The Dangers of Democracy

More Fareed, this time on Salon. It's funny how me and Tim basically agreed to all these premises a long time ago, yet neither of us are "intellectual pin-ups." In fact, it could be argued that a bunch of racist white landowners had these ideas way back in 1776. Go figure. Here are some good quotes if you don't want to read the whole thing:

Freedom, Zakaria argues, comes not from politicians' slavish obeisance to the whims of The People, divined hourly by pollsters. It comes from an intricate architecture of liberty that includes an independent judiciary, constitutional guarantees of minority rights, a free press, autonomous universities and strong civic institutions.

In America, all of these institutions have been under consistent attack for the last 40 years from populists of the left and right seeking to strip power from loathed elites and return it to the masses. "The deregulation of democracy has ... gone too far," Zakaria writes.

Another:

Zakaria's book is in part a defense of elites, of expertise and leadership over poll-driven pandering. It's a rejection of John Dewey's claim that, "The cure for the ailments of democracy is more democracy."

Being someone who never really trusted Democracy, I am very much seduced by these ideas. It has been argued (persuasively I think) that the most important branch of government is not Congress but the Supreme Court, precisely because they are not subject to "democratic whims." Sometimes the best governments protect the people against themselves, and then against itself. To wit:

When thinking about the American Constitution [Madison] said very famously in "Federalist No. 51" that when constructing a government, you have to do two things. First, the government has to control the governed, and then it has to control itself.

What do we push for, if not more democracy?

They should be pushing for human rights. More than anything else, the ability to protect individual rights is going to lay the groundwork for liberal democracy. How do you protect them? Most effectively through a court system, through laws that guarantee human rights. The other stealth method of political reform is economic reform. Economic reform has the effect over time of producing political reform because it creates the need for the rule of law, a cleaner and more responsive administration, and most importantly a middle class that presses the government for a greater political voice.

A bit of devil's advocacy: I'm an essentially a relativist. ("Essentially" meaning that I'm really not one at all.) How do we decide on and define objectively what "human rights" are? One could argue that Western style democracy arose out of Christian ideas about individuality. Therefore, it could be said that "rights" are basically something unique to our culture. I don't think I agree with that, but it is tough to argue against it. The pragmatist in me wants to say that whatever improves peoples' lives is a good thing. And rights often happen to do just that. Islamic culture may want saria, but I'll be damned if that really improves their lives in any practical sense.

And finally, Fareed on the hype:

After the book is done, I will very happily retreat back to the position of being a writer whose public persona is shaped by his own voice. I've found it unsettling to be constructed by other people, but I don't think that there's any danger of my becoming any kind of a mass phenomenon. Let's not kid ourselves.

You should read it all, there is a lot of good stuff.