Is Democracy Overrated?
With the disintegration of the Soviet Empire and the Soviet Union, and Beijing's abandonment of Maoism, anti-communism necessarily ceased to be the polestar of U.S. foreign policy.
For many, our triumph fairly cried out for a bottom-up review of all the alliances created to fight that Cold War and a return to a policy of non-intervention in foreign quarrels where no vital U.S. interest was imperiled.
This was dismissed as isolationism. Seeking some new cause to give meaning to their lives, our suddenly superfluous foreign policy elites settled upon a crusade for democracy as America's new mission in the world.
Interventions in Panama, Somalia, Haiti and Bosnia followed, plus wars in the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan. To further advance the great goal, the National Endowment for Democracy and agencies like Freedom House set out to subvert authoritarian regimes in Belgrade, Caracas, Kiev, Tbilisi, Beirut and Bishkek.
Cold War methods and means were now to be conscripted—for democratic ends.
Yet, considering the high cost in blood, money and lost leadership and prestige since our victory in the Cold War, the democracy crusade scarcely seems worth it. For while we have been bogged down in two wars, China has become the world's leading manufacturer, steelmaker, auto producer and exporter, and the second largest economy on earth.
Nevertheless, we are ever admonished, we must not flag or fail in our pursuit of global democracy, for only when the world is democratic will our providential mission be accomplished. And only then can we be truly secure.
But setting aside the utopian character of all global crusades, why do we think that the more democratic the world is, the more secure and serene America shall be?
Historically, we have often made common cause with autocrats and dictators when our vital national interests commanded it. In our Revolution, our indispensable ally against the Mother of Parliaments was Louis XVI.
In the War of 1812, where our enemy was the Duke of Wellington, our de facto ally was the tyrant Napoleon.
During our war with Mexico, the Brits were on their side, not ours. During our Civil War, Tsar Alexander I wished us well, while the British wanted to see the United States permanently divided and weakened.
Democratic Sweden, Switzerland and Ireland were neutrals in World War II, while the China of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and the Soviet Union of Joseph Stalin did most of the dying on the Allied side.
During Vietnam, autocratic South Korea and Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines sent troops. The Brits and French traded with the enemy. Gen. Pinochet, who seized power in a coup in 1973, was a better friend than Chile's Salvador Allende, who was elected. While the Nixon White House did not cause Allende's ouster, neither did they weep over it.
Democratic France denied Ronald Reagan overflight rights for his F-111s to hit Moammar Gadhafi's Libya in retaliation for a terrorist attack, but Portugal's dictatorship gave permission for Nixon to use the Azores as a fueling station in resupplying Israel during the Yom Kippur war.
Ought not nations judge friends less by the ideals they profess than by how they behave when you need them most?
Moreover, any 21st-century democracy must sooner or later, through elections, reflect the most powerful of the currents surging through society. And, outside the West, and even in parts of the West, what are these?
Ethno-nationalism, fundamentalism, anti-Americanism.
When President Bush demanded elections in Egypt, Lebanon and Palestine, the winners were the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah and Hamas.
Bush's enthusiasm for democracy seemed to wane after that.
The largest democracies in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia—Brazil, South Africa, Turkey and India—are all moving away from the United States. Brazil and India are lining up with China to oppose limits on carbon emissions that would impede their growth.
India and China are resisting concessions to save the Doha Round of trade negotiations. South Africa leads the continent in sheltering the racist tyranny of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. Brazil and Turkey launched a joint diplomatic initiative to help Iran break free of its U.S.-imposed isolation and of the U.N. sanctions regime.
Turkey is the archetype of a democratic nation moving away from America, as Ankara more accurately reflects the will of its people.
By moving Turkey off the secularist course set by Ataturk, moving closer to Iran and Syria, denouncing and defying Israel for its war in Gaza and treatment of the Palestinians, President Erdogan has increased his own and his Islamic party's standing.
In Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Egypt, anti-Americanism and fundamentalist fever are both running high. Why would we want free elections in these nations if the inevitable result would be regimes far more hostile to our interests than the present governments?
America would do well to downgrade the ideological component of its foreign policy and start putting her national interests first.
Not all autocrats are enemies; not all democrats are friends.
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When the establishment clause becomes understood in such a way that the prayer once said in a New York public school:"Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers, and our country." When such a prayer, I say, is understood as the establishment of a religion,(as it was in the 1962 Engles case) it is difficult to distinguish the twaddle of throne and altar from the tweedle of freedom loving anti-authoritarians.
