Democracy is getting a lot of attention these days. While that, in itself, is wonderful, it’s also a profound political tragedy that would make an Ancient Greek dramatist proud. If you’re like me, you’re worried about the ongoing siege of democracy as an institution. This isn’t partisan. Some from every party—from Republicans to Democrats and Independents, in the U.S., and Labour to Conservative and Liberal Democrats in the U.K.—can, in theory, agree that democracy is good. But it’s also imperiled.
As democracy comes under assault worldwide, many of us have taken a step back to reflect on the system that we’ve long taken for granted. It’s sobering that such a reflection only awakens once we realize how fragile our democracies are. Half of the world’s democracies are declining, driven by the unchecked spread of disinformation and a growing sense of cynicism and discontentedness people feel. Small, growing, vocal minorities in nations worldwide are forsaking democratic values.
It’s the great 20th-century hangover. We made so much progress after WWII, that, now, at the start of the new millennium — as technological progress reaches breakneck speed — there’s a skulking sense of “Now what?” Our technologies are rapidly evolving, our sociopolitical structures can hardly keep up, and many people worldwide feel left behind. Strongman leaders have come out of the woodwork, promising the restoration of a tarnished glory from a time before life became so messy.
This is true of most anti-democratic movements. Now, we stare out into the unknown, casting our gaze into the gaping abyss from the precipice of the heights of our crumbling democracies, both fearful and frustrated that so many of our peers have committed themselves against democracy itself.
We Are Democracies
In October 2020, Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah drew sharp criticism after penning a four-word tweet: “We’re not a democracy.” While this wasn’t the first time I’ve heard such rhetoric, a form of intellectual dishonesty that’s become so commonplace on the political right-wing in the United States, it was an especially chilling moment reading such words from a sitting United States Senator.
“Does he really not know that the country he serves under genuinely is a democracy?” I couldn’t help but wonder, though I was immediately familiar with the anti-democratic tendencies he espoused. They’d reverberated in right-wing filter bubbles for years and, despite the best prevarications from the “we’re not a democracy” crowd, we know exactly what they mean. They’re saying they don’t want a democracy.
The powerful, elite classes have always had an uncomfortable relationship with the idea of democracy, both in abstract form and lived praxis. Κλεισθένης (Cleisthenes) himself, the creator of Athenian democracy in the 500s BCE, had to battle the entrenched interests of the aristocratic class when establishing the first documented democracy. When you’re part of, or represent, a powerful, elite group (read: wealthy, white men, usually of Northern European descent, in the United States), the mere idea of “power to the people” feels vaguely threatening.
The backlash against Lee’s tweet was immediate. Media, both legacy and social, lambasted the tweet. Rightfully so. It’s alarming that a Senator doesn’t grasp the political structure established by the U.S. Constitution he swore an oath to. Couple that with the swaths of American Republicans who’ve become anti-democratic, and the situation is daunting.
“The Great Body of the People”
Lee then did what we’ve come to expect from Republicans in the Trump era—instead of apologizing and reflecting on his tweet, he doubled down, publishing an essay titled Of Course We’re Not a Democracy. The thrust of his argument followed the same tired, familiar lines of contemporary, anti-democratic right-wing discourse. “We’re not a democracy,” they’ll tell you, “We’re a republic.” Lee went on to say:
Insofar as “democracy” means “a political system in which government derives its powers from the consent of the governed,” then of course that accurately describes our system. But the word conjures far more than that. It is often used to describe rule by majority, the view that it is the prerogative of government to reflexively carry out the will of the majority of its citizens.
But, that’s precisely what we have, Senator Lee. Our U.S. Constitution begins with the words, “We the People of the United States,” or, as the founder of Senator Lee’s Republican Party, Abraham Lincoln, described it, “A Government for the People, by the People,” that he said, “shall not perish from this earth.” “O tempura! O mores!” Oh, how far we’ve fallen.
Contrarily to Senator Lee, James Madison wrote in 1788:
…we may define a republic to be…a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people, and is administered by persons holding their offices…It is ESSENTIAL to such a government that it be derived from the great body of the society, not from an inconsiderable proportion, or a favored class of it; otherwise a handful of tyrannical nobles, exercising their oppressions by a delegation of their powers, might aspire to the rank of republicans, and claim for their government the honorable title of republic.
