In the aftermath of the United States presidential elections of 2024, despite the person who won the contest, and despite the political party that has regained the ascendancy in the governance of the affairs of this country, democracy actually worked.
It worked in that votes were cast and votes were counted. The principle of majority rule did come to fruition, without any major encumbrances on election day. But there is more to liberal democracy than the casting of votes. And I would like to shine a light on a few undercurrents which affect the electoral process one way or another.
Noble as it is, liberal democracy seems to contain elements within it which constitute not only its greatest strength, but also its greatest weakness. Hence, the following question which I will pose to all Americans, especially given the negative mind-set of the president-elect towards democracy, and it is this: “Will liberal democracy continue to be a principle and a practice which will be adhered to and respected in four years’ time and beyond?”
As a political ideology, it appears that liberal democracy, unlike that of totalitarian and oligarchic systems, provides the legal power and the freedom to either confirm its existence or to cancel it at the behest of the electorate. Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany, by legitimate democratic means, then used that power to destroy democracy and then replace it with fascism. He could not have done so without the cooperation of the German people at the outset. Will this be the case in America?
Another concern is that of the education of the populace or the lack thereof. If the electorate is an illiterate or an uninformed one, then this poses a big problem for the democratic process. Interestingly, many southern states lag behind their northern counterparts in education, as far back as from the days of Reconstruction, which occurred after the Civil War, to the present. The citizens in such states, separate from such obstacles like, for example, voter suppression, have often voted in favour oaf political platforms that were completely against their own best interests.
Also, they not being up to date on the rudiments of civics education, compounded the problem of their ignorance. It was President Kennedy who said:
“The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.”
I also believe that the British writer and author, Jay Griffiths, was right, holding a position that is quite like that of President Kennedy’s, when she said that:
“Being adequately informed is a democratic duty, just as the vote is a democratic right. A misinformed electorate, voting without knowledge, is not a true democracy.”
American democracy — and indeed any other democracy — has only one morality or one core value and that is, again, the notion of majority rule. It has no other overarching principle to trump it, regardless of what any person or group has determined to be true and false, right and wrong, sense and nonsense, decent and indecent, practical and impractical, safe and unsafe, and what is kind and unkind. And so, like a pack animal or a mule pulling a cart it needs reins of external guidance.
The cogency, the urgency and the effectiveness of political debates in this country, based upon well reasoned and well meaning policies, are all beside the point as history has shown in this country. A well qualified, articulate person, dressed in a fine suit, can lose to another individual who is dressed only in a diaper, with a lampshade on his head, singing Do-Re-Mi, off key, and acting completely out of his mind. It is, simply, what the people want. Those are all extraneous variables or factors which often shape and help to perpetuate or to suspend liberal democracy — but the majority often rules, regardless of the level of their collective intelligence quotient. Ignorance, therefore, is the greatest obstacle to a thriving democracy in the United States and to those elsewhere in the world.
Years ago, I wrote the following words in another opinion piece. I believe that it bears repeating here:
“What is currently taking place in America and, indeed, the world strikes at the basic tenets of the education of our children. Unproven conspiracy theories have cast a disfiguring blight upon what was, hitherto, accepted as “the tried and proven,” that which came out of the crucible of time, which was fired by arduous work, and which was forged from painstaking trial and error.
Education, which was once revered as our children’s future, has now become anathema and something to be feared, to be eschewed, to be vilified and to be stoutly resisted. Scholarship no longer holds the perch on innovation, nor is it qualified any longer to lay the foundations for progress. There is a new sheriff in town, one who walks among us with bluster, and he is unqualified, “Fear,” with his bungling sidekick, “Ignorance.” In this dystopian dearth of enlightenment, A-B-Cs are not simple anymore.”
Another matter to be considered, in conjunction with education, is the advocacy of any particular religion over those practiced by others within the electorate, and how this can hurt rather than help matters in the democratic process. There are Americans who have long held the view that the principles which govern liberal democracy and those which constitute the core values of Christianity are one and the same. However, one would never have known this, given the candidate who was elected by them this year, a person who has consistently and has brazenly violated many biblical precepts with impunity and without remorse. But, even more important than their choice of candidate for president, during this election cycle, is the fact that Christianity espouses theocratic and not democratic principles. God dictates to mankind and not mankind to mankind. Thus, the following words that were uttered by Abraham Lincoln, in his famous Gettysburg address, as noble sounding and as eloquent as they are, have, absolutely, no basis in Scripture:
“…government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
All attempts by American evangelicals to meld the principles of liberal democracy with their misguided interpretation of Christianity fall under a heresy called syncretism, which is, basically,the amalgamation or the attempted amalgamation of different religions, cultures, or schools of thought. Orthodox Christian theologians see democracy and all other political ideologies as humanistic — that is, those which were inspired by fallible human beings and not by God. All the gospels and all the epistles were written by the biblical writers to combat the incursion of man-made philosophical traditions which they believed stood to undermine basic Christian doctrine, in the hearts and minds of Christians. And, contrary to popular opinion here in the United States of America, liberal democracy and Christianity are two different ideological animals which cannot be blended and still maintain their philosophical integrity.
An example of the angst that Jesus’ apostles had developed toward such humanistic ideas can be seen, for example, in the words of the Apostle Paul in his second epistle to the church at Corinth when he wrote:
“Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;”
Such a stance addressed to the faithful who, of their own volition, had accepted the tenets of the Christian faith, thus becoming a part of the family of God within the church, was quite appropriate. However, it was never intended to be an idea that was to be foisted upon others who were still on the outside of the church. Therefore, for evangelicals to attempt to force this upon others through secular law, and still lay claim to liberal democratic principles, is a gross contradiction in terms. They must not be surprised down the road, therefore, if they receive severe and even violent backlash from those in the electorate who do not share their views.
Within a democracy, what is done can also be undone, and one only needs to be reminded of Roe versus Wade, a law that was in place for about 50 years before it was overturned. Even amendments made to the U.S. Constitution with sufficient votes in Congress and among the states can be repealed. The 18th Amendment, for example, which had established a nationwide ban on the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol, was repealed by the 21st Amendment which was ratified on December 5, 1933. What is done can also be undone, even with respect to the establishment of white American evangelicalism as a state religion, if evangelicals are allowed to go that far in their political machinations.
On another matter, which is the lifeblood of liberal democracy, especially in regard to the voting of citizens on various issues, is that of the existence of credible information on issues and of people’s access to it in order for them to make informed decisions. Hence the provisions for freedom of speech and freedom of the press, which are both contained within the U.S. Constitution. But, outside of laws of libel, the impeding or the corrupting of these provisions in terms of influencing majority rule would be tantamount to the release of effluences flowing into and polluting a lake. When the press is controlled by special interests’ groups it cannot be counted on to impart knowledge in an unbiased and fair manner. This is a problem which besets American democracy, where the news media are controlled by corporate monopolies, and are more mindful of ratings and of their profit margins.
The legislative guardrail called the Fairness Doctrine, which was designed to ensure accountability where the accurate reporting on issues of the public interest are concerned, and to protect against corporate monopoly, was removed on the urging of President Ronald Reagan. And this has allowed for the heavy influx of political propaganda and conspiracy theories to inundate the electorate for many years, including the decade leading into this year’s election which has, in many ways, adversely affected the outcomes of this election.
The ability to manipulate the populace towards undemocratic ends, by using legitimate democratic tools, is an innate form of ideological suicide.
It is not until these key elements within the American liberal democracy are properly addressed that voting would not only be spurious, but also a highly hazardous exercise.
