It’s a mark of my protracted absence from the Ink Desk that I am only now responding to a comment on one of my posts, dating April 8th, almost six weeks ago! The comment was written by “Ed” in response to my post “Tolkien and Democracy”.
Ed’s comment raises some very interesting questions about the nature of democracy, which warrant further attention. I’m posting Ed’s comment in its entirety, my response will follow:
Tolkien a democrat?! Say it ain’t so Joseph!
Okay, okay, I know you were not suggesting that, but the very thought makes me cringe! Tolkien was a Monarchist was he not? And a strong believer in the Old (Catholic) world, yes? I know about the guilds, etc, etc in the middle ages, but perhaps it’s because of the revolution(s), but democracy leaves a bad taste in my Catholic mouth. To me it just spells the doom of the Catholic world of yore. A pox on it!
And speaking of the Chesterbelloc monster, while there is much from them that I admire, I have never been able to forgive them for their love of the French revolution. How two Catholics could so love a revolution tha massacred their fellow brothers and sisters and so persecuted their Church, and destroyed the world made by that said Church, is beyond me.
My response:
Before proceeding to Ed’s skepticism about democracy, I’d like to agree with him about the Chesterbelloc’s bizarre sympathy with the French Revolution. The Revolution was a manifestation of murderous secular fundamentalism, a precursor of the communism, Nazism and abortionism of more recent times.
I could say more about the reasons for the Chesterbelloc’s misguided support for the Jacobins but such a discussion will have to wait until another time. For the present, I’d like to address Ed’s suggestion that democracy should leave a bad taste in the mouth of Catholics.
As always, it’s important that we define our terms.
Democracy means the rule of the people (Demos = People).
The rule of the people could be the rule of the Majority (note the upper case). This is not necessarily a good thing. Nazi Germany was the rule of the Majority (Hitler was voted into power) and the oppression by the Majority of the Minorities. The communist regimes in the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China were also governments ruled by the Majority, i.e. the workers, at least in theory (unlike the Nazis, the communists were never elected to power by the “Majority” that they claimed to represent). Communism was the oppression by the Majority (poor) of the Minority (rich). This form of “democracy” is tyranny.
Ironically, and paradoxically, modern western “democracy” is not always the rule of the Majority but the rule of a coalition of Minorities who use the political mechanisms to further their own sectional interests, through lobbying, control of the media etc. In such pluralistic “democracies” the Majority is often not only silent but impotent.
The rule of the people could be the rule of the Mob. This was the danger inherent
in democracy that Plato enumerates in the Republic. As one might expect of a philosopher of Plato’s stature his critique is unsettlingly close to the reality that we are experiencing in our own time. His wisdom possesses the timelessness that is attached to Truth.
In our day, the control by minorities of political mechanisms, such as the mass media, has led to the brainwashing of the Majority. It has also led to rule by the Mob of Youth, the most immature and naïve members of society, who are therefore the most susceptible to media manipulation. The thought that the very fabric of civilized society, essentially unchanged from time immemorial, can be unraveled overnight by the Mob of Youth, a teenage rampage, is the lowest and most ignorant kind of mob rule.
There is, however, a genuine form of democracy, advocated by the Catholic Church, which is known as subsidiarity. This understanding of society is rooted in the sacrosanct position of the Family at the heart of society. It protects this smallest of political organisms from the tyranny of Big Power. It calls for democratic structures to be brought closer to the people, i.e. closer to families, through the devolution of power from Big Government to Small Government. It calls for the devolution of power from undemocratic “democratic” institutions, such as the Federal Government or the European Union, and the restoration of real political power to local, regional and state governments.
I discuss the undemocratic nature of modern macro-democracies in my book, Small is Still Beautiful, especially in the chapters titled “A Democracy of Small Areas” and “Making Democracy Democratic”.
The problem is not democracy per se but the bogus democracy which is really a tyranny
Naturally one should hesitate to state too confidently what might have been, but without the Revolution breaking the mold of the Gallican clergy, might not the Catholic position in Europe during the 19th century have been something far more sickly, more decrepit? What if all that dead wood-I think of men like Talleyrand and Sieyes-had been the rule rather than the exception among the higher clergy for a generation or two more? Read Manzoni. Read Chateaubriand. The Catholic cause drew considerable strength from the overthrow of the old things, as much murder and madness as the passage cost. Strange as it may seem to think of now, during the fifty years before 1789, probably the greater part of Europe could no more imagine a Catholic society unattached to the Bourbons or Hapsburgs than it could imagine that same society unattached to the Pope. But the Church does not stand or fall with the fortunes of one political form. The Revolution revealed that strength, and we should not forget it.
The tragedy of the Revolution was not that its watchwords were Liberte, Egalite, et Fraternite, but that no one alive at that time could see that these ideals are not opposed to the ideals of Faith, Hope and Love, which outranks every other virtue.
“Hitler was voted into power”
No, he wasn’t.
The NSDAP never got a majority of the vote. Hitler was appointed Chancellor by Hindenburg, who had grave misgivings about the wisdom of the move, but who was talked into it by his subordinate, who said Hitler would be easy to control.
The only democratic election ever held in Russia prior to Gorbachev were held under Lenin, right after the October Revolution. They were free and fair.
Both Greece and Rome were slave socieites. Plato and company were fine with slavery, and Plato was fine with communism – sharing by all – which is one reason Catholics should look askance at the Republic.
The American Founding Fathers were landed gentry whose explicit goal was to protect the wealth of the landed minority from the majority. They knew perfectly well that there are always more poor than rich. They intended the resources of the rich to be protected from the rapacity of the poor majority. That’s why the government was set up with checks and balances. This is not a bad thing, it is simply a fact.
Most of the salient historical points from which you make your argument are incorrect. Your failure to keep your facts straight doesn’t help your conclusion.
