WE Are the Enemies of Democracy

White Supremacist Richard Spenser is clearly a divisive, irresponsible provocateur whose views should be confronted and refuted thoroughly and dramatically wherever he goes. But it is naive and self defeating to believe that such ideas can be defeated by illiberal bludgeoning. The future of democracy requires that civil society takes a serious and measured response to such assaults on our future as a self determining people. Hateful antics such as Spenser's are actually necessary opportunities for bolstering the prospects of democracy in new generation of active citizens.

Public educational institutions like Auburn need to marshal the will and the resources to make events like Spenser's poisonous appearance into profound civic experiences to the extent their skills and imaginations can permit. They will need full fledged support from the surrounding community going well beyond public safety and law enforcement to include civic and religious organizations along with school and political officials. 

Colleges and universities can train and support student groups to prepare for, manage, and respond to the aftermath of these provocations. (Critical assessments of the responses to these dramatic encounters are crucial for fostering the skills to defend democracy.) Positions like Spenser's are indeed a challenge to civil society and liberal democracy, but they should be viewed as welcome challenges. They are rich with opportunities for students and community members to model gladiatorial, but edifying, responses that resound beyond the glib, the self righteous, and the topical. People should leave such events with renewed awareness of the dangers to democracy and the need to continue preparing themselves to protect our ability to rule ourselves.

Infants and toddlers need to be exposed to a wide variety of germs and pathogens so their natural immune responses can strengthen and develop. And democracy needs each generation to confront its dangers, complexities and ironies head on. Otherwise democracy becomes pathetically vulnerable to the easy manipulations of clever provocateurs.

The stakes are very high. Allowing fear and hysteria to "trump" the grueling demands of building rational and critically astute responses to atavistic and demagogic appeals is horrifyingly short sighted and hazardous. We should not waste words or energy condoning or condemning childishly self soothing tantrums. Instead we should be investing in incentives for those able to demonstrate the ability to recognize and point out unserious and manipulative rhetoric while also raising awareness that the true threats and impediments to self rule come from our own lack of skills, courage, and maturity.

Though Spenser's ideas are despicable, they have deep roots in the human psyche and in the class culture of the United States. Opportunities to confront this venom in culturally affirmative ways should be grimly welcomed by any serious person who says "Never Again" when looking "back" on the Holocaust, the genocide of Native Americans, the international slave trade and the subjugation of Africans in North America.

When contemplating the opportunity to stand against evil, some might ask "What would Jesus do?", "What would Gandhi do?", "What would Martin Luther King do?, or "What would Noam Chomsky do?"

Emotional revulsion needs to be tempered with critical deployment of rhetorical skills, critical analysis, and an acute awareness of the demands, vulnerabilities, and ironies of democracy. This does not happen in a vacuum, an incubator, or a safe space.

The Word: "Democracy"

