The city of Seattle played host to another radical experiment this year, as part of the BLM protests. Back in June, the police withdrew from several blocks allowing protestors to establish the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone. This territory was governed through consensus decision-making and bottom-up initiatives like the construction of a community vegetable garden. A number of shootings later, the police moved back in and the CHAZ was dismantled.
There is plenty of anti-democratic posturing on the radical Right, too — and not just from the outright fascists. Other flavours include neo-feudalism, various kinds of theocracy and ultra-libertarian set-ups where there’s no voting because there’s no government.
These are fringe movements, and their ideas irrelevant to mainstream politics — or at least, they were. What’s changed is that the democratic West now faces serious competition from authoritarian regimes around the world. Gone are the days when the superiority of the free world could be demonstrated in terms of its material achievements. Just look at China with its awe-inspiring hi-tech infrastructure! Gaze in wonder as dazzling cities emerge from the deserts of the Gulf! Cower in fear as Vladimir Putin rebuilds the Russian empire! The autocracies are on the front foot; the West is in retreat.
Covid has only encouraged this dangerous inferiority complex, so that while Europe and America are still struggling, China crushed its outbreak with ruthless efficiency.
Yet China is not the only country to have crushed the curve, and some of the most effective responses were mounted by democratic nations like Taiwan, Germany and New Zealand. Alternatively, it may be that the Swedish approach is ultimately proven to be the correct one. It’s too early to tell, but the truth will out — thanks to the accountability and transparency of the democratic system. Democracies get things wrong all the time, but they have the capacity to learn from their mistakes and change accordingly.
And China’s achievements may not be all they seem. Back in the days of the (first) Cold War it often looked like the Soviets were pulling ahead — for instance in the space race — and there were plenty of useful idiots in the West willing to take their propaganda at face value, while ignoring the essential rottenness of the system. Today’s useful idiots are doing exactly the same in regard to China and the other glittering dictatorships, and while it may take decades for the rot to finally bring down the system, it will happen because, in the absence of timely reform, it always does.
The case for democracy is as compelling as it ever was, but it has to be made afresh. We cannot assume that each new generation will simply absorb the lessons of history. Furthermore, democrats must confront the Left’s utopian fantasies and Right’s worship of power and wealth for its own sake.
Yet while this is a fight that should be led from the centre, I wonder if our liberals and moderates are up to the job. Indeed, I worry that it is the centrists, from unreconstructed free marketeers to progressive enthusiasts for a European superstate, who are a bigger threat to democracy than the radicals are.
To advance their vision of technocratic governance and a borderless world, centrists are quite happy to constrain the democracy they claim to be in favour of. Hence the unquestioned support for independent central banks so that “politics” (i.e. democracy) can be kept out of monetary policy; or the binding provisions of free trade agreements so that “politics” (i.e. democracy) doesn’t disrupt big business; or the “four freedoms” of the Single Market, that subordinates “national politics” (i.e. democracy) so that goods, services, capital and people can cross borders unimpeded.
In 2016, the British people decided they’d had enough. They voted to take back control, which was when the “moderates” showed us their true colours. It wasn’t just the all-out attempt to overturn the result of the referendum, but also the condescension directed at those who’d dared to defy the establishment.
Richard Dawkins was typical of his class in declaring that the “general public” were “not qualified” to take the decision they did. He also appeared to suggest that a test of “reasoning ability or knowledge” should be applied to the franchise. If that’s what he meant, then it’s a challenge to the principle of one person, one vote. But then that’s not such a controversial position these days.
The idea of an epistocracy — i.e. rule by the knowledgeable — goes all the way back to Plato. More recently, the idea that we need a more “rational” alternative to democracy as we know it has come back into vogue thanks to books such as The Myth of the Rational Voter (2007) by Bryan Caplan and Against Democracy (2016) by Jason Brennan. These are not fringe authors; both books were published by Princeton University Press and were extensively and respectfully reviewed.
So democracy is losing the battle of ideas, but more importantly it is also losing the battle of attitudes.
If the process of disenchantment has gone furthest among younger people in Anglo-Saxon countries, then that’s surely no coincidence. Here we have the most individualistic of generations in the most individualistic part of the world. And that gets us to the heart of the matter. The anti-democratic spirit of the age doesn’t come from some desire for self-abasement, rather it’s an expression of colossal self-regard.
This takes many forms, but for the “knowledge class” it’s the fallacy that their kind of knowledge is superior to all others — thus entitling a tenured professor to a bigger say than a shopkeeper or a bus driver. For the central bankers and other assorted technocrats it’s the delusion that only they can steer the ship of state — despite their record of running it aground on multiple occasions. For ideologues of Left, Right and Centre it’s all about purity. If they and their comrades are in sole possession of the truth, then why should they be impeded by the wrongthink of the enemy?
