Musings on Democracy

Bush and his neocon friends justified the war in Iraq in part because we were spreading democracy. This was a great goal, but in so doing caused so much anger in the Arab world that we should be very happy these are not democracies. Democracy is a form of government, not some sacred goal for the world. It is a way of governing people that we think works best, but democracy alone can elect Hitler to power in Germany, can support Sen. Joe McCarthy, and can elect Huey Long and Richard Daley, Sr.
Democracy uncontrolled can become mob rule. The French Revolution was a people gone wild. The founders of our nation had a great dream of freedom, but they wanted to protect the freedoms won in a very bloody war. As they wrote the constitution, they still had the dreams of freedom, the optimism of the Enlightenment, but they also wanted to prevent freedom from going wild. They were well versed in the scriptures and had some the Apostle Paul's realism as he knew that he did the things he did not want to do and did not do the things he wanted to do. Theologians later talked about original sin. The Constitution included such things as the balance of powers and the rights of the states to help prevent leaders and/or the people from abusing their powers. The Bill of Rights had to be included to get some states to ratify it.

Democracy needs some cohesion among the peoples. The United States was united by its great victory over Britain and their love of their leaders: Washington, Franklin, Jefferson,... But they were also divided over slavery, religion, and nationality. The religious differences were quite significant. Stories abounded about the wars in Europe over religion and the oppression of certain religious groups. Here we had colonies founded by Quakers, Roman Catholics, Baptists, followers of the Church of England, Puritans. Many of the founding fathers were deists and remembered how the church in many nations was dictatorial and wealthy. Shortly before and after the war those wild Methodists were causing quite a stir. We had English, French, Germans, Swedish, and other nationalities. There were soon arguments between the frontiersmen and the rich businessmen of the coastal cities. What held us together, I do not know. We share a dream.

But in some other nations, elections are the occasion of riots and killings. Deep divisions over religion, nationalities, political philosophy, class warfare, history, etc. feed fires of hatred when elections are called. In several nations their several political parties representing these different factions and the only democratic system that works is parliamentarian. There the parties must form assemble coalitions and in Israel this means that the extreme parties have extraordinary power because if they pull out, the government collapses. If Israel was truly a democracy and all the people who live inside its borders were allowed to participate in the democratic system, the Palestinians might soon have a majority.

Democracy is a system, but it works best where there is a sense of cohesion and mutual respect for persons of different backgrounds. Democracy alone has no ethos or system of values. It is a place where different ideas can be shared and we can learn from each other--if we want to. Writers say that the post-modern world is one where we realize that there are different valid ways of life and belief, different ways to shared goals. We can not go back to the religion of our forefathers for they did not share a common religious outlook. We must take pride as we have in our world being a melting pot of different colors, religions, histories, nationalities. We must work together to solve problems--but we all know that that is very difficult often, even in a democracy. And we must remember our sinfulness and weakness. Democratically elected leaders helped kill off millions and millions of innocent people in the last century.

Democracy does indeed remain the best system but for it to work well there has to be some civility and the sharing of some basic sets of values.