Return to “Democracy” Democracy: The Word Jaz, 'Homo Homini Lupus', Buenos Aires If all that was meant by the word “democracy” were “rule by the people” or “people power”, there’d be no earthly reason to discuss it.  We’ve always have had the power to rule ourselves and always will - at least until some strange robot apocalypse, an invasion of space aliens, or a long-awaited extinction event finally bequeathes our planet to grasshoppers and the scorpions. It might be we’ve simply never realized our power, and still haven’t.  In that case the mighty task of leadership would be the raising of consciousness and the creation of environments for nurturing certain necessary skills.  That would be daunting enough.  But it certainly would underestimate the challenges. It’s still seems an immense luxury (I won’t call it a ‘privilege”) to debate or contemplate how far human society has advanced viable practices of formal democracy - and how far we have to go.  Who but useless idlers and malcontents want to catalog the authentic remaining obstructions, snares, and pitfalls for democracy as a set of meaningful practices?  And is it more effete or more subversive to anticipate likely sources of potential ambush or treachery - and whether there exists any ultimate and invincible nemesis to the democracy project in Western Civilization?  There’s just so much we don’t know about democracy and what it means, but could we at least be starting, once again, to raise legitimate questions and worries? Perhaps it’s merely foolishness to consider possibilities that seem far beyond any individual or collective ken?  For instance: will it ever be possible to know if human perversity (our tendency for orneriness and contrarianism) is a primary characteristic or simply is, at a certain limit, irreducible? And then there’s the expression, “Man is Wolf to Man”.   Aside from being a crude slur against wild canines, could it also be unfair to our own species?  There’s no conclusive evidence either way, and consequent predispositions for wariness or trust seem widely distributed with a broad range of possible combinations.  And that makes sense because survival may be more dependent on either trust or wariness depending on the circumstances. Futile or not, the case for trust must be made.  Unfortunately, survival could take many forms, some much less ideal than others.  Furthermore, species survival could, under certain circumstances, impel the sacrifice of many individuals.  Certain modes of survival would clearly be preferable to others.  And though some individual humans would opt for survival under any circumstance, most of those would still poignantly regret the forced choice of a future where trust is even more a liability than it is now. But if trust and mutuality were to objectively become lethal luxuries, would something in “human nature” work to compel some survivors to strive for change? Presently the case for even paranoiac wariness remains quite strong.  We simply do not know the extent of our capacity for predation against each other.  We know even less about how altering our cultural environments might mitigate our rapaciousness.  The same goes for fostering “the better angels of our nature” - if we even agree on what those are. “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Is there any way for us to overcome ourselves? Is it even possible?   *    *     *     * Conspiracy theorists have ample precedent to fear technologically contrived solutions.  What’s that crop duster spraying us with?  Is it good old fashioned DDT, LSD, or an aerosol version of Zoloft?  If they can put fluoride in the water supply, why not some newfangled happy juice?  And even if “the gubmint” isn’t spiking the air and water with special pharmaceuticals or biological agents, how can we know they won’t start tomorrow?  The “deep state” has a vested interest in developing and using capacities to alter the moods of large groups of people.  Sometimes they might want us more pliant and, other times, more bloodthirsty.  What if “we” could selectively induce some groups to be paralyzed with fear or overcome with joyful elation?   How much would it be worth to “help” people soldier on through discomfort, doubt, or boredom so their time “on the clock” would be spent more productively?   Are “they” (still) experimenting even now on military recruits, convicts - or us? Is freely given trust among humans merely the most intimate of follies?   Is it the most exquisite luxury when secretly shared among the blessed select?  Or is it an aspirational pinnacle of human achievement, hard earned but easily toppled? Is collective trust even possible?  Is it the same as “God”?  Is it “the future”; that very “long run” in which all of us are eventually dead?  Isn’t it ultimately a question about ourselves and our unknowable “nature” where perhaps “we” are only some uncertain Nietzschean rope, a questioning series of living links, twisting and changing over the abyss gaping between our ever more beastly angles of imposture? Closer to angle calculating billiard players than to angelic agents of divine design, we are condemned to try to govern ourselves even if our constant collisions, combinations, and divergences are more quantumly inexplicable than they are geometrically determinable.  And for that reason we devise institutions that, by dispensing with the need for trust, make it (perhaps) more likely. Elections and ostracisms.  Checks and balances.   Divisions of power.  Ambitions countering ambitions.  Democracy like concoctions that survive longer than a generation or two were planned for by by cold eyed designers who kept their idealism firmly in check.  It’s a truism that the framers of the American Constitution did not trust themselves anymore than they did “the people”.  