The Tyranny of Democracy
We have flunked our own history. We have naively assumed that almost any nation can establish a viable democracy by simply setting up some ballot boxes out in the villages and having free elections. As a people, we know so little history that we have not perceived that the American experience is anomalous and could not be easily duplicatedthat if country X, Y, or Z should drive out its present dictator, the people would have a worse tyrant by tomorrow morning.1
Does anyone ever read the Constitution? Does anyone really know what it actually says? You wouldn't think so by listening to politicians and reading editorial writers. Fourth of July fictional musings bring out the intellectual interlopers in droves. The editorial board of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, representative of historical revisionists who apparently cannot read, extol America's "more than 200 years . . . [of] democracy." The Constitution never uses the word "democracy" or "democratic." Article IV, Section 4, says: "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican form of government." "Democracy" was anathema.
The editorial writers lament that America's "democratic" ideals are not flourishing around the world. "Democracy, it seems, isn't a hardy weed that will take root in just any climate. It's more of a hothouse orchid, beautiful and fragile but demanding a lot of care and just the right conditions."2 Just like I said, "fictional musings." America's democratic ideals are flourishing around the world, and they are just as ruinous there as they are here in America. Those with the most votesdemocracycreate a form of government that expresses their character. Socialists who vote, vote for socialists. Communists who vote, vote for Communists.
Character Counts
In essence, governmental forms are considered to be more important than ideology and character. Give people what they want, and they will vote for the right thing. Don't count on it if the people don't know what's right. For example, "Bolivia had sixty revolts, ten constitutions, and six presidents assassinated between 1826 and 1898." Simón Bolívar (17831830), who has been described as the "George Washington of South America," died an "exhausted and disillusioned idealist" because of the character of the ungovernable people.3 Some months before his death Bolívar wrote:
There is no good faith in [Latin] America, nor among the nations of [Latin] America. Treaties are scraps of paper; constitutions, printed matter; elections, battles; freedom, anarchy; and life a torment.4
When attempts are made to send our constitutional model abroad, it is filled with the prevailing worldview of the people or of the leadership seeking to create a new society. A nation going "democratic" is no guarantee that there will be any success or that the word has anything to do with the democratic process that operates in our American system. Nor should we be thrilled when we hear of nations becoming "republics." The former Communist governments of East Germany (GDR: German Democratic Republic) and the Soviet Union (USSR: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) used the terminology of America's governing principles, but in reality they remained communistic and anti-freedom. Democratic elections can result in Communist regimes and tyrannies.
Anything is PossibleJust Vote!
Carl F. H. Henry observes that the "nationalism of democracy" gave us "fascism and communism."5 Democracy is often the first step toward fascism, because it is used by tyrannts to disestablish political freedom in the name of political freedom.
According to J. Edgar Hoover, astute director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation: "The Red Fascists have long followed the practice of making full use of democratic liberties: elections, lawful agitation, and propaganda, and free speech, press, assembly. Their basic premise: Reap every advantage possible."6
Opponents of freedom love the democratic process. Today's America is a perfect example of the way democracy is being used to subvert the Constitution and turning this once great nation into a burgeoning socialist "paradise."
Part of the problem lies in the fact that most people do not understand the meaning of democracy. "The definitions of democracy are so varied that J. L. Austin once dismissed the word as 'notoriously useless.'"7 If, as most scholars agree, democracy has its origins in Greek thought, Christians ought to be a little suspicious of its philosophical roots. Athenianinspired democracy, seemingly dead over long centuries, "became one of a long procession of political panaceas, eventually coming full circle in the idea of government-centered socialism."8 France's bloody revolution was democratically inspired, and tyranny followed. So, in one case, democracy lead to a bloody revolution and dictatorship in France, and in other cases, democracy leads to "government-centered socialism."
There are two striking historical facts. First, nearly everyone today says they are democrats no matter whether their views are on the left, centre or right. Political regimes of all kinds in, for instance, Western Europe, the Eastern bloc and Latin America claim to be democracies. Yet, what each of these regimes says and does is radically different. Democracy seems to bestow an 'aura of legitimacy' on modern political life: rules, laws, policies and decisions appear justified and appropriate when they are 'democratic'.9
Democracy is bandied about as an incantation. When "the people" express themselves in opposition to egregiously oppressive political regimes, this is claimed to be "democracy in action," as if public expression was somehow a magical spell that will make forty or fifty years of socialistic and communistic oppression go away.
Establishing a Definition
As in all matters, it is best to start with definitions. The word itself gives us a hint of its meaning, although this will not be enough for us to make an ethical assessment.
