Nonsense on the Inevitability of Democracy

The Future of Freedom Foundation ^ | August 7, 2006 | James Bovard

[philman_36]

Many Americans are being lulled into assuming that democracy is inevitable.
Gotta love it. Thanks for the point.

The painfully obvious question...If we're already a democracy, as so many claim, then why would a future, yet still inevitable, occurance of establishing a democracy in America need to take place?

Since those "many" Americans (having ignored government class in school and hearing it being used in popular usage) probably think that America is already a democracy, instead of the republican form of government that it is, what is there to be lulled into?
It seems to me that they're already way beyond being lulled.
They're already tranquilized! Damn near catatonic.

[B-Chan]

Excellent post. Democracy, like communism, is a "god that failed". One need look only at 1936 Spain (or Russia today) to see what happens to all democracies sooner or later. Heute Rußland, morgen die Welt.

[RobbyS]

Is Bush saying that democracy is inevitable or that it is preferable to authoritarian government? It is certainly a better way of accomodating different interests than despotism.

[samm1148]

Democracy is when five men are in a room with one woman and they vote to rape the woman. A republic exists to uphold the rights of the woman--not sure who said that originally; wasn't me.

But:

It is the nature of individuals to seek freedom whereas the nature of groups is to gravitate towards tyranny--I did say that although I expect it'll be stolen by some klutz Yale graduate writing for the Washington Post.

[A. Pole]

It is the nature of individuals to seek freedom whereas the nature of groups is to gravitate towards tyranny

Man is a social/group creature by his nature.

[Sam Cree]

'Course, it is also the nature of individuals to seek membership in groups.

[samm1148]

True but one needn't bow to groupthink. That is how liberalism got to the point that it is now. Those of us who stood up; hooted and hollered and sometimes said 'no' were labeled as tinfoil hat wearing nuts.

Now that we have an America where one has to look around to see who is listening before an opinion can be expressed all the people who called us fringe guys nuts are suddenly carping about their 'rights'. It is too late for that now.

[Old_Mil]

Democracy is human government balanced on the head of a pin. It demands the best of a nation's citiens intellect, character, and work ethic and only then can it survive and thrive.

[A. Pole]

True but one needn't bow to groupthink.

Even for the greatest thinkers and inventors their own ideas are only a small fraction what they got from the culture in which they grew.

And the majority of people cannot be great thinkers or inventors. We are doomed to group-think and deluding ourself that we think on our won is a group-think itself.

[delacoert]

Americans of the day were the highest culmination of Greco-Roman, Judaeo-Christian, Anglo-American civilization.

I agree

I'm not ashamed of it

It is a fact of history.

It is worth defending -- to the death (of our enemies).

[Dog Gone]

Since Woodrow Wilson proclaimed that democracy was the destiny of humanity, more than 100 democratic governments have crashed and burned around the globe, replaced by dictators, juntas, or foreign conquerors.

I don't know where he gets his numbers. Perhaps he's counting several countries several times as their form of government vacillated.

There are unquestionably far more democracies today than in Wilson's time, so when you start off with a deceptive premise, the rest of the conclusions aren't going to be too solid.

[x]

Does anyone really believe that the rise of democracy is of necessity permanent and irreversible? If Fukuyama does, then he's naive. Democracy, like anything else, could disappear if people don't make efforts to make it work. Does anyone seriously doubt that?

When people talk about "the march of democracy" or democracy as a "destiny," they're thinking of it as the fulfillment or flourishing of something important in the human spirit. But that flowering doesn't have to happen. Circumstances could cut the process short.

We can argue about that -- about whether democracy really does correspond to human nature or whether it really is the highest or best form of government. To do so, we'd have to try to get at what "democracy" really means and what the alternatives are, and whether democracy is really even possible. But Bovard's argument about whether or not democracy is logically necessary or whether its victory is predetermined and inevitable looks to be beside the point.

[Paul Ross]

Ping.

Francis who?

[Sam Cree]

I generally agree with what you said, I was just being sardonic in my post.

As long as there is individual freedom, groups and minorities are automatically free. But it doesn't work the other way around; when the state starts meting out special rights and preferences for groups, the individual tends to suffer.

Also, I think democracy itself, as noted by others on this thread, tends to infringe the rights of the individual in favor of the group.

That's one of the purposes of our Constitution I think, to restrain the tendency of the group, in the form of a democracy, from infringing the freedom of the individual.

[Paul Ross]

That's one of the purposes of our Constitution I think, to restrain the tendency of the group, in the form of a democracy, from infringing the freedom of the individual.

That was in fact the key factor driving the Constitutional Convention...while implementing a stronger central government, still preventing mob rule...

I like Wikipedia's distillation of Madison's view (which most Founders thought compelling) about faction and mob rule:

Federalist No. 10 continues the discussion of a question broached in Hamilton's Federalist No. 9. Hamilton had addressed the destructive role of faction in breaking apart a republic. The question Madison answers, then, is how to eliminate the negative effects of faction. He defines a faction as "a number of citizens, whether amounting to a minority or majority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community." He saw direct democracy as a danger to individual rights and advocated a representative democracy (also called a republic), in order to protect individual liberty from majority rule. He says, "A pure democracy can admit no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will be felt by a majority, and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party. Hence it is, that democracies 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."

Like the anti-Federalists who opposed him, Madison was substantially influenced by the work of Montesquieu, though Madison and Montesquieu disagreed on the question addressed in this essay. He also relied heavily on the philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment, especially David Hume, whose influence is most clear in Madison's discussion of the types of faction.

[Paul Ross]

The more that democracy is assumed to be inevitable, the more likely democracy will self-destruct. Faith in inevitability deadens the sense of peril — and people blithely acquiesce to one power seizure after another by the ruling class.

Compelling conclusion.

[Sam Cree]

Thank you; that's a wonderful quote. I should get out my copy of the Federalist and actually read it.

I guess it's no coincidence that the Left pushes so hard for pure democracy.