James Madison was more than merely aware that the most enduring source of faction was the divisions between the rich and the poor.  He knew that any system with a chance to survive must recognize and attempt to balance such divisions.  He also know who had more power (at least in the short run) just as he knew which side of the available bread slice his butter was slathered on. Today, implements of surveillance are forming a bigger bulge in the toolkit of the checks that balance our society.  But since this panoptic capacity is not equally distributed, it is inevitably a force for domination and control generating salutary (for the elite) contributions to the straightening waves of paranoia and division. *    *     *     * In our brief history of civilization we may well have actually achieved major advancements in democracy and justice which are, by more decent definitions, attempts to minimize human tendencies for mutual predation. But who can convincingly claim the incremental and contingent nature of these advances has altered our fundamental natures in any significant way?  Do conservatives who tend to emphasize the depths of our own depravity do so out of genuine secular despair - or is it to justify (sanctify?) the predation and dominance currently practiced?  Do “progressives” who tend to direct our earthly desires towards our more attractive facets do so to encourage us to assiduously strive for more “progress” - or is it to divert attention from the malevolent and true obstacles to justice? It’s interesting to think about “predation” as a stark description of what is more euphemistically referred to as the “consumption” of one life form (or its products) by another.   Putting aside protests from vegetarians, this requires a recognition that predation is essential for the survival all all higher life forms lacking recourse to photosynthesis.  Reassuring or not, many forms of predation involve a degree of mutuality - if only at the level of natural selection. The domestication of crops and “livestock” is generally an induced process of genetic engineering that ultimately makes “the prey” as dependent on the predator as the other way around.  One might not wish to contemplate conditions in even the most hygienic and humane slaughter houses when considering how the the checks and balances involved in “the rule of law” may actually be a set of mechanisms for breeding most of us to be dependent on the well placed few. It’s sad to become fixedly aware that neither “mutuality” nor “cooperation” exclude “dominance”, “control”, or “exploitation”. It’s not inspiring to imagine that the best we might hope for in terms of a “commonwealth of mutuality” is some balanced form of exploitation where most forms of predatory dominance are (in the main) prevented.  But this is the baseline for constitutional democracy as we know it - even if it is not the preferred beacon for guiding us toward some future form of self governance.  Pathetic or not, this is the actual kind of “trust” some of us may be most actually inclined to invest any faith in. We, of course, value (and hopefully don’t merely imagine) other forms of mutuality and trust.  These (whether “real” or “imagined”) may reside more deeply in us than do speech and the types of thinking intertwined with language.  Some of the most intriguing theories about the origins of human language posit that it emerged from music and song.  And music, the synchronous merging of voices and percussions (of flesh on flesh, or flesh on instrument, or handheld object on object) is probably inseparable from dance.  Does it seem impossible that music and dance predate drugs and alcohol as social lubricants and bonding mechanisms? Music and dance (along with concomitant employment of intoxicants) are essential components of cult.  And “cult” may be the best descriptor for the earliest forms of what we now rely upon as “culture” and practice as “religion”.  In this (very speculative) sense “cult” predates language and myth.  And the word “cult” with its association with “myth” puts us in touch with a very generative form of irrationality associated with humans - especially in terms of our use of language.   What if language, as an extension of music and dance (with its links to mating and social “rituals” in “lower” species) was selected for on the basis of its relative efficiency in coordinating human activity?   After all, everyday speech burns magnitudes less energy than song and dance. Using language to string together any lengthy series of complex thoughts in any near coherent expository way also requires a considerable expenditure of energy and was probably never a socially viable activity until the invention of writing (if then.)  If language does serve as a “scaffold” for thought (and especially complex arrangements of thoughts), it’s intriguing (to me, anyway) to consider the multiple meanings associated with the word “scaffold” as they sometimes apply to critics of established authority. On top of mating rutuals and ceremonies of social abandon, language provides humans with other mechanisms for getting under each others’ skins.  A linguistic “ear worm” in the form of an injunction, a warning, or an enticement from almost anybody can resound in a person’s mind for hours, days, or a lifetime.  In conjunction with rhythm and melody, a linguistic “meme” can permeate an entire culture for generations.   