Many people have said many things about democracy and the term “democracy” has been interpreted in numerous different ways.
by Ruwantissa Abeyratne
Sedition is bred in the lap of luxury and its chosen emissaries are the beggared spendthrift and the impoverished libertine ~ George Bancroft
For some time, the ship of society appeared to be without a rudder. I am not referring to the insurrection on Capitol Hill of 6 January which President elect Joe Biden called “bordering on sedition”. I am referring to the time of the French Revolution (between 1789 and 1792) when a “cult” of frenetic democracy maniacs sacked Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and renamed it “ The Temple of Reason”. That there is a sense of déjà vu here is quite obvious albeit the gap of nearly 225 years between the two attacks. Watching the press coverage of the attack on Capitol Hill I was struck by one “domestic terrorist” (as he was called) justifying the attack by saying that America grew out of a revolution and the government embraced democracy as a response to it being overwhelmed.
Many people have said many things about democracy and the term “democracy” has been interpreted in numerous different ways. The most thought-provoking interpretation I found was by C Douglas Lummis in his book In Radical Democracy: “Among political words, surely “democracy” is the most cruelly overworked. It has been used to justify revolution, counterrevolution, terror, compromise, and mediocrity. It has been applied to representative institutions, free enterprise economies, State run economies, Leninist party rule, and dictatorship by plebiscite. Wars have been fought to make the world safe for it, and atomic bombs have been dropped to establish it on foreign soil. Counterinsurgency operations are carried out to protect it against guerillas who say they are fighting for it. Democracy has been treated as a whore among political words”.
President-elect Biden put it both eloquently and correctly, referring to the attack: “Our democracy is under an unprecedented assault…an assault on the rule of law like few times we've ever seen it...the scenes of chaos at the capitol do not represent who we are. It's disorder, it's chaos, it borders on sedition. It must end now." Unfortunately, this might be where the disconnect lies between the “revolutionary” insurgent attacking the fountain of democracy for his libertine views and the principled Statesman clinging on to democracy which has seemingly evolved into an amorphous ambivalence representing all but a moral compass of equality and equity in the minds of the revolutionaries.
The blurb accompanying a well reasoned book by William B. Gairdner titled “The Trouble with Democracy – A Citizen Speaks Out” has this to say: “ Gairdner’s examination of democracy has its origins in a paradox: citizens of Western democracies are continuing to demand more and more individual freedoms, yet they also want lifelong security and services from the state. This “libertarian socialism” has produced an ongoing civil war of values over a host of novel democratic rights. As a result, society has become so divided that for the first time, people are beginning to wonder if this thing we call “democracy” – our last great faith and the only remaining civil religion in Europe and North America - has let us down".
People in ancient Athens created democracy in the dawn of Western civilization circa 5th Century B.C. Gairdner in the aforementioned book says: " In its earliest forms, it was (and many would say it remains today) a continuous struggle between elites and masses for shares and control of economic and political largesse and power". Gairdner goes on to say: " For me, the first and foremost deeply unsettling truth about the ancient democracies - both Greek and Roman - is that they were utterly dependent upon their existence upon the brutality and widespread chattel slavery"...in this way, democracy evolved as a kind of concessional pact between wealthy elites and the freeborn masses of farmers and poor, both of which were defending themselves against the growing slave population they needed to keep in place”.
The Economist of March 1st to 7th 2014 in its column "Getting Democracy Right" says: " The most striking thing about the founders of modern democracy such as James Madison and John Stuart Mill is how hard-headed they were. They regarded democracy as a powerful but imperfect mechanism: something that needed to be designed carefully, in order to harness human creativity but also to check human perversity, and then kept in good working order, constantly oiled, adjusted and worked upon.
In the final analysis democracy is entrustment. In a manner of speaking therefore, it is the people who are guilty of negligent entrustment, if they entrust a nation to thieves and vagabonds. Perhaps that is why they take to the streets as they often do all around the world these days. The thieves and vagabonds are not doing the job they were voted in to do. This having been said, nothing justifies socialism or uprising without a moral compass, calculated to inflict damage to persons and property. Based on this, it is envisioned that the new President, who has demonstrated integrity and a strong political moral compass throughout his decades long career in law making and governance, would follow the principle that, when a nation reaches the state of catharsis where a regime of division and domestic instability is outrun, resuscitation of the society left behind should be done through values driven decision making. Effective leadership must move from conscious belief-based decision making to values-based decision making if the aim is to create a future most desired by the people.
The fundamental question to be asked in this regard is, “when a decision is being taken, is it aligned with the values represented by the government and the democratic aspirations of the people? If the decision is rational, but not in alignment with the values, it would not be consistent with the objective of development and growth. In every instance, the nature of the decision reflects the value. For example, if a democracy were to value trust, then the leadership needs to take decisions that allow it to display and experience trust. If accountability is valued, then decisions need to be made which bring to bear the need for accountability. Values-based decision making is not reliant upon predetermined reasoning based on past experiences. It is essentially a forward thinking process which asks the question “how can I respond to this situation in such a way that I am able to express my most deeply held values?” The values-driven leader always tries to let his values and not his beliefs guide his decision making.
A values-based democracy should ensure that development is not merely concerned with material well being and economic affluence but goes on to cover in a broad sense all forms of human progress and a better quality of life. In this sense, the development brought about by an honest democracy would not be measured merely by the increased per capita income of the citizens of a country, but also by their political and economic freedom and their equal enjoyment of the fruits of growth.
Arguably, the most important consideration must be the realization that democracy and governance are two different things. While the will of the people should prevail and there must be freedom of speech and assembly, that liberty should be subject to robust and determined governance to effectively preclude rabble rousing, anarchy and sedition. This way, perceived inadequacies of democracy can be obviated and the insidious chasm of racial, religious and ethnic hatred could be addressed proactively.
Also this way, no one could claim that a portion of the society is forgotten or neglected.
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