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Subscribe“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.” (Attributed to Marcus Tullius Cicero)
In America the traitors are Critical Theorists. Their movement has infected almost every American institution.
Wow, thanks for giving me lots to think about 🙂
I wonder if increasingly liberal parenting attitudes have left us with a generation of children in adult bodies who subconsciously want rules and boundaries imposed upon them because their parents failed do so? Controversial maybe :0
As a teacher, I’ve certainly noticed this over the last couple of decades. Students respect teachers that give them clear boundaries.
Strangely enough, it is now liberals who are uncomfortable with democracy because it gives rise to leaders they don’t like.
Two thoughts struck me reading this piece :-
As a youngster, more years ago than I care to remember, I recall a discussion in an A-Level History class in which I suggested that my studies led me to believe that benevolent dictatorship might be the best form of governance. This idea drew much agreement and approval from my contemporaries but was gently deconstructed by our teacher who used his greater experience to point out carefully that dictatorships rarely remained benevolent. Current attitudes, as reported, do not appear to be very different.
Many quote, perfectly correctly, that ancient Greece, or more accurately the city state of Athens, was the birthplace of democracy and that the etymology of the word itself comes from their language. What almost all fail to realise, or to admit, is that the franchise was extended only to adult males of proven Athenian pure lineage restricting the voters to a small percentage of the population. Universal franchise democracy is a much more recent development than many people realise (what do they think fuelled the suffragettes ?)
Yes a benevolent dictator would be FAR better than democracy. The problem is that there is a law which always wins in the end – “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”.
yes.
Those that rightly (based on history) fear the corruptibility of a limited minority can’t be ignored.
That only a small number of our respective community’s members seem to be wise enough to *accurately* project the effects of today’s behaviors to tomorrow’s results simply screams for a Jeffersonian-like “prove your understanding in order to vote” sort of model.
This merit-based approach is not elitist and can tap into our best/brightest, but suffers the weakness of how we would ‘test’ for that so-called “proper” understanding of the issues at hand.
History is rich with corrupted ‘testers’, as in the ’30s American south, when, apparently, whites were given Dr. Seuss to prove literacy, and blacks were given the Declaration of Independence. This sort of garbage happens everywhere, with every group power dynamic.
But it still seems like a viable challenge to take on, as it capitalizes on the hidden deeper wisdom we collectively possess, while filtering the more typically simplistic and emotional wisdom that both fashion and marketing forces happily leverage in all of us to tap into our more populistic and social tendencies.
Generally, we are evolutionarily programmed to want a marshmallow today, rather than two tomorrow. I expect this is appropriately amplified in times of stress. Through this lens, many of our behaviors, damaging and illogical as they may seem, are unsurprising, and any successful social system and leadership model must take this, and the natural dynamics of power->corruption into account.
good comment,
mf
The young have been indoctrinated. This is thanks to the left’s takeover of culture and education, a process facilitated by the abolition of grammar schools, the failure to supply a vocational route to success and gathering hostility to conservatism in the tertiary sector – in short, communists will see to it that conservatives are never appointed. It has happened over the last thirty years and requires no “conspiracy” beyond the usual bigotry and fanaticism of the left.
They’ve been saddled with student debt, the housing crisis and a rapidly warming planet.
The first two are the result of govt policy and intervention into marketplaces where govt has no knowledge. The last is strange way of referring to the one degree increase in average surface temperature since 1880. At least according to NASA’s Goddard Institute. Perhaps it’s not so much democracy that is at issue as ignorance.
The Chaz or chop zone was a bad joke played on tax paying citizens and businesses who were completely ignored by the authorities.
The community garden also was a joke.
That is progressive politics for you, pay your way and be law abiding and you will be ignored for BLM, antifa and any other far left organisations that decide that you are just the wrong type of human.
Cancel culture has become one of the most dangerous cultural trends of our time and it has been driven by this dislike of democracy. The underlying theme with the “disenchantment” with democracy is actually a dislike of the result. Look at how the Democrats reacted to Trumps election in 2016 (and just wait to see the fall out if Trump win’s tomorrow) and look at how the remianer establishment reacted to the EU Referendum result with an absolute refusal to accept anything that was seen to implement that result.
When it comes to cancel culture we have developed a routine that says if I don’t like something I can pretend it doesn’t exist by stopping it being repeated. We get twitter mobs who attack people with the “wrong” views, we get the police interviewing people for saying the “wrong” thing on podcasts or in speeches, we have legislation in the Scottish Parliament which will regulate what you say in our own homes, etc. This flows right into the debate between the right to free speech and the right to not be offended by someone’s opinion by preventing them from saying it.