And who knows the extent to which the mutations and evolutionary pressures that provided humanity with the capacity for extended abstract thought were not inextricably entwined with abilities connected to music, language, drama, and graphic art? Single words may sometimes have incantatory powers, but this very idea includes the likelihood that that the potency of any word (or phrase) is a function of its association with other “experiences”. These “experiences” may or may not have been “artistically” contrived by other humans, but the degree of skill and and the level of resources devoted to creating such “experiences” must tend to increase their potency.  The most successfully evocative artifacts and galvanizing experiences often inspire many derivative (and some enhanced) creative expressions which can eventually pervade, if not “create”, a culture or a “nation” through their ability to provide a shared set of references that resonate both with survival needs and with ambitions to transcend the vicissitudes of subsistence.  The reflections of the stars can sometimes be seen in dank muddy puddles. It’s practically a given that all ancient (and modern) cultures were (and are) at least partially defined by a framework of mythology involving song, dance, icons, and stories which infuse certain words and images with special potency.  Among the most exalted aspects of “European centered civilization” are legacies of the ancient Hebrews and the Classical Greeks.  The stories and symbols of the Hebrews remain so potent that framing them as  “mythology” can still generate withering cultural reactions in certain parts of the “West” which may well now appear to be ‘backwaters” though they might just as well be considered as potential primordial soups for unthinkable generative organic “reactions”. The best of the living Hebraic legacy is a moral framework for challenging unjust or unwise authority. In addition to epic literary and dramatic exemplars, Classical Greece still gives us models for rational inquiry and discourse we continue to use, adapt, and build upon.  It also gives us the concept of democracy as it applies to complex and diverse polities.  We are still struggling to adapt, use, and build democracy too. (Or, at least, we may be . . .) *    *     *     * “Democracy” like any other word is only evocative and meaningful in the context of a larger web of words and concepts.  The same goes for democracy as a set of practices. The word most associated with “democracy” is “freedom”. This would be appropriate if the connection between the two were clearer. It’s certainly viable to claim democracy will work to protect individual freedom from encroachments by other citizens or domestic institutions.   As evidenced by the Peloponnesian Wars; however, it’s not so clear that democracy offers the best protection for collective freedom - as in the self determination of nation (or city) states.   It may well be that democracy is more dependent on freedom than the other way around. Any society that depends on mind “control” or any surreptitious influence over the processes that seem to afford us “self” determination cannot be considered democratic.  Meaningful democratic participation must be “freely” voluntary.  And “surreptitious influence” manifestly includes the propaganda (now called “public relations”) which effectively plays upon the evocative power of words and images as they relate to national mythologies. Deplorable though it may be, American politics is (and probably always has been - if the 1787 convention is excluded) primarily a competition between (more or less) skillful manipulators of mythical words and symbols.  Ideally, this would not be surreptitious (and perhaps is not now) because the bulk of the citizenry would (and maybe already does?) possess the critical skills to prevent the manipulation of symbols from becoming a manipulation of people.  Under such conditions, the manipulation of symbols might enhance rather than debase democracy just as it might invigorate rather than enervate the essential mythological underpinnings of nationhood.   It bears repeating that democracy cannot operate unless an overwhelming bulk of the citizenry freely submit themselves to operating within a complex network of reciprocities, obligations, rules, traditions, and institutions. When vibrant and vigorous, this network, varyingly characterized as  “the rule of law” and “civil society” organically throbs, tenses, and develops to protect individuals and minorities against overbearing majorities, while also protecting individuals and majorities against usurping minorities.   The purpose, and only justification, for this cumbersome set of entanglements is its effectiveness in curbing human proclivities for intra-species predation. Liberalism, the Western philosophy of freedom, has been fractured since at least the turn of the previous century by contradictions first documented by Sophocles.  On one side is the responsibility to protect individuals from strangulation in (sometimes lacerating) legal/cultural thickets. On the other is the obligation to prevent the entire briar patch from being torched, dynamited, uprooted or herbicided by cunning foxes who frequently present themselves as liberal brethren.  But democracy requires this bramble for without it “freedom” is only a license for the mutual idiocies of human parasitism and predation. To an unknown extent humanity will continue to create the environments in which we will thrive, stagnate, or become extinct.  To an unknown extent our ability to enable each other to endure and support the challenges of formal democracy will help determine whether we have a future worth surviving for.  Comforting or not, this may well be the true meaning of “People Power”. 1If there’s ANYthing sensible, but not commonplace, in (especially) this exploration of language, it’s probably derived from the viewing of many YouTube videos featuring Noam Chomsky.  (Everything stupid is, of course, my own responsibility.) 2An inadvertent typo that seems more appropriate uncorrected.