Steve,
In the March 1933 election, Hitler’s NSDAP received more than twice the votes of the Socialist Party, its nearest rival, and more votes than the combined votes of all of its three major rival parties. Modern American presidential candidates can only dream of such a landslide majority.
The Bolsheviks seized power through means of a violent revolution.
Your comments about Plato are simply silly. Perhaps St. Benedict was a communist? Communism derives from the secular fundamentalism of Marx. Plato was not and could not be a communist.
Joseph, you are an Englishman who has lived under a parliamentarian government and you are a former skinhead who, one would think, knows something about Nazi history. What are you playing at? Your objections are absurd.
You know perfectly well that in a parliamentarian government the NSDAP’s 44% of the vote in 1933 didn’t help them much. Precisely because the NSDAP *NEVER* received a majority of the vote, they had to rule as part of a coalition government until they could take total power. They couldn’t manage that without a 2/3rds vote to pass an Enabling Act. They were part of a ruling coalition – Nazis never had a majority of the vote. Ever.
You know perfectly well that Hitler was NOT voted into power. Hitler was appointed Chancellor by Hindenburg. He was not voted into power as Chancellor. You know this, which is why you don’t address this point in your response.
Hindenburg did not have to appoint Hitler. Hindenburg did so only after his subordinates urged him to do so. This is simple historical fact.
“Modern American presidential candidates can only dream of such a landslide majority. ”
That is incorrect. You know, or should know, that nearly every American President won his election with more than 44% of the vote, the only exceptions being Adams, (1824, 31%), Lincoln (1860, 50%), Wilson (1912, 42%), Nixon (1968, 43%), and Clinton (1992, 43%). Modern American presidents not only dream of such a vote, they get it nearly every time.
Furthermore, while the Bolsheviks did, indeed, seize power through violent revolution, their early hold on power was quite tenuous. Bolsheviks had to publicly state that they considered themselves a provisional government, and they were forced to hold the elections for the All Russian Constituent Assembly that all previous governments, including the Tsar’s, had promised to hold, but had never actually managed to hold.
So, the Bolsheviks *DID* hold the elections for the Constituent Assembly on Nov 12/25, 1917, the elections WERE fair and free, and the Assembly DID meet to conduct business.
Of course, since the Bolsheviks lost the vote, and did not have a majority in the Assembly, that same Assembly was dissolved by the Bolsheviks after 13 hours in session. And, of course, it never met again.
But this does not detract from the historical fact that the only free and fair democratic election ever held in Russia prior to Gorbachev was held by the Bolsheviks.
As for your remark that Plato “was not and could not be a communist”, please tell Stanford University that, as their webpage on Plato’s Ethics and Politics labors under the misapprehension that a limited form of communism was a salient feature of the Republic. Perhaps you could get hired there and straighten them out on this?
Steve, The US is a de facto Tweedledum-Tweedledee Two Party State, this was not the case during the 1933 election in Germany when there were many parties from which to choose. In the face of many parties from which to choose, far more Germans voted for Hitler than for anybody else, so that, and as I said, he received more votes than the combined votes of his three nearest rivals. He also received more than twice as many votes as his main Socialist opponent. When was the last time that a US President received more than twice as many votes as his nearest rival?
As for Plato’s alleged communism, I’ll take Stanford University as seriously on this issue as I take Notre Dame and Boston College on the abortion issue.
Well, wow, Joe. Yeah, in a parliamentarian system, there are a lot more parties. What a shock.
But that doesn’t change the fact that Hitler wasn’t voted into power. You were wrong. All you have to do is apologize and confess it. You were wrong. Hitler wasn’t voted into power. I’m shocked you didn’t know that, and I’m equally shocked you are trying to defend your error in any way whatsoever.
If you think Marx was the first one to come up with communism – common ownership of property or egalitarian sharing of all property – then you are a lot less well read then you like to pretend.
You don’t have to take Stanford Philosophy Department seriously. You just have to read the Republic. Even Aristotle took issue with Plato’s idea that all property should be held in common. But I guess you don’t like Aristotle either.
I notice you got awfully quiet on the Bolshevik’s support of democratic elections, which is absolutely uncontested.
This whole essay was just you talking through your hat. You don’t have the slightest clue about the history involved. You’re just making things up. When you’re called on it, you change the subject and hope no one notices.
Is this an example of your scholarship?
You’re drilling your reputation right into the ground, so keep digging. This whole exchange is a keeper.
Steve, You are becoming increasingly shrill.
Please read my books as the standard by which to judge or dismiss my scholarship. A blog is never a place by which to measure the standards of scholarship. Blog posts are throwaway items, the sort of casual discussion one might have in a pub. Nonetheless, I stand by everything in my original post and don’t believe that anything you have said has shown anything to the contrary.
Frankly, I would not tolerate the sort of rudeness you have displayed were we to have had this discussion in a pub. I’d have shaken the dust from my feet and would have looked for more convivial company.
You may respond once again, should you wish, but please don’t expect a further response from me.
So, we shouldn’t expect accuracy in your discussions here – in fact, we should just expect drunken commentary.
Check.
And I’m shrill because your statements don’t conform to reality.
Check.
Joe, bless your heart, it’s been about ten years, but you haven’t changed a bit.
Oh, and Joe?
I really LOVE that Dan Brown-esque “Da Vinci Code” defense you made in that last comment:
a) Don’t take what I say seriously. It’s just fiction (blog).
b) But everything I said is well-researched and absolutely factual.
Logically, it’s an incoherent reply, but if it worked for Dan Brown, I suppose you think it will work for you.
You know the sophistication of your readers better than I do, so I guess this is what you think they’ll swallow. That’s why I don’t normally read your work. I’ll be returning to that mode right now.