Two centuries ago, an obscure Scotsman named Alexander Fraser Tyler observed that “a democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government.” Yet here we are, nearly 250 years into America’s experiment with a government “of the people, by the people, for the people,” as Abraham Lincoln proclaimed in his Gettysburg address. Sadly, now Tyler’s idea that democracy fails when “the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury,” is upon us.
I’ve been pondering how we got here so quickly and asking myself some questions. Is democracy failing in America and in many other countries because of corruption for personal gain? (Looks like it.) Can democracy survive, thrive and prevail anywhere? What does democracy depend upon? Is the idea of democracy a misconception or myth? How is it so easily overthrown? Why are threats to democracy growing?
According to the United Nations the number of countries moving toward authoritarianism has more than doubled in recent years as polarization increases “to toxic levels” while pluralism declines and autocratic leaders take control of countries by fostering misinformation, media censorship, and increasingly repressive civil and human rights. Why has that been happening? This led to my remembering the history of democracy and then to considering another form of governance that seems to work better than ours.
As I learned in school democracy is rooted in ancient Greece followed and altered by the Roman Republic. Both systems led to changes that grew complicated. In Greece democracy fostered the idea of citizen participation in governance but limited it to free men. The Romans went a bit further, adding limited election of representatives. Later, in medieval times, institutions added more liberal ideas like the English parliament’s Magna Carta in 1215, which limited the power of monarchs and gave some rights to various classes of people. That led to the idea that citizens should have certain rights when it came to how they were governed. When the American and French revolutions occurred the idea of human rights, though still limited, became widespread, and began to include more people in the working class, including women.
The idea of democracy relies on two principles: Individual autonomy and Equality. These two values resonated and made democracy popular, but putting those two ideas into practice proved to be complicated. Ultimately it led to the idea of majority rule. Today the idea of “representative democracy” is a framework that offers “freedom of thought, expression, religion, and peaceful assembly.”
Social democracies take these rights further. They call for governments to provide social and economic rights to all, including education, healthcare, fair pay, and pensions. Proponents of this ideology, which have been successful in Scandinavian countries and some constitutional democracies in Europe, have proven to respect the fundamental ideas of autonomy, equality, and human rights. It’s a system that has been proven to work well. Citizens are happy with such a humane form of governance and leaders are respected, trusted, and appreciated. It’s important to emphasize here that democratic socialism is not communism, a frequent trope that conservative and powerful elected leaders and their followers employ to convince others that it’s a dangerous system of governance. In reality it’s a system that works and keeps countries safe and sane.
Our Constitution, written in 1789, begins with “We the People,” meant to capture the foundational principles that the government derives its power from the consent of the governed, ”for whom it serves. But democracy is not guaranteed. As some scholars say, it is still an experiment. In 1947 Winston Churchill noted that “it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have tried from time to time.”
This brief history is important because we urgently need to recognize and resist our current and evolving system of government under the current administration, which is far from upholding the Constitution, the rule of law, human rights, and a viable and compassionate worldview. We are clearly living in a growing state of fear, shock, and illegal maneuvers that defy and threaten democracy while rapidly becoming a totalitarian state ruled by oligarchs and a dictator.
Unless you’ve escaped that or witnessed it, it’s hard to imagine what it is like, but a look at the Nazi playbook in Germany reveals the horror of those regimes.
Globally autocracies are growing exponentially. In some instances, they move to dictatorships by developing and refining techniques, including lies and propaganda, censorship, blackmail, and co-optation of entities including universities, media, the law, corporations, institutions and organizations that work toward and protect democracy. Increasing, new methods of repression, indignity and humiliation are employed (e.g., Alligator Auschwitz and ICE detention centers) and strategic alliances manipulate information threatening elections. Sound familiar?
I can’t answer the questions I’ve asked myself and I don’t know how we will emerge from this terrifying time, or how democracy can be restored and improved for the future. But I know the time has come for each of us to understand the situation, to act in our own and others’ interests, and to recognize the looming threat to our way of life. We must not only observe it, but act upon it if democracy is to prevail and thrive. We must ask ourselves hard questions in the hope that they lead us to a new and sustainable social democracy.
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Elayne Clift writes and worries in Brattleboro, Vt. www.elayne-clift.com