The debate has all flowed one way with liberals deciding what we can say and what we can do. They are now after their burning desire, deciding who will govern us.
That’s a bizarre definition of ‘centrist’. Those wanting to overturn the referendum, for instance, were not doing so from centrist conviction. As a centrist myself (I was a luke-warm Leaver) I hold certain views that might be characterized as centre-left and others centre-right. I believe in democracy, even when it does things I don’t like.
there are some interesting reflections in this article, but it is *so* easy and tempting for any keen reader to discount the arguable gems of wisdom about the state of democracy for the pervasive and incredibly sloppy broad-stroked assumptions about ‘how things are’ in today’s world – e.g.
and others like it that litter the article. so much for nuance. bummer.
i almost quit about halfway through, but persisted – more bothered at the end by the apparent arrogance than informed/enlightened by the interesting but obfuscated perspective. so it goes.
your audience is smarter than that. forget that, and you’ll lose them.
eta:
to your intended point, – expectation management is really the challenge, isn’t it?
when an impressionable youth vote “as they’re told” by the big tech and political marketing machines, having been given both promises for, and expectations of simple grandeur, vs. the reality of life’s timeless trade-offs and complexities, we shouldn’t be at all surprised when they reject that which will never (can never) be realized. by the time they realize the nature of the forces working on them, I fear the damage will be done, although one would suppose it’s not really a new situation in the river of life. Remember, we were all 18 once, and we knew it all. When things “didn’t work” as we expected, we wisely tried something else.
Previously, the local culture/community/newspaper/tv/radio was/were the primary source(s) of our expectation foundations. Now it’s fb, instagram, and twitter. go figure.
best,
mf
This sentence drew my attention, but as you rightly suggest, it is not nuanced. These are but the extreme ends of a continuum.
Individuals are mostly not smart enough to make sensible, rational decisions when voting. Nor do our systems necessarily provide the wherewithal to do so. However, the absurdities mostly cancel each other out in a way that is largely self-correcting over time. And we progress. The ‘young people’ have no experience of a time of dictators or real evidence of undemocratic systems. China is far too opaque to provide it currently and the dearth of genuine journalism perpetuates their projected apparent success. To paraphrase the quote, democracy is bad, except when compared to the alternatives.
The problem is not centrist politics. The problem is postmodernism and relativism. These have broken the fundamental ground of conversations. The consensus of academia in many areas now is that there is no truth (“everyone has their own story”), and that its all about identity and power.
The belief is that reason will magically triumph if you break up all the existing “power structures”. This will also magically lead to a better world, even though there is no thought-through end goal. Its just a random set of ideas from random people who think its cool to play clever word games, detached from reality.
They are blind to the roots of what’s the grounding of our current society in the west – christianity – and assume it’s the default position that everything will fall back to once the power structures are broken up. In reality, the default position of man is the law of the jungle, which includes a savagery that’s difficult to get back from once the switch is flipped.
Modern man – the media in particular – have learn’t nothing at all from the gulags and death camps of the 20th century. Of course they were too busy with “media studies” or “‘womens studies” to notice that names like Stalin and Hitler were not the cause of mass genocide, they were just the ones most able to take advantage of growing relativist ideologies that reimagined values, history and truth itself.
“In reality, the default position of man is the law of the jungle, which includes a savagery that’s difficult to get back from once the switch is flipped.” All too true. And pure democracy, tyranny of the masses, is only held in check by building interdependent structures to constrain. All that depends on people acting responsibly both for themselves and avoiding harm to others.
Its just a random set of ideas from random people who think its cool to play clever word games, detached from reality.
Like democratic socialism, which attempts to defy the reality that economic freedom is a necessary condition for political freedom. Democratic implies political freedom, but socialism has never been tied to freedom of any sort.
No society on earth has political freedom without also having economic freedom. There are examples of the opposite, such as Singapore or Hong Kong, where private enterprise is the norm but the govt is not based on individual freedom.
‘(Then again, 40 years ago there was the prospect of nuclear war to worry about, plus 3 million on the dole and university was for the few not the many.)’
Nuclear war was never a likely possibility, there was always work if you want it, and we now send far too many people to so-called universities.
Nuclear war was averted in 1983 by one Lieutenant Petrov, who overrode a command to launch missiles at a presumed American nuclear attack – which was apparently just an accident of the sun’s reflection. He was sure it was a false alarm. I think he was reprimanded – reprimanded for averting a nuclear catastrophe. If anyone ever deserved the Nobel Peace Prize, it is certainly him and the not the likes of Obama.
Here’s a link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
Thank you for that observation and link. I’m embarrassed to admit that I don’t recall the incident, even though I was in my late 30s then. On the other hand, I think the fear of nuclear war (I grew up in the ‘duck and cover’ period) had subsided, at least in North America, before then. I certainly agree with your comment on the Nobel.
