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The contradictions of democracy
The pro-Bush, neoconservative website Powerline has this headline:
Ukrainian Democracy Still Has A Ways to Gofollowed by a story about a fist fight in the Ukrainian parliament. This makes no sense. How does a fist fight represent a failure of democracy? The founders of the United States considered democracy—meaning unmediated rule by the people—to be tantamount to mob rule. So of course they would expect democracy to include fist fights between legislators and a lot worse else besides. Now, Powerline might have written: “Ukrainian Self-Government Still Has A Ways to Go,” or “Ukrainian Law-Abidingness Still Has A Ways to Go,” or “Ukrainian Civilization Still Has A Ways to Go,” since fist fighting in a national legislature suggests a deficiency in all those things. But it is no more undemocratic to have a fist fight in a parliament, than it is undemocratic to elect a terrorist organization to run a country. All democracy means is that the people rule—with no higher law above them, and no mutual checks and balances restraining them.
If the folks at Powerline want something better than democracy, then they should say so. The problem is, that would require them to think about the meaning of the words that they use to describe political reality. And mainstream conservatives have long since lost the desire to do that, or even the awareness that it may be necessary. Email entry |