The Blog: Cogito Ergo Blogo
Is Democracy a Universal Value?
13 January, 2012, 08:37 pm
Posted by JP
The program broadcast this Sunday asks the question: “Is Democracy a Universal Value?” According to the dictionary:
“Democracy.” A system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives.
The dictionary definition leaves a lot of room for variation. In a direct democracy, for example, the people collectively decide political matters. In a representative democracy, the people elect representatives to make the political decisions. And exactly who is an "eligible member"? Only those over 18? Or 21? Only men? Only property-owners?
Some say Athens was the world's first democracy. But women and slaves -- that is, most of the population -- were completely excluded. In the United States. It took the Civil war, the 19th amendment, the Civil Rights Legislation of the 60’s, along with the 24th and 26th amendments, to give us universal adult suffrage.
So democracy can take many forms. But is democracy itself – as opposed to this or that form of democracy – an inherently good thing?
Smart people have differed on this issues. The great philosopher and statesman, Winston Churchill, noted, "democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." Plato was a better philosopher, and he disagreed. He thought democracy was the worst possible form of government. He favored an aristocracy run by philosopher kings. There are many more phlilosopher critics of democracy, including Thomas Hobbes, who had a very negative view of democracy.
Of course, democracy also has its philosophical defenders. John Locke, for example, took the right to participate in government to be basic and self-evident. Locke's philosophical ideas heavily influenced our own Founding Fathers -- at least their rhetoric, anyway.
I think there are plenty of empirical and instrumental reasons for preferring democracy. Democracies are less likely to go to war, more likely to make decisions that citizens accept as legitimate, and more likely to command un-coerced loyalty and respect from their citizens. Nevertheless, experience also vindicates some of the doubts that Plato and Hobbes and other anti-democrats has about political decision making. It’s hard to deny, that at least as it has evolved in America, democracy puts a premium on the skills needed to win office, which may not correlate all that well with the skills needed to govern.
The skills needed to win office include being able to raise vast amounts of money, design clever campaign commercials, and give empty speeches that stir emotion but little thought. Is there any reason to think these skills correlate with the ability to govern wisely?
Still, whatever case anti-democratic philosophers make, there’s clearly a consensus in America and the West that Democracy is a good thing. Plato’s vision of running things with Philosopher Kings isn’t likely to win out anytime soon.
But is Democracy a universal value? Or does our love of democracy stem from values in our culture, that other cultures might not share? Some say values inherent in certain Asian and Muslim cultures make democracy unsuitable, at least in the forms familiar to the West.And yet when given the opportunity, people in those cultures push for democracy, from Tiananmen Square to the Arab Spring.
So do human beings, when given a real choice, actually prefer democracy? Are there sound philosophical reasons why they should prefer democracy?
We put those questions and more to our guest, Larry Diamond from the Hoover Institution, and author of The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World.
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Comments
I do not think democracy is a universal value. I would consider it a relative newcomer on the calendar of human existence. Why? Well, look at history, past and present. Government has seldom been of, by and for the people. More often, it has been of, by and for a powerful elite---and has been effected through intimidation and violence. Look at any civilization, prior to Plato; and many others afterwards and take their measure. I have always had a problem with church and state: they are inextricable, while many naively avow that they ought to be separate. This is a primary reason why Protestants split from Catholicism. They got tired of money ruling their sacred lives. Today, or course, money rules most everything, sacred and secular. Ain't that a bitch?
Democracy is not one-size-fits-all. Never was. Never will be. Freedom implies more than we are willing to allow.
Pretty much.
Democracy?
Who would vote to be governed, ruled over, or controlled by anyone else but Oneself?
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Democracy (or the idea of such) is very like Christianity. Or Islam. Or, perhaps, Buddhism. None of these ideologies is universal. But, in differing degrees, their adherents would smoke and mirror us into submission. MJA said it succinctly, if incompletely. I'll also be brief, and conscious readers can fill in the blanks for themselves.
If you can sell an Eskimo a refrigerator---go for it. Yes---that sums it pretty much.
After all these United States have sanctioned and participated in over the past thirty years, and more, and after the negative results that have accrued, more of us ought to be asking more questions about the selling of democracy around the world. As a people, we are hated for our zealotry. As a government, we are despised for our cavalier interventions---yet, we go blithely forward, secure in our own arrogance, with the faith that we are saving the world. Please. Someone needs to make this stop. If you do not like my sentiments, ask yourself why that is. Then ask yourself, if you dare: just what part of the world have we saved?
In ancient Athens, democracy died a work in progress. Ancient Rome, too, failed to make democracy work; nevertheless, Augustus Caesar preserved the by-then defunct democratic institutions in order to exercise autocratic power through them. The gladiator-rebel Spartacus failed to establish a communistic democracy. A host of odious 20th-century tyrannies dared to call themselves "Democratic Republics." Even in the modern Western democracies the rich are getting richer and the poor more desperate while the wealth of the middle-class is eroding away as our civilization degenerates.
Democracy could be admirable if it could be made to work but as yet there is no evidence that humanity has the wisdom to be able to do so.