The reason you don’t recall it is because it did not become public for many years, in fact until after the fall of the Soviet Union. Probably because the USSR didn’t want to reveal how prone to error their satellite-based early warning systems were, particularly the optical ones which told Petrov a missile attack had been launched when it hadn’t.
On the substansive point of lack of faith in democracy I can sympathise with the frustration of many young people in current systems. In the US the eledtoral college system denied Hilary Clinton the white house despite her being about 3.4 Million votes ahead of Trump. Johnson’s Conservatives took power on about 35% of votes cast because we have FPPT voting. Brexit was decided on by about 35% of the whole electorate, though about 3% majority of those who did vote.
On no real measure are any of the above fully democratic, motivated minorities are dictating to the country.
Finally Citizen’s Jurys don’t override elected politicians, in Ireland they used this method to come up with a proposal that probably no elected politician would have dared to air, the Dail then legislated to put the question(s) (gay marriage and abortion) to referenda. In those instances there was a clear and thought out proposal put to people that they could make theor minds up about rationally, not some three word slogan.
Democracy is an illusion. When coupled with political parties it is a route to them gaining more and more power over us. At every election they use our taxes to buy votes by promises of a better future if we support them. Democracy should mean a small state doing only the little that we cannot do for ourselves and this gives us freedom from the state and the personal responsibility to determine how we live our lives. Not only do we have increasing state power, the state has brought in regulation that protects large corporations from competition. Competition is an essential part of free trade to ensure we have access to a wide range of low-price goods. The state has gone further by setting up NGOs which increasingly control the decisions made by governments. Nothing shows this more than the pointless coronavirus and zero-carbon energy policies.
I guess all systems of government rely on a degree of illusion – perhaps democracy more than the others, because it needs buy in to work. The average tyrant doesn’t care if they can’t fool all the people all the time as long as they fool themselves. When you consider how fearful unelected leaders appear it looks as though they can’t even fool themselves most of the time.
Indeed. We ask for more and more and for the entire term a party is in office they set about providing as much as is possible in order to get re-elected. And, of course, the more they do the bigger the state and the greater their power.
It’s not surprising it leads to a great deal of short-termism.
Good points. What Thatcher believed actually. It was usually Labour that grew these large burgeoning monoliths and large tracts of lands and an enormous civil service that fed off of them. People do not need large monolithic governments that feed themselves and their servants with the country’s money.
Could it be that the young are turning against democracy here simply because its been rigged against them for 40 years? They may be indoctrinated but everyone can see just sitting in a house will earn you more than sweating for a living.
I’m not sure that sitting in your house is particularly rewarding in terms of enjoyment of life. We humans require social interaction and the thought that we are doing something worthwhile. Perhaps the pleasures of the moment pale in the long term. We all want purpose, I think.
” We humans require social interaction and the thought that we are doing something worthwhile.”
I don’t see the necessary connection between these two things.
The main threat to democracy is the new social media world where anyone can be sucked into the rabbit hole of disinformation and belief bubble; while behind the scene thousands of state actors in China, Russia and Iran sit in rooms and pervasively sow bubbling discord through fake profiles and algorithmic manipulations, successfully undermining western values and sowing discontent. This new dark Reformation has removed all priests of information, but removed too everything that stands between those who consume everything online and their worse natures.
A stake in the system really helps focus the mind. Marxism look good [to me] in the seventies, around the same time that Jerry Rubin was abandoning the Yippie Party in favor of brokering stocks. In the eighties, I changed my first diaper – and, took off my rose colored glasses.
The refusal to face facts and to dwell on theories from left, right and center to explain the actions of actual people is endlessly amusing.
The predilections of our young are changing. What could be the cause? Could it be that who we call “our young” are changing?
Look at the bylines in the premier American newspapers, all of them heavily infected with the “woke” outlook. How many Smiths, Armstrongs, O’Brians and Mazzinis do you see? How many Ehrlichs or McFarlands? Where did the Tom Wickers, Arthur Krocks and “Scotty” Restons go?
What names do you see? Many if not most are names from places with no feeling for small “r” republicanism in their bones at all. No history of it. No culture breeding it.
There is no “magic dirt” in America or Western Europe. Being in the West does not mean you are of the West. Change the people and you change the nation. Massive, transformational immigration policies may not have been intended to do that, but they did. We are living with the evidence and the consequences.
But why race realism is so hard for intelligent Westerners to wrap their heads around 75 years after the end of the Second World War, despite all that subsequent events have continued to teach us, is as the (fictional) King of Siam once said, “a puzzlement.”
