AMU Homeland Security Opinion

The Travesty of Democracy in the Present Age

By Brett Daniel Shehadey
Special Contributor for In Homeland Security

All around the world, the backfire of America’s previous push for democracy is made apparent every year. We must as a nation learn from our mistakes. The ultimate lesson here is one in education, where a “democracy” literally means “mob rule.”

The fundamental principle is the same today as it was back in ancient Greece—the majority of people rule the society. But the first false consensus effort was that the politicians used the terms affixed most popularly by academia and the media to mean something different while allowing the mechanism of elections and majority vote to determine the same antiquated definition of mob rule. They tried to paint democracy as a modern form of government providing free and fair system of government that was based on frequent elections and the rule of law. But the power of pushing a word “democracy” around the globe in-line with the systematic election process of majority wins does not make a liberal democracy and rarely if ever will.

Of course, we know this now. Or at least, we think we do. We also tried are hand at nation-building and the results do not look long-lasting. But if “democracy” is not spread, even in its misunderstood and consequential meaning, how else will the West promote a better world for humans to live in based on human rights and moral principles?

The question is extremely pressing in the face of growing modern tyranny among nations which we now have renamed “authoritarianism” because it is in often in republican forms and comes in various degrees of government abuse—not to confuse authoritarianism of degrees with the total tyranny or that old word the revolutionary Americans once used back then.

Our efforts to pursue the perfect meaning of a word and concept in a puritan form are part of the reason that end us up in trouble. Rather than understand the fundamentals, which we have forgotten, we seek to apply the most complex adaptations we can think of. By the way, there is no more slavery in the world either, just as there is no more tyranny. We call slavery “human trafficking.” It makes us feel better and we feel it is more descriptive, some think.

The term liberal democracy is often used. But putting aside the faulty quest for altered meanings which are irrational, the answer to the question of spreading socio-political values that will benefit the world is simple—it lies within a greater understanding and adherence to liberalism. What? Not familiar that political “L” word. This word too has been altered in the US frame of mind, for which in Europe, it remains the same while American forbearers held it to mean the fuel of their revolutionary spirit. Americans have indeed and unfortunately lost the basics and the source of what are today within us many inborn political cultural values.

The real definition of liberalism, as a fundamental character, is rooted in the belief in divine or natural laws that are universally applied and interpreted through the faculty and skill of developed human reason. Liberalism is more than just the openness of government and the empowerment of people. Liberalism at its root is the empowering of people through reason so that they may improve their own lives and the lives of others in society.

Political liberal movements were ultimately about the freedom of the individual from all bonds and the purpose of a fettered mind, body and spirit. Enlighten and spread reason was believed in turn that it would allow the people the ability to interpret the divine or natural laws, which would in turn allow them to discover that the governance of the people should have benign characteristics that are easily recognized as beneficial and humane.

The underlining of classical liberal philosophies may evolve over time to fit the modern environment but the fundamentals cannot be ignored. It could be seen that the spirit of democracy is dead without liberalism and that promoting liberalism everywhere is the right answer to the above question. After all, stealing traits from liberal thinkers does not equate to being a servant of liberalism and the principles of a liberal government. Some of which are: open government, freedom, equality, the rule of law, elections from the people without the show of favoritism, the rule of beneficial and equal laws for and applicable to all.

Most ideas originating from liberalism can be found somewhere or derived by the student of liberalism. But it should not be required that all of those ideals should be expected by burgeoning wanton desires and movements stirring in the world. A full liberal democratic government does not need to be immediately required but phased in over time. The institution itself need not even be formed if evolutionary liberalism can be initiated and transplanted around the world successfully in bits, in pieces and stages.

Are genuine gains being made? How can one tell if the country does not allow journalists and whose people live in fear to even say what they really feel or are no longer sure of their real feelings as they are psychologically abused by tyrants? The Western agenda, if any, should be to root out, expose and eliminate efforts that undermine the genuine liberal process rather than artificially creating it; meanwhile, they can promote and inspire it where it is absent but should never push or force it. The liberal process would be defined by those movements which empower the individual and the people of given states regardless of their democratic character. To do this requires massive tools of covert and overt means of strategic information programs in statecraft.

To some extent the US has been doing this all along or attempting to do so as it adjusted policy forms of “spreading democracy” politics. The problem is that it failed to find an alternative framework in which to produce positive results that empowered the people. some times it is too little too late but it is almost always too little, uncoordinated with a prudent and strategic whole of government approach. Elections are not enough. An imposed political rivalry to tyrannical overlords are not enough for a foreign people to enjoy the fruits of liberty. Movements, journalism and associations must be started at the grass-roots level where there is a heart and will to do so and grow independently on their own.

The fact that certain groups within a society want more representation but are not getting it does not immediately necessitate sponsorship for their empowerment either. What if they are criminal or their intentions are hostile to the rest of the population? Think of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Quickly propelled to power and just as quickly fallen and persecuted again. Neither the nationalists in Egypt nor the Islamists are willing to embrace liberalism but they do tinker with democracy—even the military in power now.

There is a reason why, in principle, that criminals are disenfranchised from the election process legally. This does not mean that they should not have the right but are not responsible enough to have it. Having acted contrary to the law, why should they vote to alter it while serving time? On the other hand, it makes more sense that prisoners who have committed felonies should be incarcerated for their safety and the safety of others, refrained from vote and participation in governance until such time as they are again released, rehabilitated and responsible enough to vote again. There is such a thing as liberalism in theory and liberalism in practice but the goal is an evolving revolution of individual and social empowerment.

In a mere democracy and with only democratic ends, one political faction will obtain power in the form of even legitimate elections and then utterly persecute the other into defeat or extinction if it can. Thus the democratic system, like a weapon in the wrong hands, or irresponsible hands, has the power to oppress, torture and genocide a portion of a state just the same as a monarchy. So democracy is neither good nor bad but really just one process that was entrusted and pushed as something greater than what it really was. This argument against illiberal democracy and the “tyranny of majority” was well understood by liberal thinkers of the past.

Liberalism must be about the search for enlightenment that brought about the concepts now falsely attributed to modern democracies throughout the world. Liberalism is a catalyst that improves people’s lives and livelihoods as well as society and drives and generates ideas and prosperity. Democracy is a form of government formation and retention.

The shadow of Russia’s paper democracy is one recent example that does not discourage the region’s undemocratic but more importantly illiberal make-up. The faulty democracy of Ukraine (whether regarding the interim unelected political leaders in Kiev or the Crimea, Donetsk or Luhansk Russian inspired election farcical plagued with intimidation and mock votes) are just another case in point.

At this time, the Syrian President Bashar al Assad presents himself as an electoral candidate in the national presidential elections in the midst of an ongoing civil war and after having been dictator for about the same time as Putin (since 2000). The two remain allies with strong geopolitical interests and even stronger stakes in their adherence to democracy, deceit and oppression.

The antithesis of liberalism is not just tyranny but also sloth and ignorance; and most importantly the lack of reason and self-empowerment in general. Also a modern relativistic democracy is not based on reason or right as it denies the existence of universal natural laws. Rather it favors the proposition of any given group in power or trendy thing to be decided by the majority for the blessings and the ills of whatever it may bring. Relativistic democracy also impairs the innate ability for human reason or the freedom of people to rightly interpret them.

Thus liberalism is the spirit that excels in liberation and improvement. Democracy is a political institutional device that funnels both the good people and the bad people through it and submits itself to the majority in the end, even if they become tyrannical.

 

 

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