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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
February 27, 2011
End democracy now
Columnists read columnists -- even meet, and correspond, I would have to admit under police interrogation -- and there are moments when I just have to tip my hat. Such a moment came this week, while reading a column by Walter E. Williams, on the Townhall website. (That would be a "lunatic right-wing" site, to those of you who are lunatic Left.)In case you've never heard of him, Williams is the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University. This doesn't impress me, but it might impress some other people. He is also an African-American, or as he might say, "black" -- which I do not consider a conspicuous virtue, but again it might come as a surprise to some. He grew up in Philadelphia housing projects. Now, THAT impresses me. The column was entitled (yawn) "Democracy Versus Liberty." Expressed that way, his thesis is not especially controversial. To some degree it is acknowledged, even on the Left, that there may be some tension between these two supposed desiderata. Yet others -- including, it would seem, everyone currently reporting from the Middle East -- use the terms so interchangeably, that we can at least hope to irritate them, a wee little bit. Williams begins by quoting from among the more prominent Founding Fathers of the United States, warning against the dangers of democracy. (My favourite is from John Adams: "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.") He continues by mentioning that the word "democracy" is to be found nowhere in the U.S. Constitution, nor in the preceding Declaration of Independence. It is instead a "republic" at which the authors were aiming. Moreover, none of the subsequent grand expostulations of American patriotism mention democracy, either. To which I would add that Patrick Henry did not declare, "Give me democracy or give me death." The idea would be too fatuous. Our Canadian founding fathers (yes, they were all guys) were similarly uninfatuated by this term, which might be translated from the Greek, "mob rule." It is a little-appreciated fact that they established our own appointive Senate quite purposely, to resist demagogic excesses in any House of Commons. And while Canadian schoolchildren may be taught to laugh at this, today (if they so much as learn that our Senate exists), I remain of a mind with the Fathers of Confederation. The sad truth is that those United States have been fairly thoroughly democratized. And Canada, aheu! ... I was born in a free country, but now it is a democracy. A government of laws, not of men; and especially not mobs of men -- this was the ambition of so many great statesmen in that antediluvian world, before the flood of "interactive technology" began to lift the possibility of instant referenda on any subject at all. The whole project of polling people, on complex but significant questions of moral and legal right, should trigger revulsion in any well-formed mind. (And for the rest, skepticism would be a start.) For "the people," considered as a volatile mass, have really no idea. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I recall that I have myself, from time to time, slipped into the rhetorical posture of confusing democracy with motherhood and apple pie. In my own defence, let me say that I do it less as I grow older; but I have never had a good excuse. As a child of only seven I witnessed a mob (in Lahore, Pakistan) "voting" by its gestures till the blood ran down the street, and I made my first vow as a Tory. And, Loyalist to the core, I have no sneaking sympathy for revolution, either. (Republics I can tolerate on the small, urban scale.) We think we have grown fat on democracy, for that is, once again, what postmodern children are taught to believe, in the Nanny State's schools. The reality is almost the precise opposite. America and Europe grew fat, and alas mentally lazy, thanks to the rule of law. And not just any law, but that founded upon explicitly Christian doctrines and premises, which recognized the sanctity of human life, and extended this, by cautious increments and experiments, to the fullest human liberty the world had yet enjoyed. They tried democracy in the Gaza Strip. And now they have Hamas as a consequence. We have flourished, ourselves, almost in spite of the democracy that has now caught up with us. For after several generations of voting ourselves other people's money, then borrowing against our children when that ran out; and voting away our freedoms to the minders of the state; we find our own constitutional order under potentially catastrophic stress. Truth to tell, I almost split my sides laughing when I read Prof. Williams's column. Not because he said anything untrue, but because he expressed a very important truth, quite lost upon the masses. Which is rather of the essence of humour: it flags things that we had put out of mind. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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