What is democracy for and how we can save it
It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others. — Winston Churchill.
Undeniably, our democracy is in peril. Our unalienable human rights are being threatened or abrogated as we speak. In this, the oldest extant democracy in the world, some thirty to forty percent are seeking to impose a theocratic system of minority rule the likes of which haven’t been seen since the Puritan Commonwealth in England in the 17th century. At least that is what Mr. Justice Samuel Alito indicated with his opinion destroying our unalienable right to bodily autonomy in the Dobbs case as I wrote here. What the Reactionary Party is trying to do and what their aims are should be abundantly clear to everyone by now.
And every day, we hear people talking about our democracy being in peril and asking why someone — Attorney General Merrick Garland, President Joe Biden, the members of the January 6th committee, the Democrats in Congress — doesn’t do something to save our democracy. But no one individual or small group is going to save us because democracy doesn’t work that way. Another problem is what isn’t being discussed — why should we try to save our democracy and what we need to do to save it. We need to examine democracy’s premises, ideals, and obligations in order to really understand why it is worth the fight and to fully understand how to save it. We need to fully understand why a democracy is a more human system than all the others.
For much of human history, most people have lived under some sort of minority rule. Today, there are billions of people who live under some form of minority rule. It doesn’t matter what kind of minority rule — kings, priestly classes, aristocracy, ideological parties (like fascism and communism), or just your garden variety oligarchies and dictators — they all share some basic features. The first thing they all require is obedience, not to the law but to the minority and its interests. The demand for obedience is always backed by force. Opposing the ruling minority never comes to a good end. Punishment can range from a loss of employment, to constant harassment by agents of the state to imprisonment and death. Vaclav Havel, the Czechoslovakian dissent that led the movement to bring down the communist government there in 1989 and was the first democratically elected president, wrote often about how he suffered all of that except death. The list of people executed for opposing such regimes is long and illustrious.
All of them rely on some form of censorship. Book burning, book banning, not allowing the publication of certain writers, controlling school curriculums are common because nothing can be discussed that dares to challenge the omnipotence or omniscience of the minority. Granted, there have been times and places where this aspect of minority rule has been lighter and other times and places where it was heavier but it was and is always part of it. We are seeing it now with all the pearl-clutching hysteria about what is taught in schools and on library shelves in places like Tennessee and Florida and Texas. It seems that this is always connected with the beginnings of minority rule.
Another common feature is the complete absence of the rule of law — that fundamental idea that the law should apply to everyone equally and everyone should follow the laws because of that. Any administration of justice is arbitrary and most people will do what they want if they think they can get away with it or have the right connections.
All of this is rooted in the basic premise of minority rule: the people exist to serve the state and its interests as defined by the ruling minority.
But a democracy inverts that basic premise. The state exists to serve the people by creating the conditions so that we can live the life we want. It does this by allowing all citizens to participate in their own governance and in the governance of the state. And that means that all citizens, because they are equal participants in government, must be treated equally under the law. (Okay, all you commenters wanting to write that this has never actually been the case, understand I am talking about the ideals of democracy now. Reality always falls short of the ideal. But if we give up on the ideal because humans are not perfect and don’t live up to the ideal all time, then all the people throughout history and today who wanted and want to destroy democracy have already won.)
These are not exactly new ideas. They come from Aristotle and Pericles.
The Ancient Greeks also came up with some else. The idea that there is something called natural rights. Much later another idea grew out that: the idea of unalienable, now generally called human, rights. These ideas became inseparably linked to the idea of democracy. But there was the understanding that any exercise of your rights ends when it infringes on the rights of others; no right can ever be considered absolute. Your right to swing your arms ended at some else’s nose was how we traditionally explained it.
Countries ruled by minorities don’t care about human rights. Vladimir Putin doesn’t care about human rights; the Chinese Communist Party doesn’t care about human rights; the Puritan Commonwealth, so beloved by our rogue Supreme Court, didn’t care about human rights.
The idea of unalienable human rights of citizens became so important that protecting them became the primary purpose of democratic governance. Perhaps the most powerful and influential expression of this newer idea of democracy is from the Declaration of Independence. We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness — -That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
This concise statement of the democratic social contract was written by Thomas Jefferson, an enslaver known for serially raping at least one of his enslaved people, and edited by Benjamin Franklin, who had been president of one of the first anti-slavery organizations in North America even though he had once enslaved at least three people. The path to democracy is littered with irony and imperfect people who applied their ideas in imperfect ways. But it became the basis for the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen during the French Revolution, the Abolitionist movement, universal adult suffrage which wasn’t achieved until the 20th century, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Civil Rights movement, and, well, any movement for equality and human rights.
