In his book, The Future of Freedom, Fareed Zakaria wrote: "We live in a democratic age." In other words, 119 countries now use popular elections to form their governments. Many today believe that democracy is the only justifiable political order, the only moral political order. We hardly realize how peculiar this view is to the whole of history. It is unique to our time. Nearly 2,500 years ago Aristotle rejected rule by the people. He noted that the state is an association for the protection of property. It is also a pact for protection against injustice. More than this, its purpose is to enable its members preserve "the good life." In order to secure "the good life," the people require a virtuous government (because the ancient philosophers understood "the good" to be a moral proposition). Free citizens are equal in their freedom, but not in their virtue (which the ancients associated with wealth). Unless we are speaking of successful pirates or criminals, those who accumulate wealth do so because of their "goodness." The things we produce, by way of wealth, are even called "goods." This idea belonged the ancient philosophers and to America's Founding fathers. "We must remember," wrote Aristotle, "that [most citizens] are not men of wealth, and have no claim to virtue in anything. To let them share in the highest offices is to take a risk: inevitably, their unjust standards will cause them to commit injustice, and their lack of judgment will lead them into error." (The Politics, III xi) History teaches that democracy is the declining form of authority, tending toward degeneracy. "There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide," noted John Adams (America's second president). George Bernard Shaw explained, "Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few." Or, as H.L. Mencken said, "Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage."
In terms of rhetoric, today's politicians tend to confuse freedom with democracy, failing to realize that freedom is best preserved not by democracy but by a system of checks and balances within the state. John Adams wrote: "The generation and corruption of governments, which may, in other words, be called the progress and course of human passions in society, are subjects which have engaged the attention of the greatest writers; and whether the essays they have left us were copied from history, or wrought out of their own conjectures and reasonings, they are very much to our purpose, to show the utility and necessity of different orders of men, and of an equilibrium of powers and privileges. They demonstrate the corruptibility of every species of simple government, by which I mean a power without a check, whether in one, a few, or many." Rule by one is monarchy. Rule by few is oligarchy. Rule by many is democracy. Unmixed and unchecked, the three simple forms of the state give way to corruption. This is because, as famously noted by Lord Acton, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
President Bush proposes democracy as the solution for the terrorist problem that grows out of the Middle East. He talks of advancing freedom for the Muslim world. In a recent address before the U.S. Naval Academy, the president explained: "Advancing the cause of freedom and democracy in the Middle East begins with ensuring the success of a free Iraq." The president is quite serious in his purpose, yet we may wonder whether he grasps the sense in which the Founders' understanding of free government has been corrupted by unchecked egalitarianism and a longstanding tendency toward pure democracy and the removal of checks against popular misrule. One only has to imagine an economic collapse in the context of the mob's empowerment to realize the danger. The demands of the many, the taking of polls, the politician with his finger to the wind has replaced older notions of political virtue and statesmanship. Why doesn't the president discuss virtue as John Adams and George Washington did?
According to President Bush, "By strengthening Iraqi democracy, we will gain a partner in the cause of peace and moderation in the Muslim world, and an ally in the worldwide struggle against the terrorists. Advancing the ideal of democracy and self-government is the mission that created our nation -- and now it is the calling of a new generation of Americans. We will meet the challenge of our time. We will answer history's call with confidence -- because we know that freedom is the destiny of every man, woman and child on this earth." But Mr. President, democracy is not an unmitigated good. It depends on the nature of the people being empowered. It depends on their beliefs, their culture and habits. Men frequently judge things as they are in the moment, failing to consider what they are becoming. Most Americans cannot see the growing degeneracy of their own country, and they lack the imagination to see how democracy may amplify Islam's more dangerous tendencies. We use big words today, like "democracy" and "freedom," and we throw them around as if we understand what we are saying. But words like "democracy" and "freedom" have been misunderstood by a generation that hardly knows any history and takes the latest news in "sound bites."
Elections were not initially established, in Britain and America, because "the people" were understood to be sovereign. In 1896 William Lecky wrote, "The most remarkable political characteristic of the latter part of the nineteenth century has unquestionably been the complete displacement of the center of power in free governments, and the accompanying changes in the prevailing theories about the principles on which representative governments should be based." It was "a profound and far-reaching revolution," Lecky observed, accomplished "without any act of violence or any change in the external framework of government."
In the 18th century, voting was not conceived as a "natural right," wrote Lecky, "but a right conferred by legislation on grounds of expediency, or ... for the benefit of the state." Voting was initially the prerogative of landowners. "It was ... a fundamental principle of the old system of representation that the chief political power should be with the owners of the land," he explained. In the days of the Founding Fathers, representative government was not (as Lincoln later suggested) "of the people, by the people, for the people...." It was "of property, by property, for property." It was a logical development when, during the 19th century, those who wanted to overthrow the existing order took aim at property. Giving a sidelong wink to socialism and communism, the most subversive attack on property may be found in the call to universal suffrage. It is not that the enfranchised masses immediately vote to "expropriate the expropriators" and redistribute a country's wealth. The downward path to ruin involves countless gradations, thousands of little compromises brought into being by town councils and courts, all the way up to the national legislature.
The Bush administration has put the term "democracy" at the center of its ideological struggle in the war against radical Islam. It's as if we are replaying the words of Lincoln at Gettysburg, only this time the war is not a civil war but a world war. Lincoln suggested that America was the motherland of freedom, a country "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." He spoke of "a new birth of freedom" as well as "government of the people, by the people, for the people...." This high-flying rhetoric is doubtless stirring, and makes easy copy for later conflicts. And it would appear that America's campaign against terror has adopted Lincoln's rhetoric (transmuting it from the Civil War to an unacknowledged religious war). The specter of Lincoln has been summoned, his words refashioned, his ideas redirected in a way that misunderstands the very terms it employs.
