On Democracy

Andrew McCarthy has an excellent article in National Review Online this weekend about democracy in the Arab world.  McCarthy contrasts the optimism surrounding last year's "Arab Spring" with the reality taking shape in the newly democratic Egypt.  The Muslim Brotherhood is gaining political power while Shiite and Christian minorities are subject to increasing discrimination and oppression.  The fact that so many people are surprised by this development shows how little we understand democracy compared with the Founding Fathers.

The founders were very suspicious of democracy.  We all learn this at some point in social studies class but I don't think we internalize it or even understand it.  This is partly because the definition of democracy in the popular mind has changed over the centuries.

When the founders criticized democracy, they had in mind the ancient Greek model in which every citizen took a direct role in governing the affairs of the city state.  James Madison summarized the weaknesses of democracy in Federalist No. 10 thusly:

From this view of the subject, it may be concluded, that a pure Democracy, by which I mean a Society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the Government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of Government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party, or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is, that such Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives, as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of Government, have erroneously supposed, that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.

 Benjamin Franklin put it more succinctly:  "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch."  Or as Tommy Lee Jones put it in Men in Black: "People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."


Faced with the threat to liberty posed by a democratic form of government, the founders opted for a republican one in which government is in the hands of a relatively few persons chosen by some portion of the population and the government is itself constrained by procedural and substantial limitations which cannot be altered except by action of a supermajority.  The founders' suspicion of democracy informs the whole text of the Constitution by setting up counter-majoritarian roadblocks to government action.

The founders took a utilitarian view of government.  Every form of government was to be judged by how well it protected liberty.  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 abolish it, and to institute a 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.

In modern times we have strayed from this view.  It seems that most Americans hold the assumption that the chief purpose of government is to distribute benefits.  Such benefits might be cash but they might also be jobs, military bases, commuter rail lines or bike paths.  With this change in ideas about the role of government has come a change in attitudes about voting.

If you think that government is mainly about distributing benefits, then expanding the franchise and removing barriers to voting is a matter of simple fairness.  Every individual is equal before the law and should have an equal chance to get his hands on whatever goods are being handed out by elected officials.  This leads to things like "motor-voter" registration, liberalized absentee voting, internet voting and opposition to voter ID laws.

If however you believe that government exists to safeguard inalienable rights, which are granted by God and therefore exist before and outside government, then the franchise is a sacred public trust to be exercised deliberately and with due diligence.  In the words of the History and Moral Philosophy teacher from Starship Troopers, "When you vote you are exercising political power."  People who hold this view see an advantage to requiring voters to register in advance, to cast their votes at set times and places and to prove their qualifications to vote by presenting some form of identification.

Which brings us back to the Arab Spring.  People who looked at the demonstrations in Tahrir Square and concluded that democracy would bring peace and freedom to the Middle East failed to grasp those basic truths that the Founders understood all too well.  Simply giving people the vote does not guarantee that they will use it justly.  The American republic was not formed ex nihilo in 1776.  It was built on a foundation of millenia of history - from the Roman republic through Christianity, Anglo-Saxon egalitarianism, Norman law, the Magna Carta, the English Civil War and the Scottish and French Enlightenments, just to name a few.  Our revolution was so successful that we don't realize just how rare an event it was.  Most revolutions do not result in a stable, liberal republic.  They usually result in some variation of the Reign of Terror.

George W. Bush and the neoconservatives suffered from a similar delusion when they planned their strategy for Afghanistan and Iraq.  They often spoke of the universal human desire for freedom.  And it's true that all people want freedom, but most people want freedom for themselves alone.  They are perfectly willing to oppress their neighbors.

There is no quick fix.  Simply giving people an opportunity to cast a ballot does not automatically result in a decent and free civil society.  It can take centuries to form a citizenry that will exercise the franchise justly.  And there is nothing permanent about such a society.  We are now witnessing in Europe what happens when the voters come to view government as the means by which to loot their neighbors' property and the United States are not too far behind on that path.