What is odd, is that so few even seem capable of even *considering* the possibility of what you write, let alone actually internalizing the ideas and ‘seeing’ how plausible your explanation is.
Color blindness may seem confusing to those that that can see the full spectrum, but clear causal relationships in our social structures being missed – relationships having so much logic, data, and history to confirm them simply defy comprehension at a logical level.
Such seemingly willful blindness simply must have evolutionary underpinnings, and/or be a side-effect of some other evolutionary trait, as it is too pervasive in seemingly intelligent people (perhaps myself?) to be random happenstance.
Or maybe someone is putting something in the water.
best,
mf
I personally wouldn’t position supranationalism as centrist and nor would I position the LibDems as centrist. Both are part of a post-class reconstituted Left that forms the Progressive Alliance.
As such, the Left is now technocratically driven and seeks to intentionally bypass the Equality/Inequality debate due to its deep rooted anthropocentrism and its deep affiliation with egalitarianism.
The new Centre is composed of pragmatists who recognise that the ideologically driven impetus of the Progressive Left is inherently authoritarian and the ideologically driven impetus of the Libertarian Right is inherently authoritarian in that both want to capture the State and enforce their respective ideologies.
The pragmatic Centre on the other hand is policy orientated and thus it is perceived, that through democracy, pragmatic policy can be constructed and refined. Thus the pragmatic Centre takes the best of all the ideological positions that spread from Left to Right. Those being Anarchism, Communism, Socialism, Progressivism, Liberalism, Conservatism, Libertarianism.
In conclusion, with a re-imagined Centre that is based on pragmatism, then the hope for democracy can remain alive.
This passage crops up in my book ‘Salazar, the Dictator Who refused to Die’ which may be of relevance to this debate.
‘Salazar had always found the idea that politics could shape and improve the human condition to be dangerous nonsense, and at the start of his third decade in charge of Portugal, he was able to reach out to some Western leaders who did not dissent from his view. For twenty-five years, there had been no ideological competition allowed in Portugal. He saw most of the ideologies as being nothing better than falsehoods about human nature. From his perspective, it was the political parties and their rancorous spirit which disrupted the natural order of things. They drove citizens to chase after unrealisable goals and group themselves into bitterly antagonistic factions. Liberty and justice, he believed, were best guaranteed by individuals exercising self-restraint and investing their hopes in a limited state which guaranteed order and security and avoided trying to redefine human nature.’:
it’s astonishing how all the young repeat exactly the same thoughts about “democracy” when debating with friends etc. It really came about after the EU referendum and it really does concern me of how bigoted their views are. It goes on the lines of “people are generally too unintelligent to know how to vote” without really looking at themselves at the mirror and asking whether they themselves do (the answer is no, even less so if they are educated). One solution to this problem, they claim, is to only allow “intelligent” folks to vote – I mean wow.
Far better to suggest that rather than setting intelligence standards for voters, it might be a better idea to set some standards and criteria for those who stand for election. That way, we the voters, may make fewer mistakes and vote some competent people in. Then again, I may be being a bit optimistic!
wonderful… kind a “stop curing the symptoms approach”. bravo. Will propagate this idea!
Trouble is you come up against the Groucho Marx principle – ” i would not want to belong to any club that would let me in”. So the only people willing to stand for office will be adherants of the Sarah Palin principle, people who are “not thoughtful enough to know they are not thoughtful enough”
I’ve noticed this attitude more in the US where professors and students believe that having a degree grants you some special insight into how societies should be governed. The higher up the academic ‘food-chain’ you go, the more apparent it becomes, hence the sneering snobbery directed at conservatives.
Once I arrived at: “the most effective responses were mounted by democratic nations like Taiwan, Germany and New Zealand.” I realize the article is either outdated or the author just ignorant of the data.
Within complex and large democratic societies there will always be some
degree of illusion/false consciousness to keep the show on the road. The
extent of this seems to depend on how much the powers of state are
seperated and balanced. So the USA gets more “democracy points” than the
UK which gets more than India and so on. I think the problem with those
who support totalitarian systems is they fail to understand if you
seize power illegally what is to stop AN Other seizing it back? As for
the “young people” i doubt they really want a dictatorship they just
have strong views about what they don’t like, but no idea how to solve
problems which are old hat to us but only just news to the <25s – EG
police brutality, government corruption, racism, inequality etc etc. As
they get older they will learn there are no silver bullets for these
problems. I am very much in favour of the armed forces taking a role in law and order in the UK similar to the Guardia Civil, IDF or National Guard, as something is needed with the withdrawal of the police from fighting crime and disorder, but that can be done without handing the forces political powers. The current use of the police as a political tool is probably a big reason why youngsters are so ill-disposed to our current system. They are, after all, way more likely to be victims of violence and theft than other age groups.
