AMERICANS IGNORE THE FRAGILITY OF OUR DEMOCRACY—-AND ITS CURRENT DISARRAY—— AT OUR PERIL
BY
ALLAN C. BROWNFELD
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The
political divisions in our society should concern all Americans who
value our democratic tradition. Men and women in the Democratic and
Republican parties, more and more, are viewing one another as “enemies”
rather than adversaries who may disagree about various policies but are
committed to the larger society and its future. We have seen an assault
on the U.S. Capitol and a campaign to reverse the results of the 2020
election. Civility is largely absent from our political discourse, on
all sides of the political spectrum.
I
worked in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives for many years.
Republicans and Democrats made coalitions in areas in which they could
agree. Together, Republicans and Democrats won the Cold War, ended
racial segregation, and provided voting rights to all citizens.
In
the years I worked in Congress, I don’t remember the legislators with
whom I worked speaking ill of those in the other party. In one
position, I served as assistant to the research director of the House
Republican Conference. I met regularly with those on our board,
including two future presidents, Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush. I
don’t remember ill will toward the Democrats but a desire to convince
as many Democrats as possible to join them in supporting their
legislative proposals. They often succeeded. In one instance,
conservative legislation to bring an end to the Interstate Commerce
Commission and the Cjvil Aeronautics Board gained enough Democratic
support to become law.
Suddenly, with free enterprise and competition brought to the airlines
and the trucking industry, prices became competitive and real
competition entered these industries. One conservative Republican with
whom I worked on this issue was Rep. Phil Crane (R-IL). He worked with
and was supported by President Jimmy Carter’s Civil Aeronautics Board
chairman Alfred Kahn, who also served as chairman of Carter’s Council of
Wage and Price Stability. There are many examples of Republicans and
Democrats working together for the best interest of the country. Many
still remember the images of President Ronald Reagan and House Speaker
Tip O’Neill working—-and relaxing—-together.
Free
societies are rare in history and those few which have existed have not
lasted very long. In “On Power,” the French political philosopher
Bertrand De Jouvenel points out that we frequently say, “Liberty is the
most precious of all goods” without noticing what this concept implies.
He writes: “A good thing which is of great price is not one of the
primary necessities. Water costs nothing at all and bread very little.
What costs much is something like a Rembrandt, which though its price
is above rubies, is wanted by very few people and by none who have not,
as it happens, a sufficiency of bread and water. Precious things,
therefore, are really desired by but few people, and by none who have
not, as it happens, a sufficiency of bread and water. Precious things,
therefore, are really desired by but few human beings and not even by
them until their primary needs have been amply provided. It is from
this point of view that liberty needs to be looked at—-the will to be
free is in time of danger extinguished and revives again when once the
need of security has received satisfaction. Liberty is in fact only a
secondary need; The primary need is security.”
The
great philosophers predicted that democratic government would produce
this result. Plato, Aristotle and, more recently, De Tocqueville, Lord
Bryce and Macaulay, predicted that people would give away their freedom
voluntarily for what they perceived as greater security, De Jouvenel
concludes: “The state, when once it is made the giver of protection and
security, has but to urge the necessities of its protectorate and
overlordship to justify its encroachments.”
In
a similar vein, Thomas Babbington Macaulay in 1857 lamented, “I have
long been convinced that institutions purely democratic, sooner or
later, destroy liberty or civilization or both. In Europe, where the
population is dense, the effect of such institutions would be almost
instantaneous…Either the poor would plunder the rich, and civilization
would perish, or order and prosperity would be saved by a strong
military government and liberty would perish.”
Macaulay,
looking to America, declared that, “Either some Caesar or Napoleon will
seize the reins of government with a strong hand; or your republic
will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians…as the Roman
Empire was…with this difference- that your Huns and Vandals will have
been engendered within your own country by your institutions.”
More
than 200 years ago, the British historian Alexander Tytler argued that,
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government . It can
only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largess
out of the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always
votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public
treasury—-with the result that democracy collapses over a loose fiscal
policy, always to be followed by a dictatorship.”