'Democracy' is derived from demokratia, the root meanings of which are demos (people) and kratos (rule). Democracy means a form of government in which, in contradistinction to monarchies and aristocracies, the people rule.10
Numerous pundits talk about the glories of democracy but never define it. The assumption is that everyone knows what everyone else means by the term. I'm persuaded that if Christian proponents of democracy actually established a definition of democracy, we would all see how unbiblical and weak their social theories actually are. It's convenient to say "I believe in democracy!" It's another thing to define it and to live in terms of its precepts.
As Christians, do we really want to claim to believe in an undefined social theory that is accepted as normative by humanists from around the world when we consider how our Christian forefathers reacted to the concept? John Winthrop declared democracy to be "the meanest and worst of all forms of government."11 John Cotton wrote in 1636: "Democracy, I do not conceive that ever God did ordain as a fit government either for church or commonwealth. If the people be governors, who shall be governed?"12 In the Federalist Papers (No. 10), James Madison, said to be the "Father of the Constitution," writes that democracies are "spectacles of turbulence and contention." Pure democracies are "incompatible with personal security or the rights of property. . . . In general [they] have been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."13 Francis Schaeffer described law by majority opinion, certainly a definition of democracy, as "the dictatorship of the 51%, with no controls and nothing with which to challenge the majority."14 Schaeffer deduces a simple implication of this definition of democracy: "It means that if Hitler was able to get a 51% vote of the Germans, he had a right to kill the Jews."15
What should we think of this? Did these men oppose the democratic process? Winthrop certainly did not. Although voting was restricted in New England16 compared to our nation's universal suffrage, assistants were chosen "by the general vote of the people" through the raising of hands.17 Certainly Madison cannot be accused of rebuffing the democratic process.
These men feared that the whims of the majority cut off from an ethical base would prevail if direct democracy were ever accepted as a legitimate form of civil government. On the other hand, these men knew that only "the people" could keep a government in check. There was no divine right of kings (or a divine right of representatives or judges), and there must be no divine right of the people. A checking and balancing civil government was the ideal our founders worked for. But if at any time the character of the people changed, the effort would have been for nought. This is why John Adams could write: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." At the Constitutional Convention, an enfeebled Benjamin Franklin, quoting Psalm 127:1, reiterated the necessity of the nation acknowledging that all powers, whether vested in the people or in their representatives, come from God: "Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it." In the same speech, Franklin continued: "I firmly believe this and I also believe that, without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel...."18
NOTES
1. Edward Coleson, "The American Revolution: Typical or Unique?," The Journal of Christian Reconstruction, 3:1, Symposium on Christianity and the American Revolution, ed. Gary North (Summer 1976), 172.
2. "U.S. democracy difficult to emulate," The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (July 4, 2000), A8.
3. Coleson, "The American Revolution: Typical or Unique?," 17677.
4. Quoted in Edward Coleson, "The American Revolution: Typical or Unique?," 177.
5. Carl F.H. Henry, God Revelation and Authority, 6 vols. (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1979), 4:8.
6. Carl F.H. Henry, Aspects of Christian Social Ethics (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964), 127.
7. Greg L. Bahnsen, "The Theonomic Position on God and Politics," in Gary Scott Smith, ed., God and Politics: Four Views on the Reformation of Civil Government (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1989), 53, note 25.
8. Ferdinand Lundberg, Myth of Democracy (New York: Lyle Stuart, 1989), 7.
9. David Held, Models of Democracy (Standford, CA: Standford University Press, 1987), 1.
10. Held, Models of Democracy, 2.
11. Quoted in A. Marvyn Davies, Foundation of American Freedom: Calvinism in the Development of Democratic Thought and Action (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1955), 11.
12. Letter to Lord Say and Seal, quoted by Perry Miller and Thomas H. Johnson, eds., The Puritans: A Sourcebook of Their Writings, 2 vols. (New York: Harper and Row, [1938) 1963), 1:20910.
13. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist, Jacob E. Cooke, ed. (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961), 61.
14. Francis A. Schaeffer, The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1970), 3334.
15. Schaeffer, The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century, 34.
16. Marchette Chute, The First Liberty: A History of the right to Vote in America, 16191850 (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1969).
17. Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop (Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1958), 90.
18. Benjamin Franklin, "Motion for Prayers in the Convention," The Works of Benjamin Franklin, Federal edition, ed.John Bigelow (New York and London: The Knickerbocker Press, 1904), 2:337338.