Winston Churchill’s homage to democracy is one of the most overused quotes in English-speaking countries: “Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
Churchill stated that in 1947, just two years after the defeat of a bunch of nasty totalitarian regimes in Europe and Asia and at the point when the West embarked upon a four-decade-long Cold War against yet another. The advantages of the democratic form of government were quite obvious — especially to those who had felt at first hand Hitler’s homicidal mania or were living under Stalin’s blood-soaked dictatorship. However, even at that momentous junction, there were uncomfortable questions about democracy — as well as about the republican form of government that was spreading around the world.
There is no question that the three emperors who ruled the vast expanse of the European territory east of (and including) the French-speaking city of Metz up until the end of World War I were not always very smart. They were vain and wasteful — as well as quite often repressive and even brutal. Their rule was based on the accident of birth which made them monarchs at birth, regardless of their own intellectual abilities, ambitions, personality traits or character.
By then, the idea that they were created monarchs by Divine Providence had been obsolete for more than a century, or since the spread of the Enlightenment. France, which had assimilated the ideas of the Age of Reason most thoroughly, spent most of the 19th century trying to become a republic — and finally succeeding just as Germany was proclaimed an Empire. A new nation, the United States, was built entirely on the ideas of the Enlightenment and was a republic from the start. Latin American nations then followed suit once they freed themselves from their colonial masters
The monarchies that the republics replaced were not at all constitutional or especially democratic. The Russian czar styled himself as the Autocrat of All the Russias. But the record of the republics themselves is at best patchy. On one side of the ledger we have the United States and France as well as Czechoslovakia and Poland, albeit these two with many caveats. However, plenty of other republics have done very poorly. Moreover, democracy — the free and fair elections as an expression of vox populi — had produced very deplorable results. Some of the leaders the people elected have been far worse than anything monarchies had produced since the Middle Ages. In this regard, Germany’s two federal elections of 1932 come to mind, both won by Hitler’s Nazis. And while in the second election, held in November, the Nazis lost a bunch of seats, Stalin’s Communists significantly increased their representation.
But perhaps this is unfair. Germany had been traumatized by a protracted war that killed off or scarred an entire generation. It then suffered the first instance of hyperinflation in economic history and the Depression which was exacerbated by the heavy burden or reparations imposed by the victorious powers. To add insult to injury, it was made a scapegoat for a senseless, murderous conflict in which all participating nations were complicit to a considerable extent. A large portion of the population had been radicalized and the left and the right fought pitched battles in the streets. By the time Germans opted for Hitler, law and order and a special brand of national greatness Germany was confused and exhausted.
More interesting — and amazing — is what we’re seeing now all over the world. While rapid technological, economic and social changes are indeed disconcerting and produce anxiety, globalization and new technologies do threaten many jobs and lifestyles and the Great Recession was a true hardship for many, current conditions can’t be easily compared to the turmoil that shook Europe in the interwar period. And yet, populism and radicalism are everywhere on the ascendent. A numerous crop of politicians are willing to cater to the resentments and fears of their voters. And, time and again, once they grab power, they implement policies that somehow manage to combine cruelty with stupidity. They steal to enrich themselves, their family members and buddies. They deprive the very voters who elected them of a prosperous future. And, more often than not, they refuse to leave when their term is up.
Today’s major summit meetings of world leaders have become a multiracial, multicultural rogue gallery. To be fair once again, not all were freely elected. China’s Xi Jinping runs a one-party system and Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman is a crown prince in a medieval absolutist monarchy. Putin, while popularly elected at least to his first term, runs a country that at that time had had less than a decade of incomplete democracy in its more than 1,000-year history. The same can be said of Belarus’ Alexander Lukashenko and of strongmen in various Central Asian republics. But voters in so many other countries that are ruled by Bolsenaros, Erdogans, Orbans, Netanyahus, Kaczinskis, Modis and the like have chosen those men freely and in some cases have reelected them more than once.
Established Western democracies have not been inured to the lure of populist politicians. In France, the National Rally (or Front) is highly popular. Italy was for many years governed by Berlusconi and may yet elect a Lega government. The UK voted for Brexit and now has a barely competent government with a massive majority in Parliament.
And then there is the United States, the de facto guarantor of freedom and democracy in the world. As the investigation into the January 6 riot proceeds, it becomes exceedingly clear how close its constitutional order came to being overthrown. It held this time, but some 30-40% of voters — a critical mass by any measure — seem ready to surrender voluntarily their freedoms and rights. Very much in keeping with populists in other countries, they have chosen — apparently knowingly — a shameless crook and liar as their leader.
In fact, democracy as understood by Churchill functioned as a workable system precisely because it wasn’t quite democratic. British democracy is a constitutional monarchy. Even though the monarch has no role in the political process, Britain in Churchill’s time was run almost exclusively by a “better class of people” — men bearing the right titles, educated in the right schools, belonging to the right clubs — and the rest of the country, still steeped in the tradition of subordination, left them to it.
Here is a quote from H.L.Mencken that perhaps explains our current predicament:
As democracy is perfected, the office of the president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
Having just seen Donald Trump spend four years in the White House, you can only marvel at Mencken’s clairvoyance. And if Mencken were alive today, he probably would have noted a kind of paradox: as democracy is perfected, it will eventually reach a point when democracy is abolished by popular demand. And so we see how restrictions on voting are introduced in half of the American states by democratically elected representatives of the people.
