From: wolda002@umn.edu
Date: Mon Jul 07 2008 - 18:24:14 EDT
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jul/04/the-hard-thing-of-democracy/
BAY: The hard thing of democracy
Austin Bay
COMMENTARY: A Vietnam vet friend of mine argues that maintaining a
democracy requires three things — a passion for freedom, tolerance for
diversity and intolerance for threats.
A letter from a reader, responding to a column on Iraq's struggling
democracy, suggested I write about the United States' own tortuous path —
sketching a nation that began with limited voting rights and confronted
powerful factions, ethnic animosities, urban riot, rural rebellion and
destructive civil war. The reader thought America's saga might help the
public "understand that this democracy thing is hard."
Hard indeed. Mull my friend's threefold guidance, and you'll find tricky
paradox after paradox entwined within several enigmas. Balancing tolerance
and intolerance is an obvious tension, which requires reason, experience,
maturity and discipline, but the aspiration for freedom, the drive to
obtain it and retain it, also involves emotional passion and desire.
America itself is a structural paradox. The United States is a republic —
for good reason. America's Founders saw dangers in what James Madison
(Federalist Paper 10) called "pure democracy... a society consisting of a
small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in
person." Madison argued this arrangement had "no cure for the mischiefs of
faction," and weaker parties and "an obnoxious individual" were vulnerable
to "pure" majority rule.
Yet a muscular democratic spirit empowers the Constitution's opening
phrase, "We the people of the United States." America is a balancing act,
where democratic practices and values steer the republic.
Democracy and freedom, that passionate objective, are closely linked, but
democracy in practice is an exercise in restrained freedom. Liberty without
responsibility quickly and all too easily degrades to libertinism, which is
why maintaining democracy demands shared responsibility.
But shared responsibility - what a risky demand. Human beings may behave
nobly and sacrificially; they also behave abysmally and selfishly. During
the Cold War, Jean Francois Revel wrote in "How Democracies Perish" that
"democracy may, after all, turn out to have been a historical accident. ...
Democracy is by its very nature turned inward. Its vocation is the patient
and realistic improvement of life in a community."
Mr. Revel echoed John Adams' observation of 1814: "Democracy never lasts
long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a
democracy yet that did not commit suicide." Mr. Revel saw democratic
practice as paradox fraught with social reward and danger. "Societies of
which permanent criticism is an integral feature are the only livable
ones," he wrote, "but they are also the most fragile."
"Permanent criticism" exemplifies tolerance for diversity, though to my ear
Mr. Revel's "criticism" implies respect and regard for the system itself -
a salient difference from 1960s student protesters who damned the entire
American enterprise. But neither criticism nor protest is the highest form
of patriotism, as many of these self-congratulatory '60s radicals contend.
The toughest job in a democracy is that of a private soldier assaulting an
enemy machine gun nest - and that private's action is intolerance for
threat exemplified.
Mr. Revel believed democracies would continue to be threatened "as long as
theirs is not the only system in the world," and they "must compete with
systems that do not burden themselves with the same obligations."
What are those obligations? Philosopher Paul Woodruff in his "First
Democracy: The Challenge of an Ancient Idea" identified "seven ideas" that
a democratic government "tries to express." They certainly intersect with
Mr. Revel's obligations. Mr. Woodruff listed: freedom from tyranny;
"harmony"; the rule of law; natural equality; citizen wisdom; "reasoning
without knowledge"; and general education.
Harmony entails "wanting together." Lack of harmony can lead to civil war.
Democratic equality "rests on the idea that the poor should be equal to the
rich... at least for sharing governance." Mr. Woodruff argued ancient
Athenians taught that "reasoning without knowledge depends on working out
what is most reasonable to believe. What is most reasonable to believe is
the view which best survives adversary debate." That suggests permanent
criticism and controversy are as vital to democracy as being prepared to
defend it.
"Democracy is hard," Mr. Woodruff wrote, echoing the reader's letter. "They
did not get it entirely right in Athens 2,500 years ago, and we do not have
it right now, anywhere."
Perhaps democracy is, like happiness, a pursuit.
Austin Bay is a nationally syndicated columnist.
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