Our democracy is in peril. Democracy is always in peril. Democracy has always been a fragile system. It’s very nature makes it fragile. It can be undermined easily by demagogues. That is why Plato and Socrates opposed democracy. It is a short step from demagoguery to tyranny. Democracy is always a fight between those who believe in it and its premises and purposes and those who don’t. And those that don’t really believe in democracy have, historically, been very good at hiding their true aims until they feel comfortable enough in their position of power to openly impose their will on everyone else. That seems to be the point we are in now.
Until that point they are excellent at manipulating the language of democracy to achieve their ends.
Any system of minority rule requires only one thing from the people: obedience. A democracy makes demands on its citizens. Demands that are sometimes difficult and uncomfortable. When people stop fulfilling those demands, the antidemocratic forces begin to take over. This is what makes democracy so fragile.
The first demand is that you believe in democratic governance; you believe that government is how the people come together, either directly or through elected representatives, to solve problems. You have to believe that it can be effective. But far too many of us simply stopped believing in this basic idea. Ronald Reagan claimed, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that democratic governance was the biggest problem in society. Those aren’t his exact words but that was really what he meant — government is ineffective and incapable of doing anything well so we should just stop trying.
He won reelection by carrying 49 states.
After that, it seemed that no one was willing to stand up for democratic governance or willing to stand against the equally false premises of economic anarchy, so-called neoliberal economics, would solve all our problems. Even Bill Clinton and Barak Obama bought into those judging by whom they appointed to their economic teams. The most false, and pernicious to democracy, of those false premises is that people are inherently selfish and competitive.
That leads us to the idea that citizens need to think about more than just yourself. Some people, on both sides of the aisle seem to find this demand to be very difficult. The question should never be “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” as Reagan, steeped in that neoliberal thinking, had it. The question should always be “Is the country better off?” The fundamental democratic principle is the idea that the healthier your community, the better off you and everyone will be even if any given policy adversely affects you personally. This is what Adam Smith meant when he wrote about enlightened self-interest. This is what the founders meant when they talked about the need to be disinterested. Disinterested meant that you should look reasonably at any given political idea without regard to your own narrow, selfish interests.
The next demand that democracy places on its citizens is reasonableness. This does not necessarily mean every political discussion needs to be a strictly logical, Socratic dialogue. But it does require certain habits of mind that seem to have been ignored in recent decades. The first thing necessary for reasonable political debate is a respect for and acceptance of facts. It is reasonable to dispute what facts mean but to trade in lies is inherently destructive. It is equally destructive to deny basic facts as well. You have to bargain in good faith. And you have to accept the idea that you may lose, either in an election or on an issue. If you lose, you accept that the other side will govern, at least until the next election. The next level of reasonableness is to respect your opponents as being fellow citizens who hold different ideas. In normal times, to vilify the opposition as inherently immoral, unpatriotic, evil, and the like is destructive.
These are not normal times. The reactionary right hasn’t engaged in reasonable politics since the 1990s. While the Democratic Party has had a few instances of being unreasonable on some issues, there has been nothing to compare with what the reactionaries have been doing. The Reactionary Party has also been very successful in rigging the game, through things like Gerrymandering and the like, to ensure their power. The Reactionary Party controls state legislatures in places where their party’s voter registration has them in the minority and in places where they receive fewer votes then their opposition.
That reality brings me to the most important obligation that a democracy puts on its citizens; the one that if we don’t fulfil it, puts democracy most at peril. That obligation, that duty, is participation. The duty to be politically engaged. Democracy depends on us showing up and taking part in it, at all levels. When we don’t we open the door to the end of democracy. This is not a new idea. It is included in the oldest defense of democracy, Pericles’ “Funeral Oration” in 431 BCE.
But to be a reasonable citizen in a democracy, you must first be informed, to know what is going on at the local, state and federal level. Too many of us simply aren’t aware. Our local papers are folding all over the country. While most of us know who the president is, do we know who are your senators are? Or representatives in the House? How about your state representative or senator? City or town councilor? School board member? The people on your local zoning commission?