On Noisy Authority

Return to:Democracy

1789

The Best of Times.  The Worst Of Times.

Think back on your knowledge of history.  When would you say humanity emerged from savagery and barbarism? Was it during the Roman Empire? As a consequence of the Magna Carta? After the American Revolution? At the end of the US Civil War? On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918? With the final verdict of the Nuremberg Trials?  (or with the lurch of the last trapdoor?) In the dodged holocaust of the Cuban Missile Crisis? The election of Barack Obama? The impeachment/resignation/25thment of dumvald trimp? Or maybe we never really were all that bloodthirsty in the first place?  At least not by nature.  Perhaps we’ve only behaved in certain ways because of tricks of history?  Contaminated understandings and miscalculations?  Somewhat toxic social arrangements still needing a little reconfiguration?  Maybe all we need is a little attitude adjustment to political economy? Does that sound too silly? Are we humans essentially the same as when our species first popped up into the archeological record about 200k years ago? The same record suggests big game hunters were taller and stronger than descendents later trapped by settled agriculture and civilization.  More recent records indicate, that in the past few generations, humans in the advanced industrial world have again grown taller.  (This is attributed to more meat in the average diet.) The above is all quite speculative.  Even more speculative is the idea of domestication. An experiment conducted on a Russian fox fur farm may demonstrate something about domestication.  It took experimenters approximately forty generations to breed “tame” foxes.   And these playful little pets were not only cute and cuddly, they exhibited similar physical characteristics to other domesticated animals (floppy ears, piebald fur patterns, etc.)   In this experiment, the only animals allowed to breed were those who displayed the most friendliness and least fear when interacting with humans.   Friendliness and trust. * * * * Could we humans be domesticating ourselves? It’s superficially plausible. We humans certainly don’t selectively breed ourselves solely on the criteria of friendliness and trust.  But friendliness and trust probably make up some percentage of the factors contributing to how we form stable breeding pairs.  Friendliness and trust must also play some role in supporting individual survival.  And as our human societies grow more complex and difficult to navigate, this may be becoming ever more true. Or not. Perhaps, in the very long run, we might already be responding to selection pressures in favor of not only trust and friendliness, but also for abilities to do mathematics and employ still other higher level thinking skills?   And could (on the same extended timescale) empathy, compassion, and tolerance for uncertainty be playing ever more statistically significant roles in human evolutionary fitness? It’s not impossible . . . The idea is simply that cultural evolution may affect human biological evolution.   This would be little different from the ways we collectively influence the genetic expressions of certain traits in pigs, dogs, cats, cattle, sheep, goats, horses, soybeans, peaches, and Swiss chard. To think seriously about this may be to find it more reassuring than horrifying.  At least I think so.  But the idea of us consciously trying to engineer our cultural and biological future does raise certain hackles.  And this becomes more understandable if one contemplates just who might be in charge of such an engineering project.  It might be more acceptable and more comforting to imagine “progress” as an organic process emerging from trillions of individual choices guided with “free market precision” perhaps by some benevolent deity, the “cunning of reason”,  or the fortuitous “invisible hand” mistakenly celebrated by slack apologists for capitalism. But engineering is what we do.  Termites construct castles.  Beavers build lodges in ponds deepened by dams firmly packed and tightly patched with their very own flat paddle tails.   We engineer cities and societies.  And we do so both unconsciously - and with the very best laid plans.  And, sometimes, with the very worst. "Repression is the only lasting philosophy. The dark deference of fear and slavery, my friend," observed the Marquis, "will keep the dogs obedient to the whip, as long as this roof," looking up to it, "shuts out the sky." The above is extracted from “A Tale of Two Cities” published in 1859 and written, of course, by Charles Dickens. A more famous excerpt is the soliloquy with the line, “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done . . .”   But the most memorable line in the book might be it’s opening: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.” The age referred to by Dickens is the time of the French Revolution which broke out in 1789.  The US Constitution was ratified during that very same year.  For this double reason, 1789 might be considered a culmination of the historical era known as the European “Enlightenment” even though it’s sometimes (plaintively?) argued that the “Enlightenment” remains an ongoing “civilizing” project in Western (and World) historical development. For the average American it might be tempting to serenely imagine that our Constitution’s ratification represents the “best” of those times, and the French Revolution, with its Terror, the “worst”. After all, the Constitution provided some proven measure of stability that has allowed some significant advancements in the actual practice of democracy.  French society, it has been argued, is still rocking and rolling on the shockwaves caused by its formative revolution.   