge?" we are abandoning all standards of right and wrong. And, some things are just plain wrong, no matter how you look at it. Without a moral foundation it becomes impossible to accept responsibility and to make judgments about even our own survival. The anti-democratic forces, who trumpet big government either don't understand that, or they don't want to understand it. Either way, it bodes ill for all of the rest of us.

Politics: General, Culture: General

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