My constitutional law professor (a retired judge, so not young) once told the class that the 2 things ruining India are democracy and human rights. this has been going on for much longer. Young people just have internet and use it more.
ofc it might also mean that Indian state has been more SJW than anything the west has come up with until now.
Young people just have internet and use it more.
then you’d think they would be well aware of how socialism leads to communism and that neither is good. Yet, here we are.
the internet is not a replacement of sensible thinking. It generates its own echo chambers, more potent than anything else before it. explains why usually young people can go from being staunchly LW to RW (or vice-versa, much rarer) in a matter of weeks, without leaving their rooms.
The internet does give any random person the power to consume propaganda extensively and express their thoughts on it.
Surely the ideal is not so much democracy or dictatorship but the outcome that exists where there is a healthy tension. This tension is between power exercised from those with legitimate expertise and the ordinary rights we all have. These rights are to live our lives in the way that we wish without bringing harm to others. Those who would wield legitimate power have a responsibility to demonstrate that they are more informed and able to act for the good of all. This is what is so offensive when self styled, movements made up of a minority of the population, take it upon themselves to break laws they find inconvenient to their cause; demonise their ideological opponents or demand social conformity- in order to shoe horn their way into influence. Without the respect or agreement of the wider population, they have no entitlement to that influence.
Oh! Shock, Horror, more research, another study and from Cambridge no less. Wow! er… hang on if something plunged to a tad over 50% Forgive me I’m a simple man but doesn’t that still mean there is still more satisfied? And who decides what satisfaction means. I’m a bit slow (older than Joe and Don) but I’m satisfied for my eyes to open in the morning. My grandchildren I think would be dissatisfied if they hadn’t changed the world by coffee break. It must need another study, more research, more funding, more experts and so on. er… why?
We have always had idiots, but it seems to me that spouting from the lower orifice is much more common now. Indeed just where did common sense go? The picture heading this nonsense is telling. Two more despicable odious characters would be hard to find. Keep well, stay safe.
‘For instance, a 2018 report from the the Onward think tank found that significantly more young people than old thought that “having a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament” is a “good way to run the country”. ‘
To understand a person’s real view about strong leaders the qualifier to the question should have been “even if the leader will pursue policies which are antithetical to your values”
“the same survey found that 35% of under-35s thought that having the army rule the country is a good idea”
I got this far and stopped reading. It’s obviously gibberish.
per my comment way above, it is rich with trashy ad lefty over-generalizations, but there are some valid ideas buried there if you’ll get your brain dirty for a bit.
not sure it was worth it tho’ – the comments are better reading in this one!
The simple linear Left-Right axis is woefully inadequate to describe what’s going on. It would make more sense to sort them into authoritarian left/right, and those more libertarian and democratically inclined.
The ‘centrists’ here like Blair, the EU, Big Tech or Extinction Rebellion etc. are clearly all authoritarian. They want your democratic power out of the way, because they know best, as did Stalin and Mao.
The world is suffering from a wrong understanding of human freedom and politics.
Those who value the notion of human freedom tend to think of it in terms of Narcissistic immunity from restraints. That is, they think of freedom basically as separation from parentlike demands., so that the “free man” is conceived as someone who can do whatever he likes, whenever he likes.
But such freedom cannot be realized or practiced in the world of face-to-face human relationships. Indeed, it is founded on a fundamental revulsion to the limiting power of relationships and to the moral demands of love and self-sacrifice. It is a false, childish, and ultimately antisocial point of view. It is the viewpoint of private self-indulgence and ceaseless self-mediation. It is the very principle that destroys relationships, love, and the higher processes of personal, social, and spiritual growth.
Yet, this childish point of view is the popular notion that underlies the exercise of freedom in present-day democracies. It characterizes the present popular version of the “American spirit” and the present “spirit” of democratic and capitalistic “free” enterprise in the world (especially in the USA). It is the root of private and public irresponsibility and the vulgar exploitation of subhuman possibilities everywhere in the modern technological world of TV “cultures”
Human freedom is a political or relational estate, rather than a separately personal one. It is a disposition in which one assumes full moral responsibility for ones social and intimate relationships.If a State is organized as a democracy, it cannot function as a true democracy unless the people are typically and personally mature in this disposition of human freedom. A true democracy is founded on such freedom, or moral responsibility, on the part of the population as a whole.
Meanwhile Orange Haired Narcissus now “rules” in America!
If you completely misunderstand or even misrepresent the liberal/libertarian viewpoint, then it is easily dismissed.
You say:
Which is not what freedom of the individual is to most people. To quote Mill (my emphasis on the key qualifying part):
Everyone understands that this is a complex path to tread, but far better than the authoritarian and ineffective alternative of state or society imposing generic and arbitrary restrictions as per some one size fits all model. To quote Mill again – it is harmful and reductive to have a “tyranny of the masses”.
