Democracy and freedom

By Christopher Coyle
web posted August 23, 2004

There are not many ideas which are more revered than the
concept of democracy, the system of government lead by the
great body of the people themselves. Indeed, it is true that
democracy has done much to give a voice to many and make
politics more representative of the public at large. Yet, in our
unending affection for the democratic process, we become apt to
forget the true purpose of political systems: the maintenance
societal order and individual liberty. Democracy is only as useful
and important as it satisfies these goals. We risk the danger of
valuing the tools intended to protect freedom above the very
ideal itself. Democracy is only a means to an end, not a goal in
and of itself.

If we were able to discover and prove a system which was more
conducive to such freedom, society should not be wary of
releasing itself from the tenets of democracy to adopt the new
ways. All things being equal, living in freedom under an absolute
ruler would be much preferred to representative tyranny. Of
course, history has shown that democracy has generally been the
political system most conducive to a free society, a sentiment
perhaps most accurately portrait by former British Prime
Minister Winston Churchill when he quipped, "Democracy is the
worst form of government, except for all those others that have
been tried."

Whether there actually is a better system out there, either
currently existing or yet to be thought of, is anyone's guess. The
great minds of history have given us no shortage of utopian
visions of possible government administration. What is
indisputable is that fact that democracy does leave much to be
desired. The course of modern nation-states like America, which
of course is not a true a democracy but rather a republic or
representative democracy (but which does not really change the
study of the problem at all), is in this regard particularly
enlightening to analyze.

The spread of enfranchisement to wider swaths of the population
has helped to contribute to the growth of the federal government
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The power of the vote
is essentially the power to control other people's lives, including
their pocketbooks. As the nineteenth-century South Carolina
Senator John Calhoun so ably demonstrated, the spread of
democracy tends to separate the population into the distinct
classes of taxpayers and tax consumers. Democracy enables the
mass of the population to vote themselves benefits from others
who are not so numerous as to defend themselves at the ballot
box. The process only gets more vicious as the ranks of the tax
consumers continue to rise, being supported by the smaller and
over-burdened taxpayers, who, being in the minority, have little
recourse to protect their resources from the voting plunderers.
This process has born itself out in America, though not yet to the
extent of the socialist nations of Europe, which itself
demonstrates the further progression of this phenomenon.

More generally, it is this fundamental conflict between balancing
the will of the majority with the fundamental rights of the minority
which plagued, among others, our founding fathers during
deliberations in creating a new government. King George III had
shown the Americans the danger of the centralized control of
power, a situation we were keen on not repeating. It was under
such conditions that the concept of federalism gained
acceptance, devolving most powers to the several states and
ultimately to the people themselves. This avoided the dreaded
centralization of power and the accompanying evils that come
with it. Yet, most American political philosophers of the time
were just as fearful of the rule of the tyrannical majority, dreading
a "mobocracy" which would trample the rights of the minority
and those out of power. It was one of the great attributes of the
Constitution and the Bill of Rights in that it placed limits on
majority decision-making by specifically delineating a small
number of areas where the government could interfere as well as
listing fundamental rights of citizens and thereby guarantee many
of the absolute political rights of minorities against the fleeting
whims of temporary majorities.

Governments, as Thomas Jefferson so eloquently phrased in the
Declaration of Independence, were not instituted to be an
instrument of the popular will (though they were legitimized by
the consent of the governed) but rather to secure our rights of
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. There is nothing mythical
about the "will of the majority." Obviously, the popularity of a
decision in no way demonstrates its justness or morality. The
fundamental individual rights of every person are above the will
of even the greatest of any majority; the vote of a plebiscite can
not take that away.

Today, the danger of supplanting democracy for freedom as our
striving ideal is even greater as apply this principle in attempting
to reform foreign nations' political institutions. An important goal
for the Bush administration in foreign policy has been democratic
reforms in the Middle East. Such reforms have been part of a
very slow process, but a process that has been making progress
nevertheless. Mr. Bush's desire to mould a democratic society
has seen the most progress in those nations which America has
invaded during his tenure, Afghanistan and Iraq. The people of
these nations have born many hardships from the repressive,
dictatorial regimes of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein's Baathist
regime, respectively. Understandably trying to avoid the failures
of the previous system, America has nurtured a transition to
democratic institutions in these burgeoning nations. However, we
have seemingly ignored the potential tyranny of the majority
which could ensue.

For instance, Shiite Muslims make up approximately 60 percent
of the Iraqi population and will undoubtedly be the winners of a
new, democratically-elected government. This has raised fears
that the majority of Iraqis in a democratic process may just vote
themselves into a theocracy along the lines of Iran. Whenever
administration officials and their supporters are pressed on the
issue of a potential popularly-elected fundamentalist government,
their answer inevitably comes down to the simple reply "they
won't." That may very well be true yet, in the end, it provides
absolutely no surety that such a course of events will not occur.
This is because the fundamental nature of democracy forbids any
such assertion from being truthfully declared.
 
No such guarantee of one's individual liberties can ever be truly
safe as long as such decisions rests in the hands of any majority
that develops. Of course, such a guarantee will not be safe
anywhere as long as any individual has such political power, with
or without the consent of the majority. In America, the
Constitution has gone a long way to protect those individual
rights. However, in the end, it is simply a piece of paper,
constantly evolving as it is subject to the differing interpretations
of those in power. There is also nothing sacred about the
document; it has the ability to be changed by future generations.
And as history has repeatedly shown us, the Constitution can
simply be ignored when it gets in the way of the plans of those
ruling over us. The answers to our essential political questions
will never be discovered if we continue to mistake the ends we
wish to strive for with the means we utilize to achieve those ends.
"Liberty is the highest political end," Lord Acton said.
Representative government – democracy – should only be
pursued for as long as it not detrimental to that highest of ideals.

Christopher Coyle (cjcoyle2k@yahoo.com) is the president of
The Liberty Coalition at the University of Virginia.

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