DEMOCRACY AND PHILOSOPHY
Wow! The comments by the esteemed regulars (and I am waiting to hear from the esteemed Carpenter, who I always find so wise) all agree: no contemporary philosopher can defend democracy, as it has turned out. Philosophers value the quality of thought: it is faulty to assume that when the majority decides some policy is good, it will in fact be good; the mere fact that the majority decided is not inherently good, the policy has to be good in fact, and there is no inherent connection between the decision-making process, and good.
The liberal impetus for democracy is respect for people’s needs. But democracy immediately becomes a vehicle for codifying people’s wants. And these wants are often not what the society actually needs to progress. I feel that along with much of the Constitution, capitalism and democracy will not get the US into the 21st century successfully.
Nothing about democracy is “inherent” or “universal,” as the hosts have used those terms. No more so than “divine right to rule,” for instance; all that is being sought is just a name and some beliefmagic to appeal to the governed so that they will be pacified and placated into thinking that their wants are being taken into account, and so that those who rule can get away with their private agendas.
A true democracy would have the people directly (not indirectly through “representatives”) deciding the really important stuff: do we go to war, where shall my taxes go, what shall be the minimum wage, who gets free health care, what shall interest rates be, and a whole bunch of moral questions. Never forget, minority civil rights are, in a true democracy, only those that the majority is willing to recognize, out of concern that someday they might be in the minority.
Well stated T, well stated. Your last sentence, though not original, is well-reiterated. And the overall substance of your comment is congruent with the reality of what others have stated, seems to me. Democracy is but another ideal---an outgrowth of the indomitablilty of the human spirit. Or, do we call those paradigms now? Thanks for the kind words. JP and KT: please carry on---this blog could one day be legendary...
I wrote a new declaration of independence and preamble to the Constitution sometime ago and thought to share it here.
Thanks,
A Declaration of Unity Freedom & Equality
We the people of this planet Earth, in order to form a more perfect or equal union, establish equitable justice, insure domestic as well as universal tranquility, provide for a common defense against inequity, promote a general equitable welfare system, and secure the Blessings of Liberty, or more simply the true Freedoms of Equality, to ourselves, our posterity, to all things, must declare and practice a new constitution, based on the ultimate truth, the power of Nature’s true equality, the separate and equal station in which Nature’s God entitles all, the self-evident truth that not only all men, but equally all things are truly created equal, that all is truly One. Then and only then, will mankind as well as the entire universe, that he through the course of human events so unlawfully, so unnaturally, so destructively, and so inequitably divided, be truly united, and equally set free. The time has come to dissolve the bands of inequity that divide us, the time has come for a new declaration, an evolution based on truth, a new constitution powered by nature’s true equity, true unity, true Oneness, the time has come to unite all things and set the universe free.
And only the truth shall set us free!
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If by universal value it is meant a value for which there is a force of reason to adopt, then Democracy is a Universal value. Acts of consent for a governing body are democratic acts; therefore individuals who are in favor of their government are, by definition, participating in a Democracy. Acts of disconsent and protest are attempts to interact democratically with a political entity. Only by nonparticipation does one disengage with democracy.
Equality is the true value of the Universe.
Let freedom ring!
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Are the flaws of Democracy – as many in this blog so aptly described, an inherent characteristics of it, or does it have to do more with our failure to set up and impose it properly? I am not an American, but follow the GOP show with great interest. It is horrifying to see if a candidate dare to use his/her brain to reason, he/she becomes suspect liberal and not conservative enough. Or if he/she is open to grow as a person and politician, they stamp the ‘flip-flopper’ label on him. It appears logical to assume that ‘mass consciousness’ elects the most dysfunctional politician, following the democratic process.
Let us be positive about this for a moment, and assume the electorate successfully selected the candidate with the best qualification. In a true democracy, the majority should have the means to adjust, change its collective mind on any issue to the extent it is practical, resulting in course corrections the Government should heed. In our current system, we address these issues by limiting the duration of time a politician can hold onto office.
I argue the state of our democracy points to the degree of maturity of the electorate more than whether democracy is inherently a workable societal form of governance. The question is how can we make it work more effectively?
The question of values, whether there are universal values is a critical consideration. Organized religions take it for granted that they are the only one who know what they are. Like it or not, we have a strong religious dimension to our subject matter if the electorate subscribed to follow various religious doctrines. Is there a chance to identify some common values that do not have their roots in religious believes? If values do not sprout from metaphysical layers, how can we go about identifying them? Is there a non-religious god of some sort that would grant the universality to our moral codes? I’d like to suggest there is such a ‘god’. It is our ‘humanness’, our emerging, developing and expanding human nature.
Universal values are wired, hard-coded into the fabric of our makeup. We do not have to figure out what they are through some convoluted phylosophical reasoning. We can simply know them by reflecting what we are and what it is we all value. Mother Teresa and the Afgan suicide bombers all value life, for example. The suicide bomber wants to secure a luxurious aternal life in paradise by killing fellow humans. These misguided people are still searching for values – albeit in a highly undesireable way.
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