Discussing
the dilemma facing American democracy, Professor Samuel Huntington
noted that, “The Greek philosophers argued that the best practical
state—-the ‘mixed regime’’—-would combine several different principles
of government in the constitution. The Constitution of 1787. was
drafted with this insight very much in mind. Over the years, however,
the American political system has emerged as a distinctive case of
extraordinarily democratic institutions joined to an exclusively
democratic value system. Democracy, as a result, can very easily become
a threat to itself in the United States…The vulnerability of democratic
government in the United States thus comes from the internal dynamics
of democracy itself.”
At
the beginning of the Republic, this idea was very much on the minds of
the Founding Fathers. “Democracy never lasts long,”. John Adams
observed. “it soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never
was a democracy that did not commit suicide”
The
political rhetoric to which we have been subjected in the recent past,
the demonization of adversaries, is increasingly reminiscent, many
argue, of how democracies fail. Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy
at Yale University, makes this point: “It is a core tenet of fascist
politics that the goal of oratory should not be to convince the
intellect , but to sway the will. The anonymous author of an article in
a 1925 Italian fascist magazine writes, ‘The mysticism of Fascism is
the proof of its triumph. Reasoning does not attract, emotion does.’
In Mein Kampf, in a chapter entitled’The Struggle in the Early Days:
The Role of the Orator,’ Hitler writes that it is a gross
misunderstanding to dismiss simple language as stupid. Throughout Mein
Kampf, Hitler is clear that the aim of propaganda is to replace reasoned
argument in the public sphere with irrational fears and passions. In a
February 2018 interview, Steve Bannon said, ‘We got elected on Drain
the Swamp, Lock Her Up, Build a Wall…this was pure anger. Anger and
fear is what gets people to the polls.’”
Many
twenty first century Americans have not only turned away from the
Foundung Fathers’ fear of government power but have also rejected two of
their important observations. One is that equality and liberty are
inherently contradictory and that the only kind of equality which is
consistent with liberty is equality under the law. The second is that
free enterprise and other freedoms go hand in hand and that if one is
destroyed , the others will also cease to exist.
In
his Second Treatise, John Locke, the philosopher who most significantly
influenced the thinking of the Founders, stated that, “The great and
Chief end…of man’s uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves
under governments is the preservation of their property. Every man has a
property in his own person . This nobody has any right to but
himself. The labor of his body and the work of his hands, we may say,
are properly his. Whatsoever then, he removed out of the state that
nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labor with it,
and joined to it something that is his own , and thereby makes it his
property.”
Those who
today advocate an “equal” distribution of property claim that, in doing
so, they are simply applying the philosophy of the Founding Fathers to
matters of economic concern. Nothing could be further from the truth.
In The Federalist Papers, James Madison clearly deals with this
question. He wrote: “The diversity in the faculties of men, from
which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable
obstacle to a uniformity of interest. The protection of these faculties
is the first object of government. From the protection of different and
unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different
degrees and kinds of property immediately results.”
Anyone
looking at our current political life sees a society in disarray.
Political opponents demonize one another and increasingly view one
another as enemies. More and more name-calling, “Fascist” for one side,
“Marxist” for the other, replaces any serious discussion of the many
serious issues facing the nation. Samuel Johnson, the Oxford scholar
and English statesman of the 1700s, stated, ,When once the forms of
civility are violated, there returns little hope of a return to kindness
and decency.” And John Adams, our second president, said that, “Our
Constitution was made only for a moral…people. It is wholly inadequate
to the government of any other.”
The
fragility of our democracy and the threat now facing it is clear to
more and more Americans. In a recent survey, 93 per cent of Americans
identified incivility as a major problem. Dr. Michael McCullough, a
psychology professor at the University of Miami, argues that civility is
crucial for maintaining orderliness in a society wherein the absence of
civility leads to anarchy and disorder, resulting in a broken society.
It is essential that we recognize the peril we are in and move swiftly
to change course.