Dr. Wilson, I am currently reading and re-reading your anthology of essays and book reviews contained in "Defending Dixie" (Additionally, I've been plying my way through "I'll Take My Stand" and "The Conservative Mind"). My overall understanding up to this point is that our country - at least the Southern part of it - was founded upon reality, about things as they were and truly ought to be organically, not mere abstractions, nor ideology. As I've no doubt written here before, that doesn't mean that God loves us of the "Seed of Albion" more than He does others, but we cannot hope to have many of the institutions of government, of community that we take for granted if we have cut ourselves off from the very root that gave us what we have (or had prior to Appomattox?).
As has been said elsewhere, you cannot understand Western Civilization properly if you don't understand that its roots lie in Jerusalem, Athens, and Republican Rome. For Americans, add London to that line-up. You don't get to Philadelphia in 1776 and the 1780s without first distilling all of that culture through a British filter.
Regardless of whether or not they could articulate all of that, our ancestors, whether they were from England, Ireland, Scotland, or Wales, understood on a basic level those ideas and institutions that were handed down to them through centuries of historical and cultural institutions - through the blood, if you will. Democratic elements on the local level can function fairly well within the framework of a republic if the folks being governed share enough of these handed down understandings and cultural values.
The "propositional nation", be it a democracy or republic, sounds nice in theory, but we don't live in a theory; this is the real world.
Do I understand you correctly?
Mr. Smith. Yes. And I only stand on the shoulders of giants in this understanding.
Sincere thanks, Dr. Wilson. Not to hijack this thread, but I feel somewhat as King Josiah must have felt upon the discovery of the long neglected Law. I rec'd. my B.A. in history, with concentrations in Ancient/Medieval and American histories, but feel as if I've been cut off from my past and am only now discovering so much of it for the first time. It is indeed like an undiscovered country that I have had hints of but never fully realized in anywhere close to its fulness.
If I am struggling with this - and I have some modicum of training - where is the average American or even Southerner in all of this? As a former junior high/middle school teacher in the inner city of Long Beach, CA, I can say authoritatively that students get a dumbed down, simplistic, PC version of our past, where even if the text doesn't out and out lie, it does so through what its authors and editors choose to include, exclude, or emphasize. I recall a simulation game we did in one of my advanced history classes dealing with the formation of the Constitution. I'm sorry, but as admirable as a Benjamin Banaker (sp.?), the semi-legendary Hiawatha, or even an Abigail Adams may have been in their way, to put them on the same level in terms of emphasis as, say, James Madison or George Washington, is unconscionable. You can bet they're being taught drivel about the wonders of American democracy rather than the republic we are supposed to be.
When I attend a school program dedicated in part to Washington and Lincoln's birthdays here in a small rural town in Tennessee, and I hear my cousin's little daughter joining in a song that includes "Thank you, Abraham Lincoln!", I cringe. AAAARRRRRGGGGHHHH!!!
God help us!
@30 Professor Wilson: "C.S. Lewis said something similar [about democracy]." Was it this?
"I believe in political equality. But there are two opposite reasons for being a democrat. You may think all men so good that they deserve a share in the government of the commonwealth, and so wise that the commonwealth needs their advice. That is, in my opinion, the false, romantic doctrine of democracy. On the other hand, you may believe fallen men to be so wicked that not one of them can be trusted with any irresponsible power over his fellows. That I believe to be the true ground of democracy. I do not believe that God created an egalitarian world."
He says similar things elsewhere, this statement is from an essay called "Membership". I quote the gist of this statement frequently. One of the things that's so maddening about discussing democracy is the sinister confusion that exists between the "true ground of democracy" (wicked mankind) and its satanic counterfeit--"all men so good they deserve a share..."
@54 I have recently finished "I'll Take My Stand" and I have been attempting to sing its praises to others throughout my time reading it. I've had some weird responses. My wife liked it because she says it supports her instinct that we should move to a farm. My mother-in-law was slightly scandalized by the fact that one of the essays bears the title "The Hind Tit" (possibly the most power-packed one in the group by the way.) And I promised my best friend a copy for Christmas, a transplant to the South from Michigan, but a very peaceable yankee. I think he will like it, but he recently sneered at Southern admiration for Nathan Bedford Forrest, characterizing such sentiments as "revisionist." But he is coming around quickly, hence my plan to give him "Stand."
