Yes, America IS a Democracy
And more's the pity (DN 1.14)
Cover page | Preface | Introduction 1 | Introduction 2 | Introduction 3 |
(Part I) Why: 1.0 | 1.1 | 1.2 | 1.3 | 1.4 | 1.5 | 1.6 | 1.7 | 1.8 | 1.9 | 1.10 | 1.11 | 1.12 | 1.13 | 1.14
Chapter 1: WHY
1.14 — The Democracy Problem, Part 1
DEMOCRACY. It’s the word that ends all debate. These days, when the media calls a public figure “anti-democratic,” it’s like calling him or her a Nazi. No one questions democracy. Everyone knows it is the ultimate evolution in human governance. Only a lunatic would speak ill of the greatest system mankind has ever developed.
Well, I am that lunatic. Democracy is not good. And if given the chance, I would say that to any media personality’s face (both because it is true and to watch their heads explode).
The next step in our journey is to free ourselves from the mind prison of ‘democracy.’ We must find our way out of the fog of the last 200 years. We must stop believing that democracy is a good thing.
But America isn’t a democracy, Chris, you historical ignoramus. It’s a constitutional republic!
*Deep breath.*
If I had a dollar for every time I have heard this—often said with angry disdain, as if I were some sort of apostate child—we could fund the startup sequence for a real distributed nation.
So let’s define the terminology once and for all.
If we only mean “democracy” in the very narrow sense that the American Founders were using the word, then yes, America is technically not a democracy. But in the broader meaning of the word, it absolutely is.
The Founders used “democracy” specifically to refer to pure or direct democracy. These are systems in which citizens themselves vote directly on matters of public policy. We can also use the term arithmocracy, which refers to a system of pure majority rule, in which all it takes to enact a policy is approval by 50-percent-plus-one of the voters. The Founders rightly understood the dangers of any such system.
The Founders’ goal was to make a distinction between those types of democracy and the indirect or representative democracy that they were creating, which they called a republic, and which Americans today rightly call a constitutional republic because the system is guided by a formal written constitution.
In an indirect democracy, the primary democratic mechanism is for people to vote for representatives who then make decisions (putatively) on the people’s behalf. Parliamentary systems, the American federal republic, and numerous other types of indirect democracies all function in this way. (Many of these also employ some direct methods, such as ballot initiatives, recalls, and referenda—often at the local level.)
When I use the term “democracy,” I am (unless I specify otherwise) using it in its broadest sense: as a top-level category that describes any system in which decision-making occurs through a system of voting.
I am not alone in this. I understand the impulse among patriotic Americans to use the word narrowly, as the American Founders used it, but when most people throughout the world use the word “democracy,” they mean it in this much broader sense.
At the very top level, the term democracy is used to distinguish among terms meant to identify a degree of dispersion of decision-making authority:
Monarchy: one person decides for everyone.
Oligarchy: a small number decide for everyone.
Democracy: the majority decides for everyone.
Anarchy: everyone decides for themselves.
Obviously those definitions are simplified shorthand, but they are useful as such. Indeed, it is essential that we have a word for this top-level category. And that word is, in fact, democracy.
In order to further elucidate all of this, I have created a detailed chart. The top portion shows a continuum: degree of dispersion of decision-making authority. Ranged below are a wide variety of different systems of political organization, placed roughly where they belong along such a continuum. (NB: The placements are accurate enough; it is not possible to place them with any sort of “perfect” accuracy.)
As an aside: I recognize that leftists will quibble with some of this, such as the placement of syndicalism as a totalitarian/oligarchic/particratic phenomenon. But it is. And the way to know that it is would be to start a privately owned factory in an area in which syndicalists have power. If that factory employs workers on mutually acceptable terms, but in the standard “capitalistic” way, how long would it take before syndicalists came knocking roughly on that factory’s door? We know the answer. Because leftism isn’t about what’s best for workers—it’s about what a small cadre of angry university-educated intellectuals think is best for them.
Anyway…
The Founders knew from history that pure democracies are fraught with problems. They understood that majorities can trample the rights of minorities and individuals. So they devised a compromise—a system that blended democratic elements with various structures designed to mitigate the problems associated with democracy.
They went with representative rather than direct democracy. They created two different types of elected representatives, elected in different ways and for different terms.
The Senate was intended to act as a deliberative restraint upon the unbridled passions of the majority, and to represent state interests through indirect election (which was later undone by the 17th Amendment). The states were able to create their own versions of this system (though that too was undone by Baker v. Carr/Reynolds v. Sims).
They created systems designed to slow things down—vetos, a long process for passage of legislation, etc.—so that rash decisions would not be made in the heat of the moment. They established the Electoral College, a layered system of subsidiarity, multiple branches, and all the other checks and balances that every school-child ought to know.
Yet the fact that they sought to create a compromise system does not make it not a democracy. An indirect democracy, yes. A “partial” democracy—sure. But it is still a subset of democracy as a top-level category describing degree of dispersion of decision-making authority.
In other words, as you can perceive in the chart above, democracy in this top-level categorical sense is one answer to the all-important human question…
Who gets to rule?
By obsessing over the distinction the American Founders made between one type of democracy and democracy writ large, we risk missing the point. And that point is that democracy, like monarchy and oligarchy, is the WRONG answer to that question.
It is important for patriotic conservatives to recognize this and not ignore it out of some misplaced terminological respect for the American Founders. The future depends on freedom-cherishing conservatives helping humanity rise to the next plateau in the journey of human liberty.
And that depends on those same conservatives not remaining permanently stuck in 1789.
Are you benefitting from these posts and from our many conversations? Do you have high hopes for the future success of this project? If so, please consider sharing a small amount—just a cup of coffee once a month—to keep me in the field and working on this!
It matters not what you call a government. They are all rotten to the core. You could never find any insane asylum with as many cuckoos and invalids as you find in government. For so many, government is their alter ego...the super power they never could otherwise have. The power to inflict damage and pain to a population and never have to be accountable.
One point only because I think it important to know the battlefield: When elites, or oligarchs in practice, use the word democracy, they have moved the definition. Democracy the people speak of = the will of the people even though it's a lie. Democracy as understood by the elites = the will of the institutions. It's a recent switch but it's important to know how others are defining.