But it might be more edifying for a student to do her best to imagine how each may have encompassed both the best and the worst - even if not in the same proportion. That may also be the best way to view 1789 as a pivotal year for “democracy” as we know it in the western world. This presentation (it really is a “bloody slideshow” . . .) is expressly intended to avoid any glorification of democracy.  The reason, though, is not to disparage democracy - nor to diminish its importance in any way.  Rather, the idea is that democracy is too fragile, too contingent, and too shallowly rooted in human society for it to be taken for granted.  Democracy is far too delicate and uncertain for it to be spoon fed like Dylan’s Casanova in “Desolation Row” “                          . . .  to get him to feel more assured Then they'll kill him with self-confidence after poisoning him with words” And it might be the same with what we call “civilization”. * * * * In a perfect democracy there still might be some differences between the ideal role of a scholar and an educator.  The mandate for both is always to be honest: to tell the truth to the best of her ability.   The scholar seeks new knowledge.   The ideal educator strives to create robust learning environments for allowing everyone opportunities to understand and choose the best knowledge most useful and pleasing to them.   The scholar provides his research and knowledge to political, social, and economic leaders.  In a perfect democracy those leaders would be (at least potentially) all the active citizens.  Educators should do everything possible to encourage everyone to be (or become) fully active citizens with the wherewithal to find, analyze, and disseminate all the ideas and information needed to participate in democracy as effectively as possible. In a perfect democracy there would still be myths.  There will always be myths. Scholars might be crucial in creating, curating, and monitoring the mythologies of a society.  But, in a perfect democracy, both educators and scholars would take care to provide the general public with the motivation and cognitive tools for identifying and appraising the myths that animate each citizen’s understanding of their own worlds. The idea of a perfect democracy is certainly a type of myth.  So is capitalism.  So is “common sense”.  So is “progress”.  So are “human rights”.  Even the idea of a minimally functioning democracy might never be better than a benign guiding myth. There are many types of myth in the human cognitive toolkit.  There are “creation myths” with turtles all the way down.  There are “founding myths” such as cloud vanishing Romulus, wall leaping Remus, and the whole haggle of Sabine Rapists.  But all serious myths, as opposed to some flittering or persistent memes, are “guiding myths”.  And while individual myths may die and be forgotten, mythology itself is neither disposable nor escapable. As a species, we’ll likely never know the actual limits (or all the deceptions) of empirical knowledge.  We will always be required to choose ideals based on our values, affinities, and dispositions. A society rife with deprivation, insecurity, and panics is likely to be ridden with a certain set of dispositions quite unlike a more stable and prosperous society.  But we may not have solid knowledge of what’s required to make such a society in all cases, and even less about whether such societies can be maintained for any significant number of generations. We don’t know how much equality is possible - or desirable.  We don’t know if a majority of any general population has the capacity to be serious, well informed, and critically active citizens even if they could be induced to aspire to that. But we also don’t know what’s impossible.   So we must not surrender to cynicism or hopelessness.  And we must take care that myths which entice us are not seductions from the Sirens of our exhausted desires for destruction. * * * * Thomas Jefferson had the legal authority to buy, sell, and flog the bodies of black men, women, and children forced to toil in his home, his kitchen, his bedroom, and in the slave labor camp that produced his wealth. Those were his actual circumstances when he wrote “all men are created equal”.  Did he believe that?  Did he believe in a creator who endowed all men to certain rights including “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”?  Does it matter what he believed? It matters what we believe.  But how we believe also matters.  To believe in “rights” and “constitutions” as magic talismans that are self protecting and reinforcing, never mind self evident, is an abdication of human responsibility.  It’s an abdication of our responsibilities to ourselves and also to each other.  To believe in these myths as worthwhile goals, however, might be an essential part of realizing our full potential as individuals and as a species - no matter how limited our collective potential may be. Do the majority of humans value peace and security more than freedom and mutual trust? Does freedom require all individuals to be well armed and proficient in the use of deadly force? Is “civilization” as we know it more robust and adaptable - or more fragile and self destructive? Is “intelligence” a “lethal mutation”? Is “Man” always be liable to be “wolf to man”? We don’t know. And any answer is less likely to be revealed than created. Louis Capet, the sixteenth royal Louis of France, was apparently a benign and gentle man.  Perhaps, under the right conditions, we would all be benign and gentle, just as under other conditions any of us could be an executioner or a hapless victim. The year 1789 is generally accepted as the most recent landmark year plausibly used by serious historians to mark the dawn of the “modern” era.  It is certainly a suitable year to commence a thoughtful study of democracy which, in addition to being a worthy myth, is also a process freighted with tedium and inspiration, frustrations and victories, defeats and promising lessons.  And sweat and tears and blood.

