There are more kinds of democracy than kinds of compact cars.” The weary citizen, belabored by political oratory and bewildered by news analysts, retreats in confusion to the comparative simplicity of automobile ads, time payments, and keeping up with the Joneses.
Democracy, like cars, comes with all kinds of surface trappings. It comes in Cuba with seven-hour television speeches and drumhead trials, in France with a colonial war and dignified retreats to St. Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises, in Ghana with destruction of tribal rule and the exiling of the opposition, in Russia with a one-party system and a Supreme Soviet that has never heard of saying “Nyet” to party polities.
What do they have in common?
The basic purpose of a car is to furnish transportation. Other purposes, such as impressing the neighbors or enhancing Junior’s prestige, are incidental. The basic purposes of democracy are to furnish a government responsible to the people and guaranteeing the basic rights of man. Other purposes, such as furnishing a catchword to conceal the real methods of the government or a subject for campaign speeches, are equally incidental. The problem in the term democracy is to dig under the surface appearances to the basic structure and find whether or not it is fulfilling its basic obligations.
Regardless of surface differences, there are only two kinds of democracy—constitutional and majoritarian. Majoritarian democracy is government by majority will.
Constitutional democracy has written guarantees not only of a government by the people but also of the basic rights of minority groups and the individual.
“Democracy” usually means majoritarian democracy. Campaign speeches on “the will of the people in our great democracy” are geared to majority votes and majority will. Poets writing the great American epic or sonnets to democracy are seldom concerned with anything beyond the majority will and a majority of the book-buying public. Authors of historical novels have heroes and heroines dying for democracy, but the martyrs are ordinarily more concerned with their costumes than with constitutional technicalities..
Majoritarian democracy is government of the people, by the people, for the people. If it is good enough for the Gettysburg Address, can it have limitations? If so, what are they?
For one thing, discussions of majoritarian democracy are apt to float off into discussions of democracy as a “way of life.” The specific applications of this may involve “democracy in the family,” with 5-year-old Johnny voting on the kind of car insurance the family should have, or “democracy in the classroom,” with fifth-grade Johnny determining the year’s curriculum.
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Its more general applications are considered in discussions or orations demanding “equality of opportunity,” with the feeling that this also means equality of achievement; “freedom for the individual,” with no feeling that this should include any responsibility for the rights or feelings of others; or just a “democracy” in which everyone lives in a lovely rosy haze, no one has to pay taxes, and the government pays tribute to the brotherhood of man by paying everyone’s bills.
But suppose the discussion is restricted to majoritarian democracy as a form of government. This is a government in which all decisions are made, all laws are passed, by majority vote. What happens? The first problem may be psychological rather than legal. In a group, political or social, in which all decisions are made by majority vote, the individual may become lost in the crowd. If the majority is always right, the individual feels that the dissident minority must be wrong. “Togetherness” becomes a political and social must; individualism is politically and sociologically wrong, in addition to being psychologically undesirable. In this kind of thinking the great American tradition of the rugged individualist is obviously not democratic.
American histories have suffered from this emphasis on the majority rather than the individual. Individualism has been considered an American trait since the days of the first settlers. Whatever their other faults or virtues, those who survived the rigors of the frontier were individualists. The Jamestown settlement was not noted for happy unanimity of opinion, and Winthrop’s journals of the early years in Boston show individual differences over such varying items as antinomianism and the ownership of a stray pig.
Modern historians have tried to rewrite American history by economic or political groups, but most Americans still feel that the significant thing about American history is its colorful individuals. Walt Disney and the television industry have proved that this interest can be commercially profitable, but even the exploitation of Davy Crockett, Francis Marion, and a succession of real and mythical Western marshals has not lessened the American belief that individuals count in history.
The economic pressures leading to the great westward migration are not so interesting as Daniel Boone, Kit Carson, and Jedediah Smith. The Indians’ treaty rights to the Black Hills country have made little or no impression on the reputation of Custer, whose death with 200 men has made as much impression on the public mind as many military engagements with losses of thousands. Custer’s military strategy may be questioned, but his place in popular history is safe.
There is a reason for this interest in the individual. The American tradition of individualism was strengthened by the need of self-reliance in pioneer days, and Americans still have faith in the heroic potentialities of the individual. The American system is based on individual opportunity, individual initiative, and individual freedom. Emerson’s statement in “Self-Reliance”—that “an institution is but the lengthened shadow of one man”—is a statement of the American creed.
It is this individualism that is threatened by an unthinking acceptance of the doctrine of the majority will. The price of majority membership may be majority morality. Emphasis on “togetherness,” “interpersonal relationships,” and the “tragedy of isolation from the group” may lead to the theory that the dissident individual is always wrong and the majority, no matter what the motivation, is always right.