Meanwhile, Lee’s Republican Party has consistently filibustered in the Senate to block popular legislation proposed by Democrats. It only takes 41 senators, representing 21% of the U.S. population, to do so.
Tyranny of the Minority
The “disdain for modernity” underpins the desire for minority rule, or, as comedian Stephen Colbert said, “Reality has a well-known liberal bias.” When your worldview conflicts with reality as it’s popularly understood, the only recourse you have is an appeal to naked power.
Right-wing groups like The Heritage Foundation share a similar sentiment when they bemoan “the tyranny of the majority.” As Edwin J. Feulner, Ph.D., said in Preventing The Tyranny of the Majority:
In a democracy, of course, the majority rules. That’s all well and good for the majority, but what about the minority? Don’t they have rights that deserve respect? People often refer to the United States as a democracy, but technically speaking, that’s not true. It’s a republic.
I have two bits of bad news for both Lee and Feulner. First, they can spare us the pity party about how wealthy white elites are a minority. Because someone in society must have power and make decisions, the alternative to what they call “tyranny of the majority” is “tyranny of the minority”—which is what they really want (and it’s what they’ve enjoyed for a very long time).
Political scientists know well that what we have can accurately be described as the latter, not the former. When Trump was impeached (again) in 2021, fifty-seven senators voted to convict him of the riot and insurrection on January 6th, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol, fewer than the two-thirds majority required to secure a conviction. Those mostly Democratic senators represented 76.6 million more people than the senators who voted to acquit—yet, Trump was acquitted. If that’s not a minority rule, I don’t know what is.
Distance, Not Disempowerment
While it is true that the Founding Fathers, steeped in limited information, were deeply skeptical of what they called the “pure democracy” of Ancient Greece, their primary reasoning for making a distinction about distance, not who is and is not entitled to exercise power through representation.
James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers:
As the natural limit of a democracy is that distance from the central point which will just permit the most remote citizens to assemble as often as their public functions demand, and will include no greater number than can join in those functions; so the natural limit of a republic is that distance from the centre which will barely allow the representatives to meet as often as may be necessary for the administration of public affairs.
The obvious concern here is the distance people would have to travel to convene and make decisions in the 18th century. So when they posit the word “republic” against “democracy,” the implication that they’re describing direct democracy is obvious. But that’s not what Senator Lee and his ilk are protesting. Nobody in the U.S. is insisting that the Constitution doesn’t really spell out a representative government, but rather, a pure democracy. It’s a non-sequitur. As George Thomas wrote for The Atlantic:
American constitutional design can best be understood as an effort to establish a sober form of democracy. It did so by embracing representation, the separation of powers, checks and balances, and the protection of individual rights…
A Democratic Republic
The second count is even more damaging, namely, yes, yes we are a democracy, and all the kicking, screaming, self-victimization, and toddler tantrums of anti-democratic aristocrats in the world won’t change that. The immediate problem is the fact that a constitutional republic is a type of representative democracy. They’re near-synonyms.
A kingdom is a form of monarchy, but not all monarchies are kingdoms, just like a constitutional republic is a form of democracy, but not all democracies are republics.
If I held up an apple and said, “This is a piece of fruit,” and someone barked back at me, “That’s not a fruit—it’s an apple!” anyone present would have to pause to peel their eyes from the back of their heads where they’d rolled uncontrollably because, as we all know, an apple is a fruit.
“Salus populi suprema lex,” wrote John Locke — the “founding father of liberal thought” — in Second Treatise on Government, in 1660 — “The Welfare of the People shall be the highest law.” Locke’s work would later go on to become the seeds that would germinate into the much larger idea called The United States of America. It seems Senator Lee and many others like him are either forgetting or ignoring the clear lineage of roots that have delivered us The United States we currently live in. Tweeting, “We’re not a democracy,” is patently anti-American.
Has our union, our beautiful democratic republic, ever been perfect? Not in the slightest. We’ve seen slavery, Jim Crow, the subjugation of women, the oppression of Native Americans, ethnic Chinese, Japanese, and more. But it’s better than the alternatives being proposed by those who seek to destroy it, and it’s our responsibility to defend it. Progress toward “a more perfect union” is never made by those who wish to drive society backward.