"About 90 percent of the Americans of the founding generation were of British ethnic background—English, Scottish, Welsh or Irish—and the idea of government they inherited and adapted in America was rooted in the British political tradition — representative government; the rule of law; it regarded executive power as an institution to be checked; it recognized various "rights" of the subject incorporated into the Bill of Rights and the very body of the Constitution; and it clearly rejected both pure "democracy" and pure "equality" in favor of a republican mixed government of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy." - Sam Francis
Both common men and kings are flawed individuals and aristocrats can become (or be replaced by) plutocrats, oligarchs, technocrats and worse. Hence, the balanced (and very British) form of government Dr. Francis described. At least, that's my take on the subject.
The other ten per cent were Dutch, Germans, and French Protestants.
And a few English Catholics in Maryland and other Southern colonies---Catholics not being tolerated in the North.
@59, Dr. Wilson:
Indeed, it was the nutty Puritans who banned celebrating Christmas, as I recall from Aaron Wolf's article a few years back.
#57 #52 Balance is good. Let's also note that this natural native landed aristocracy, rooted in "the British political tradition", stole monastic land and enriched itself by plundering the wealth of the Church; enacted enclosure laws with disruptive results; closed monastic inns and opened public jails to receive the disrupted; argued for the divine right of kings and condoned regicide to justify their perfidy.
Now many of these traditions were indeed british. But if they were
British traditions prior to the "English Accident" they were also Christian traditions, and if they were Christian they were Catholic. The roots of Western Civ. do indeed tap into Jerusalem, Athens, and Republican Rome. And if for americans especially they went through London before they ariived at Philadelphia, they most certainly entwined themselves around the very heart of Europe, connecting Paris, Salamanca, Bologna, London and Rome. Intellectually, politically, etc.etc., England did not stand alone - it was part of the main. Whig history is not the only narrative.
Enough already!
A minor outbreak of mob action in New England--which started in New Hampshire/Portsmouth, and then turned a few miles to the South, was nationalized by what regional politicians? who brought war to their beloved land?--trusting they had good contacts with the insurgent Whigs in England no doubt; a true civil war, with all the nastiness and atrocities that follow against property owners.
In New England, these violations of property rights, was relatively constrained to corrupt judicial action against reasonable Loyalists. In a way, it kept the folks realists--Shay's and Whiskey's were Northern born--were they not?
The South, with their mockery of citizenship 3/5ths clause, had the balance of power with the Constitution coup d'etat, which they promptly squandered with their revenge against the Loyalists in Canada--who were like the Cuban Nationalists in Florida, folks with a point--and de facto alliance with Napoleon in the War of 1812.
Puritans, nutty puritans? How 'bout we stick to Original Sin, and call it even? It's not like Hawthorne had large sales of books Down South telling the folks what the Puritans were really like.
And post-script--my family is all Wets, from what I can tell from research, and a great...grandfather fought for the Patriots in South Carolina.
Young sons of the british gentry and yeoman class settle the new found continent. In the south they formed the last and only genuine American leadership/aristocray class. After Appomattox they were suppressed, but as early as the 1840's they began to be replaced by Europe's flotasm and jetsam.
The English aristocracy/leadership class has survived and prospered a good many centuries, their southern cousins 200 -300 some years. Suppressed yes- genocide no.I don't think it disrespectful to ask- why such a relatively short lifespan? I will not broach the subject of anyone's jetsam, but note that " the first and not the last men of any school or revolution are generally the best and the purest; as William Penn was better than a Quaker millionaire or Washington better than an American oil magnate". G.K.C.
"we cannot hope to have many of the institutions of government, of community that we take for granted if we have cut ourselves off from the very root that gave us what we have ."
Well said, Mr. Smith. My only addition would be that the branch is often mistaken for the root.
#59 Catholics did not tolerate the hysterical protestants very well either. It was a mutual and ancient understanding of the truth that good fences make good neighbors. The various European countries during the middle ages were unified by their Holy Religion but not uniform in custom and usage. Uniformity is always the request of reform movements. Look at how traditional Catholics were treated by the reformers after the Second Vatican Council.
Appreciation for the essay and all comment responses relative to it
is extended to all.
David Smith @54: " I’ve been cut off from my past and am only now discovering so much of it for the first time".
I suggest you get a set of the tapes from TRI's 13th summer school at which the the topic was Anglo Saxon England. They will serve you well in filling in those gaps in your educations.