I would agree the extent of individual liberty is a matter of debate, and we can argue the finer points. However this is encompassed within the concept of Liberty – which is not black or white but nuanced. It’s no surprise that the most advanced and developed societies in the past 200-300 years have adopted a healthy degree of liberalism.
Libertarians I would argue, far from having a childish viewpoint, have a more developed and nuanced understanding of human nature and society and what is the best way to exist as a group of individuals within a community/society/nation.
interesting, and two thoughts occur:
– you’re arguably correct, but it appears you’re assuming humans can actually change this aspect of their selfish primal programming by force of will (nurture) – specifically, ‘adjusting’ their built-in opportunism from its defaults (nature) by force or education. I’m not so confident this is ever going to happen across our large populations and cultures – especially the hungry ones.
– you describe pure selfishness in humans as if it is entirely unrestrained and therefore capable of immeasurable damage (roughly). Nature, as a competitive arena hasn’t yet created a purely selfish creature that survives evolutionary forces, as they will, by definition, self-terminate. There are always forces that push back, or such creatures will eventually self-extinguish (and we may).
That said, I believe in the pervasive and unrestrained selfish *desire* within most creatures, but not in an unrestrained environment that would sustain such. It’s a good thing we cannot do everything we want, even if the want itself is quite real. And I believe our historic behavior and evolutionary success thus far reflects that tension, even in the rawest of social situations. An extreme to make the point: without some tempering forces (internal/moral/instinctive or simple physical-pushback), if hungry enough, we would likely eat our mates and offspring – which would obviously end our cycle… 🙂
I tend to trust the forces of the ages that have molded us thus far, to generally keep us in check, but I also see many of our current abilities and technological capacities outrunning our current mental limitations. It could easily be argued that we are testing that edge to the point of possible self-extinction, and I don’t believe any amount of nurture can be applied to our existing large collectives in a way that will successfully realize your thesis, even if it would work perfectly if implemented. I believe this to be a function of our species, not our will. But the optimism implied by your comment is heartening.
best,
mf
the greatest argument against democracy is a 5 min discussion with the average voter.
Ah yes, the Year-in-Provence Remainer looks down his nose at the little people.
“It’s too early to tell, but the truth will out ” thanks to the accountability and transparency of the democratic system”
Hmmm. I’m not sure what country this is talking about. I don’t get the impression our ruling class are accountable or transparent. Although the occlusion & unaccountability did seem to get far far worse when those Blairite ‘centrists’ took power in 1997. The ramshackle pre-97 Ancient Regime didn’t seem very good at keeping secrets.
Unfortunately Democracy is an illusion that can not be guaranteed to work well. What we have is democrature. Probably it needs to be replaced with a system that qualifies the voters.
That’s a thought provoking pic at the head of the article isn’t it? What is going through Blair’s mind as he puts on the charm for a murderer? That is not a loaded question; I don’t believe Blair to be a monster, but an astute political animal. There must be an element of ‘how did it come to this?’
Super piece by the way. Purity and self-regard – poisons masquerading as knowledge.
I don’t agree with this article at all.
First of all who do you mean by “the British people”? Who do you mean by “the establishment”? 17,410,742 people voted for Leave. Its true that 70% had GCSE qualifications or lower but 32% had degrees. 52% had higher qualifications below degree level and 50% had A-Levels. These are not small numbers and the Leave vote was far from homogeneous. Furthermore, although 64% were D/E (working class/non-working) and 63% were C2 (skilled working class) 48% were C1 (lower middle class) and 35% were A/B (upper middle class/middle middle class). This is hardly a “Peasant’s Revolt”.
And since when was being knowledgeable “elite” and ignorant “working class”? Abraham Lincoln was one of America’s greatest Presidents. He grew up in poverty in a log cabin in Indiana and was largely self educated. But he was a voracious reader and could more than hold his own with his more refined and better educated peers. This article’s worship of anti-intellectualism makes absolutely no sense.
Sure, ‘democracy’ can forever be ‘gerrymandered’ by an electoral system that governs its implementation and its age parameters, but in the broadest sense, the fundamental principle behind modern democracy is really a very simple one.
That ‘principle’ is that you get to vote, be it ultimately ‘rightly’ or ‘wrongly’, in the privacy of a voting booth or your own home, in what you perceive to be your own self-interest, and that decision is a personal, private matter unless you decide to divulge or broadcast otherwise.
Whether you’re a university professor, a captain of industry or a road sweeper, young or old, male or female, gay or straight, black, white or purple, disabled or able bodied, rich or poor, apparently smart or dumb doesn’t make a blind bit of difference as to what you might divine that self-interest to be in that given moment, but the key here is that your vote is forever worth no more or less than that of your fellow self-interested voters.
