I am writing this from the birthplace of (selective) democracy 2,500 years ago, the Athenians having the noose to limit voting rights to intelligent men capable of distinguishing between what is true and what is false. They were very wise, those Athenians; they even elected leaders by drawing lots, because they knew all about human nature, and that the politician who accepts power reluctantly and uses it sparingly is only to be found in myths (and much later on in Shakespeare plays).
Organized Crime: The U...
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Athenian democracy failed when the city-state lost a ten-year war against Sparta, a military state that had proudly and joyfully sacrificed her king and best warriors in order to save the rest of Greece from the invading Persian hordes. (Had I been around, although an Athenian, I would have fought with the Spartans, as my mother’s family derives from that sacred part of Greece.) Fundamentally, humans are not predisposed to living democratically. We are assertive against others, the better of us while smiling, but we do resemble our cousins of the animal kingdom. World history is the story of assertive individuals searching for power. There is only one exception, the one of our Lord Jesus.
“Today minorities impose their laws on entire communities of speakers and writers while abolishing centuries of linguistic and cultural evolution.”
Smooth talkers are the problem. Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler, Mussolini, all charmed the crowds and seduced them to collective ecstasy. The ancient ones like Socrates knew all about those tricks long before. Old Soc warned time and again against demagoguery, and when one of those smooth talkers became too big for his chiton (tunic, for any of you unfamiliar with ancient Greek), Athenians would vote him out of the city. The Ancients knew how fragile democracy was and tried desperately never to put it to the test. Sparta, Thebes, and Macedon, all undemocratic kingdoms, followed the demise of the Athenian experiment, and some of us who don’t watch TV all day and night know the rest.
Principles of Economics
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Not even a Hollywood PR flack could convince anyone that democracy spread like wildfire after the Athenian example. Unlike Christianity, democracy didn’t travel well, except when strongmen used it as an excuse to unseat rivals. In Europe, only after World War I, the militarily defeated Romanovs, Hohenzollerns, and Habsburgs had to abdicate or resign, and Russia, Germany, and Austria became democratic republics with parliamentary governments. Those smiling wallet-lifters the Brits claimed a parliamentary democratic system since chopping off the head of Charles I, but it was nothing of the kind. It was a game played between upper-class gents who differed at times on various matters but were completely united where power lay: on them and their sons and grandsons. Then suddenly some cheeky Brit exiles called Americans began demanding to be heard, and we all know the rest. The American Revolution was how democracy became flavor of the week, month, year, and so on.
The only trouble with American democracy is the true meaning of Patrick Henry’s famous phrase “Give me liberty or give me death.” He did not mean anarchy, nor did he mean liberty as a license for unbound personal freedom. Yet today there are ignoramuses with Ivy League college degrees writing for subversive New York weeklies that complain the system is rigged against minorities. They think American ancestor worship is like the German Hitler worship, and that half the population is represented by eighteen senators, the other half by 82. Voter ID is fascist, as is offering water to someone standing in line to vote in Florida.