Democracy

Democracy in America is less glorified than glossed over.  It's taken for granted that, threatened or not, democracy is something we have. 

Sometimes democracy is spoken of as something we could lose. And such discussions have increased in both frequency and alarm since the presidential election of 2016. 

Only more rarely is democracy mentioned as something that could be increased or advanced.

Sometimes "democracy" is simply equated with "the United States".  And in many circles the United States is considered a leader in the advancement of democracy.  This was probably true in the 1830s even while US slavery was expanding, and the genocide of indigenous North American peoples was accelerating. 

Today the US may still be at the forefront of the development of democracy.  

But it is not impossible that the near future may witness a sharp retrenchment of democracy in many parts of the world - including the United States. 

Perhaps such a retrenchment will erase the dramatic victories won since the 1960s. Perhaps it will reverse all the democratic advancements of the twentieth century.

Perhaps democracy as an effective set of practices and institutions will simply cease to effectively function in the coming decades. Perhaps nothing like this could happen without concerted and passionate resistance.

Perhaps a majority of Americans will approve, acquiesce, or even fail to notice an atrophy of democracy.  And if they do, perhaps it will be because they came to believe democracy was never anything but a naive fantasy or a cynical scam.  Perhaps they already believe this.

In this curricular activity, the United State plays a key and perhaps central role in an exploration of democracy's development in the Western World. This is appropriate.  But, hopefully American democracy is here set in a broader context that will support a more cold eyed understanding of both its urgency and its fragility.

One of the most insidious and effective ways of inflicting mortal injuries upon democracy is to glamorize or romanticize it.  As an ideal, democracy can certainly be inspiring - especially when long and grueling struggles "end" in victory.  But such victories could also be democracy's tragic flaw, containing the bitter seeds of it's inevitable destruction.

Democracy as an ideal does not always effectively lend its inspiring glamor to its actual practice.  The same can be said for its historical realizations even if those dramatic victories still stir the hearts of all serious citizens.  That's because a living democracy is also a set of practices which cannot always be contained in solemn rituals or energizing celebrations.

The practice of democracy may only rarely be found to be inspiring.  Perhaps in most actual life experience it is merely a set of duties generating tedium, frustration, and perhaps, relief when things go well; heartbreak and disillusionment when they don't. Democracy is people after all.

Humanity has evolved so that most of us endure the tedium, frustrations, and heartbreaks of family life. Most of us can see past the onerous duties of fostering children to find meaning, value, and even transcendence. 

But public life, whether it be civic or sectarian seems something different.  

Or maybe not.

Perhaps the most pivotal challenge of modernity is the growing recognition that humans create our own myths - and it is our myths that animate and energize our communal lives.  And perhaps the ultimate distinction between "conservatism" and "progressivism" is in how we choose to confront this reality.