The Dark Side of Democracy

THE TOWER OF BABEL, though a handy explanation for the diversity of languages, does not account for the multiple meanings of some key words in any one language. In everyday discourse, these words are asked to carry a heavy load: "love," "freedom" (or "liberty"), "justice," "constitution," and, of course, "God," whom even Hitler sometimes invoked. But the one word in the political realm which signally works overtime is "democracy. " Recall the Communist regimes with titles like "the People's Democratic Republic of . " Such temerity in kidnapping the word suggests that it must have strong positive connotations. Not everyone, of course, sees it that way. Hitler may have invoked God but was contemptuous of democracy, a feeling shared by some Islamic countries and fundamentalist movements. Even if we limit ourselves to home tuff, "democracy" is not well understood. Ask Americans what it means, and they are, collectively, likely to list a plethora of uplifting customs. Overarching all these blessings is the popular sense that democracy is a vote of confidence in the wisdom of the common people by placing the political solution of the largest questions at their disposal. Loving democracy therefore means being upbeat about people (the government, after all is of, by, and for them) and optimistic about life. These fine-sounding traits are, however, but the branches or manifestations of democracy. The unsavory truth is that the essence of democracy is actually pessimism, based on absence of innocence and loss of knowledge. Democracy means serious doubts about people and about the truth, doubts about our ability to withstand temptation and about our capacity to know, doubts about ethics and epistemology. Democracy is, finally, communal metaphysical rudderlessness. I Original Sin All non-democratic forms of government are based on an explicit or implicit elitist view. Whether it be a monarchy, aristocracy, theocracy, a Robespierre-like expression of the Rousseauist General Will, a Marxist dictatorship of the proletariat, a British or French colony run by a disinterested civil service, a Huxleyan utopian republic, or a plutocracy in various times and places, some individual or group is seen (or is cynically rationalized) as capable of rising above selfish interests--as few people are--and of governing for the common good. Although all early societies operated on this assumption, the notion was first given eloquent expression by Plato, whose hypothetical Republic is ruled by a class of selfless guardians and who memorably stated that there would be no good government until philosophers became kings or kings became philosophers. In principle, Plato was right; monarchy would work, indeed would be vastly superior to democracy, if good and wise men became kings; aristocracy would work if patricians were the best persons in the realm. They obviously have not been. Thinkers from the time of the American Revolution--behind them, Locke and Montesquieu--have realized that there can be no elite to govern us for our benefit. Though a few individuals are a little more objective than the rest of us, no one knows, on the basis of past behavior, how anyone--not even oneself will behave under temptations that, having newly come to power, one has never known before. It takes possession of high office to reveal the true inner person, and the record of history has been that it brings out the worst in most people. The very few who are able to pass the test cannot be isolated in advance from the others who look equally promising but turn out not to be so. We have had, furthermore, a century of thinkers like Marx and Nietzsche and Freud, who taught us about the role of the unconscious in human affairs, about self deception and rationalization, about ulterior motives and mixed intentions, about moral ambiguity. These notions make it hard to believe in incorruptible, unchanging altruism in anyone and make it easy to believe that precisely those who talk a good game are often the ones least trustworthy. …