More-on Democracy

Pardon the bad pun.

Democracy was a concept that early parlaiments were loath to extend to all members of their society. First it was landowning white men. Then it was just white men. Then it was men. Then it was anyone. To our egalitarian mindest, the notion that it ever was the case that only white landowning men could vote or hold office seems cruel and barbaric. If it were the case today, it certainly would be. The fight for progress was long and bloody, but it was also a matter of basic changes to the way we organized ourselves as nations. Before those changes had taken place, there were real reasons to fear the tyranny of the unlettered mob who had nothing to lose from the destruction of existing order. The problem was that no one with any power really wanted that mob to learn to read in the first place, so we had a long and bloody fight for progress. To gain universal suffrage, those outside of power: women, non-whites, non-owners, had to prove their worth to those who ruled over them. They also had to scare the hell out of them.

My point here isn't to make the case against extending democracy to all citizens of a nation. It's to say that its extension is only successful when citizens demand it themselves, and when they acquire the faculties to discuss and fight for a point of view on the floor of a legislative body, and not in the streets or on the battlefield. It avoids mob-driven extremism only when citizens play by these complex rules. It exists today only in the most tenuous form, and only after more than a century of total collapses, democratically-elected monsters such as Hitler and Mussolini, or both. Tyrannical regimes, be they modern-day Syria, or sixteenth century France have a tendency to atrophy the thinking of common citizens. They generate a dependence on old superstitions, or the strictly patriarchical protection of the Sovereign.

People aren't automatically able to step into the role of dialectical reasoning, and the clash of beliefs in a multiparty democracy. This is why the process was at times halting, why sometimes leaders with the best intentions would call for the slow extension of rights to such people. Today, the appeal of tyrants and fundamentalists echoes the demand of such people, who themselves are ripe for civic indoctrination by evil leaders.

Generations have to come and go, wars over rights must be fought in order for it to be a commodity worth owning and exchanging among a populace. At very least, it is difficult, if not impossible, to induce pure social demand for democracy out of thin air. As for our current conflicts, I see no one action that the West can commit to which would help this situation.

I do not think democracy equals peace. At least not in any short- or medium-term sense. If anything creates peace, it is mutual self-interest, or maybe in a perfect world, mutual love.