The merest mention of redefining that very basic principle is an affront to the idea of ‘democracy’ that millions of hapless souls have fought and continue to fight and die for.
The very notion sends a shiver up my spine and yet, in an increasingly precarious politically polarised world it seems to be becoming a perfectly acceptable position to hold.
Of course a wise and benevolent dictatorship is a better system of government than a democracy – decision-making, at least, can certainly be swifter*. The only problem is ensuring that it remains benevolent – and it’s a problem that has not been solved over the course of human history.
* There’s an old military maxim to the effect that: “A good leader is one who can make decisions swiftly and then stick to them; and if they can be correct decisions, that’s even better.”
Democracy has always been the worst system apart from all the others. However there are a growing number of people who are exasperated / exhausted by how pathetic and self interested our politicians are. It does not seem to matter which party wins power, what we get could not organise a piss up in a brewery.
I would argue that people should be dissatisfied with the democracy we have, it rarely provides on its promises. However, the biggest threat to it is general complacency that it is the natural state of things and won’t evolve, the Fukayama view that nothing can beat a system that constantly corrects itself, and which sucks in and pacifies its rivals through trade and the offer of having all the stuff you need. The stats are worrying, but I don’t think this article does more than wildly extrapolate what the meaning of “dissatisfaction with democracy” in a poll is. From observation we have a generation that likes pot, Instagram and Fortnite more than revolution and a new world order…
Social Theory points to the yoof being an over-educated under-resourced post-post modern generation who can’t see any point in worrying about things that have never actually been in their control.
In the 1950s we had “centrist” government, i.e., Butskellism, and it was basically a form of benign authoritarianism: the state ran much of the economy, and took active steps to fulfill public needs (e.g., building council houses); key industries operated as nationalised monopolies (a process the post-1951 Tory government halted but did not reverse); social policies were conservative.
In the late 1990s and 2000s we had centrist government, i.e., Blairism, and it was basically a form of soft libertarianism; the market was left largely to its own devices; via PFIs, private interests were encouraged to take over many of what hitherto had been considered the essential functions of the state; social policies were liberal.
These two forms of government were basically opposite, yet somehow we refer to them both as “centrist”. Maybe we should stop using the term, since it’s evidently meaningless?
Youths have traditionally favoured left wing idealism, and academia doesn’t disavow the
unrealistic components that are inherent in all left wing autocracies. Though
the epithet itself is misleading, as there isn’t a true socialist country
operating globally, but the idea sounds attractive to the people. Most
dictatorships are Fascist in nature, though many declare themselves socialist,
as that is preferable to the reviled form of capitalism, or colonialism linked
to the right. The general debasement of language to flatter unworkable
ideologies has existed almost as long as language itself, and with social media
expansion, the pace is accelerating.
Democracy has been corrupted by succeeding governments, who proudly proclaim its heritage and benefits, whilst ignoring the original concept, leading to the current apathy. Western Europe has become a prime example of a massive bureaucratic autarchy, paying
lip service to the outmoded democratic discipline and removing any moral crusader who
challenges the incestuous fraud committed by the numerous diplomats. Huge sums
of money are spent lobbying government by industry for favours, and elections
are often won by the candidate able to spend most and make enticing promises
that are patently implausible. Persuading the vast majority of the electorate
to scrutinise the promises and past performances of smooth talking politicians
is being fanciful, but what are the alternatives?
Democracy is getting a bad press, following capitalism, which is much maligned without troubling to delve into the actual meaning and total lack of malice in the concept. Current
media is to blame for much of it, expanding on a socialist/libertarian
platform, insisting that human rights, social awareness and empathy are their
sole preserve, and capitalism begets fascism. In the past the young rebelled
against the establishment and hailed terrorists like Che Guevara, but academia
and the establishment had heard it all before, and largely ignored it, until
now.
Now we have instant communication allowing the most banal language, prime air time, and
celebrities, along with politicians, or even senior police chiefs, feel obliged
to offer their inane views, polluting our minds to the reality.
No wonder the young deride democracy; it will soon become redundant as some other fashionable concept that appeals to all the virtue signalling glitterati appears on the
scene, reducing still further the grip on reality and appreciation of our
heritage.
The writer does not do justice to the alternatives proferred by the radical left. For example democratic models being pioneered in Rojava and Chiapas to name but two. If we want our youth to get democracy surely they need to hear about these living examples ?
The alternatives proferred by the radical left correlate very strongly indeed with terror, torture, famine, and mass murder. To allow the radical left anywhere near power is moral lunacy.
Completely agree. They are very close to getting it though. They are fascists masquerading as civil rights activists.