The importance of the individual has recently been taken from the closet of near-oblivion, dusted off, and restored to an honored place among educators and architects. Division of students into classes by ability as well as age has ceased to be regarded as “undemocratic” and recognized as furnishing true equality of opportunity. Educational textbooks are recognizing individual as well as group learning, and individual as well as committee achievements. Architects have discovered that families can have too much “togetherness” and might desire occasional individual privacy.
Not only individualism but also the minority may suffer from majority rule. If the majority is always right, Americans have been regarding with respect a number of groups who, as minorities, must have been wrong. The Pilgrims and Puritans, as minority groups, should be dealt with as aberrant rather than heroic. The provisions of William Penn and Roger Williams for minority groups were an encouragement of error rather than a provision for divergent opinions that might also be truth. Thomas Jefferson’s firm belief, most clearly stated in the “Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom,” that truth could come from minorities as well as majorities, should be considerably revised.
Is the majority always right? Political scientists are not convinced that it is. “An election may be the work of social insanity—for there is such a thing—rather than that of social wisdom. Here is the weak point of sociological optimism: electors can be turned into a mob, and a mob can elect a Führer.” Even a casual investigation of history will show examples, from the days of the Caesars to the days of Hitler and Mussolini, of dictators who gained their power through the majority will. There is little question that even in a free election Kosygin and Castro could command a majority vote, though their brand of democracy would have small sale in other countries.
Then how can a country have a government responsive to the will of the people, which also safeguards the rights of the minority and the individual? The answer is constitutional democracy. Under a constitutional government, the majority are free to rule as long as they do not infringe on the basic rights of the minority and the individual.
In protecting the rights of the minority, the Constitution also protects the rights of the majority. If today’s majority becomes tomorrow’s minority, they are as safe as today’s minority. This reduces the feeling of insecurity of majorities. If there is no protection, the majority will attempt to suppress the minority for fear of being overthrown and in turn becoming a persecuted minority. This was the problem in the early colonies; the settlers had been members of a religious or political minority in Europe; they had no intention of becoming members of a persecuted minority in the New World. Consequently they devoted a considerable amount of time and attention to seeing that no minority group gained sufficient strength to challenge their rule.
This was Winthrop and Cotton’s objection to Anne Hutchinson—she was a political as well as a religious threat to their supremacy. Roger Williams was banished because religious minorities might become majorities and upset the Boston theocracy. If there is no constitution, or if the majority lacks faith in the constitution, repression of the minority groups is inevitable. The majority will not feel safe otherwise.
Constitutional safeguards have obvious practical value, but what were the bases for the guarantees of 1787 and the Bill of Rights? Political philosophers in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and in America in the eighteenth century, formulated a doctrine inherent in English common law for centuries. This was the doctrine of “natural rights,” the theory that man had certain rights that should not be taken from him by any government, majority or no majority.
The statement of these rights has varied somewhat, but the basic principles are very similar. The statements range from the “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” of the Declaration of Independence to the “liberty, equality, and fraternity” of the French Revolution. They are accepted as the basis of all democracy, majoritarian or constitutional, but they can be guaranteed only by a constitution of some kind. These natural rights are based on the concept of the dignity and worth of the individual, and the worth of the individual must be considered if the rights are to be preserved.
Nor will the question of the worth of the individual remain for any length of time on a remote plane. The weary citizen who has retreated to the classified ads should occasionally consult a classified index of legal cases on basic rights guaranteed by the Constitution. From the Dred Scott decision to the Bible reading cases, the great legal battles fought in the Supreme Court have dealt with human rights. Economic problems and obscure rules of law are duly recorded in the annals of the Supreme Court, but the public concern is with decisions reflecting the guarantees of the Constitution for the individual and the minority group.
Buy democracy, but don’t sell the Constitution short.
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Edith Stone, Ph.D., was a professor of English at Columbia Union College, in Takoma Park, Maryland, when she wrote this article, which appeared in the July-August 1966 issue of Liberty. She was head of the department a few years later when Liberty editor Steed attended the college.
1 Morris R. Cohen, American Thought: A Critical Sketch (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1954), p. 19.
2 Yves R. Simon, Philosophy of Democratic Government (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), p. 89.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cohen, Morris R. American Thought: A Critical Sketch. Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1954.
Gabriel, Ralph Henry. The Course of American Democratic Thought; an Intellectual History Since 1815. New York: Ronald Press, 1940.
McIlwain, Charles Howard. Constitutionalism; Ancient and Modern. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1940.
MacIver, Robert Morrison. The Ramparts We Guard. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1950.
———. The Web of Government. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1947.
Pennock, James Roland. Liberal Democracy: Its Merits and Prospects. New York: Rinehart and Co., 1950.
Simon, Yves R. Philosophy of Democratic Government. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951.
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