Yes, I know that most state and local issues are often tedious. Reading a local paper is less enjoyable than keeping up with the Kardashians. Going to candidate nights or a school board meeting can be difficult, boring, and, well, the last thing anyone wants to do after a hard day’s work. But this is the true meaning of the expression “freedom isn’t free.”
The most basic form of participation in a representative democracy is voting. Most of us will turn out once every four years for presidential elections. But even then, voter turnout is only around 60 percent. Think about it a moment. A president has to appeal only to about a third of eligible voters to be elected. And people wonder why politicians don’t seem to care about what a majority of Americans want. They don’t need to. Voting is how we hold them to the mark
But a president isn’t a king with absolute power, despite what people like Bill Barr may think. He or she needs the support of a majority of both houses in Congress to get anything done. But in midterm elections sixty percent of us can’t be bothered to turn out to vote. Turnouts in midterms hover around forty percent. It’s even worse at the state and local level, especially in those states that have off-year elections or hold them on different days. There turnout seems to hover around twenty percent.
Lower voter turnout translates into more power for the most motivated political faction. The Reactionary Party is a zealous, religiously-inspired movement that is seeking to impose minority rule. They are highly motivated. And they represent roughly thirty percent of Americans.
This is why so many state legislatures are dominated by the Reactionary Party and why they have been able to Gerrymander so many states, especially in places that are more evenly split like Wisconsin, Michigan, and the rest of the so-called swing states. They can do it because the rest of us don’t bother to show up. A common theme in the discussions of all the voter suppression laws being proposed based on the lie of election fraud is that anytime an eligible voter is denied a ballot, our democracy is diminished. That is true. But it is also true that when eligible voters don’t vote our democracy is diminished.
The Reactionary Party is made up of zealots who always show up. Always remember that.
But voting alone is merely the baseline of democratic involvement. We also need to be activists. We need to volunteer for campaigns we support, door-knocking and such like. And, most importantly, we need to find people to run for office at all levels or do it ourselves. Those seeking to impose minority rule on the rest of us seemingly have figured out that if you want to rig the system you need to be active at the local and state levels. That means that if we want to unrig the system, so do we. But we really aren’t doing that. In 2020, 27 percent of state legislative races and 40 percent of local races were unopposed. State legislatures are the bodies responsible for Gerrymandering districts and local town councils and school boards are where books are banned.
Our democracy is NOT going to be saved by President Biden, or the January 6th Committee, or, even, the brave souls like Cassidy Hutchinson. Democracy will not be saved by any single savior. Want Joe Biden to protect our unalienable, human rights then work to get him the majorities he needs. Want to make Joe Manchin, who seems to want to frustrate progress on just about every issue, irrelevant than elect more senators who agree with you. Don’t want books banned in your local schools and libraries, elect local leaders who agree with you.
Democracy depends on all of us doing our part; holding our leaders to mark by showing up and participating. That is really what democracy is. Rule of the demos, the people, only works if the people, all the people, show up. When we don’t, like in 2010 or 2016, those who oppose democracy win. In 2010, many of us were disappointed that President Obama hadn’t completely fixed the economy or didn’t go far enough with the Affordable Care Act or thought it went too far or wasn’t hard enough on Wall Street. Whatever the reason people stayed home that year, what we got was the red wave, Gerrymandered states, the Tea Party pushing the Reactionary Party further to the right, and governors like Scott Walker. In 2016, the lowest voter turnout this century for a presidential election, people stayed home because they didn’t like Hillary Clinton or were disappointed that other candidates didn’t win in the primaries. The result was nothing but violence, chaos and insurrection.
Nor will democracy be saved by institutions and processes. As the rogue Supreme Court seems absolutely hell-bent on proving, institutions are only as good as the people in them. Any institution or process can be subverted. The Reactionary Party is running candidates for county clerk and secretaries of state so they can toss out votes if they don’t like the outcome.
If we want to save our democracy, no other issue matters right now. Not inflation, not gas prices, not our disappointment over this or that policy failure. Besides, the Reactionary Party never offers any solutions to our myriad problems anyway. They only point them out to blame others and distract us. They want to overthrow democracy — rule by the people — in favor of creating a theocratic, fascist state where we will all be forced to live what they consider a “godly life.”
They may seek to destroy democracy but it is most imperiled by our apathy.
If we want to save democracy, we must get out to vote, get everyone we know out to vote. And we must vote for people who will defend our democracy and our unalienable rights. If we don’t show up, they win.
