Democracy.
Nowadays we talk about it a lot. Is it under attack at home? Is it worth advocating overseas?
The thing is, you really can’t answer those questions until you define democracy, and what you have to understand about that is, not everyone treasures it the way most of us do or even defines it the same way. Certainly not in other parts of the world and when you look at the insurrection of January 6th, not even in the U.S.A.
But if we have to know what democracy means before we know what it’s worth, we need to recognize that it derives from two words in Greek: “demos,” which means people, and “kratos,” which means power.
Demos kratos. Democracy.
That makes Abraham Lincoln’s definition of a democratic form of government, delivered on the hallowed ground at Gettysburg, as good as any: “Of the people, by the people, for the people.”
And his practical definition may be the best: “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. Whatever differs from this… is no democracy.”
And yet that only applies to a democracy as we have long defined it: a system that permits the majority of citizens to elect representatives to do our bidding (which is what also makes us a republic), but protects the rights of the minority whose preferences have been repudiated.
Not everyone sees it the same way though, which is part of the reason why democracies rise and fall.
When the Soviet Union crumbled, democratic freedoms blossomed in the Russia that replaced it. I spent time there in those days and having long yearned for liberties they’d never had, suddenly people were free to speak their minds, the press was free to report alternative views, political parties were free to flourish. But once Vladimir Putin took charge, the flower died, petal by petal. He still claims his country has democratic elections, but they’re hardly democratic when the only parties permitted to field candidates for parliament are parties he has approved.
Opposition leader Alexei Navalny not only was disapproved from politics, he was imprisoned.
Russia’s former World Chess champion Garry Kasparov knows this firsthand from when he retired from the game and became a political activist, declaring his intent in 2008 to run against Putin for president. He wrote about it in The New York Times: “I know what it means to have my opinion censored while every major media outlet is dedicated to vilifying me and my colleagues. While I traveled across the country to campaign, we would find venues suddenly closed for repairs, our flights canceled, our meetings shut down by the police. Nor did I quite manage to stay out of jail, spending five days in a Moscow cell for participating in an ‘unauthorized rally’.”
Kasparov concluded his op-ed this way: “The people who cast the votes don’t decide an election, the people who count the votes do. In system like that, by the time the voting begins, the game is already over.”
With all the maneuvering in the U.S. to control elections, America beware.
But in Russia it is no surprise, not after what one of Putin’s advisors once told me, that democracy is designed “to undermine authority.” Evidently that, is how Putin defines democracy.
Not that all the citizens object. When the Soviet state dissolved and democracy was introduced, the thin safety net that had protected people, albeit minimally, dissolved with it. Which meant unemployment grew, corruption grew, crime grew, homelessness grew. As an opposition politician (whose party Putin long ago decertified) told me in Moscow, “In most people’s minds, that became the definition of democracy.”
It might help explain why democracy in Russia is over and done.
As it is, after a short run, in Tunisia. When popular revolutions swept across the Middle East eleven years ago in what was known as the Arab Spring, democracy took root in several nations but eventually, like falling dominoes, it yielded again to dictators. Eventually Tunisia was the only democracy to survive. But sadly, I say was. In an election earlier this week, Tunisia’s president Kais Saied won voters’ approval of a new constitution granting him what amounts to one-man rule, the power to appoint his people to virtually every branch of government. He points with pride to the mandate: allegedly almost 95% of voters voted yes. But here’s the catch: most political parties boycotted the election and turnout was less than 30%. So 95% of less than 30% determined the future of Tunisia.
Democracy in the Middle East is over and done too.
Some democracies are hybrids. For example there are electoral democracies, where candidates and parties are not hand-picked by the leadership, but they’re not social democracies, which the Carter Center defines as, “An inclusive democratic society that respects human rights and laws, administers justice fairly, and encourages full citizen participation in government.” Iraq, as a case in point, has had reasonably fair elections and has come a long way from the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, but is still in effect a winner-take-all democracy.
And some are the other way around. The comparatively tolerant and inestimably affluent Emirate of Dubai, which is ruled strictly by monarchs, is (in relative terms anyway) a social democracy but not an electoral democracy. I’ve openly consumed alcohol there, and seen women with all but their faces covered walking arm-in-arm with women dressed like Las Vegas hookers. One mid-ranking royal took a break from the camel races one day there to explain it to me this way: Income has priority over Islam, dollars have priority over democracy. If you go along, you get along.
In some countries democracy spreads almost by accident. China and Vietnam are good examples. Once they introduced capitalism, if only in their economic self-interest, they introduced democracy, because decisions are made by private citizens who are growing their businesses, not just by their governments. But that’s as far as it goes. Chinese president Xi Jinping told a People’s Congress conference last October, “Democracy, a shared value of humanity, is a key tenet unswervingly upheld by the CPC (the Communist Party of China) and the Chinese people.” He said it with a straight face. Yet in elections for local “People’s Congresses,” which are the only elections in China where citizens can vote for candidates, there is still intimidation when contenders run and intimidation when they serve. As with those who now oversee Hong Kong, which long enjoyed almost total independence, they have to toe the line, or Beijing will replace them with someone who will.
And democratic choices don’t always equate with democratic ideology. After corruption in the PLO, the Palestine Liberation Organization, led to food shortages in the already impoverished Gaza Strip, the terror group Hamas moved in and got people fed, so that when elections were held, Hamas was triumphant. I know from my own reporting there that many who voted for Hamas did not support its ideology, but when it comes to a choice between an unwelcome ideology and a welcome plate of food on the table, there is no contest.
You can almost tell which societies have some form of democracy, and which don’t. If every eligible citizen is entitled to cast a vote and determine the outcome of an election, then for better or worse, there is democracy. If interest groups are allowed to lobby their government for the causes they hold dear, then for better or worse, there is democracy. If there is independence for everything from PTAs to Chambers of Commerce to Boy Scout troops, then for better or worse, there is democracy. If the internet is free and open for a full spectrum of views, then for better or worse, there is democracy.
There will be corruption, there will be dissent. But if corruption is not ignored and dissent is not stifled, there is democracy.
If there are no free elections, no independent interest groups, no self-governing organizations, no unrestricted internet… and no freedom of speech, no freedom of press, no freedom of religion, no freedom of assembly… and corruption is ignored and dissent is stifled… there is not.
Yet it’s not as simple as that. For as outspoken Colorado abortion rights doctor Warren Hern once told the Justice Department about violence committed against him and his colleagues, “The classic problem of democracy is that it grants great liberty to those who hate freedom.”
So it grants liberty to legislators like Representative Lauren Boebert from Hern’s own state, who told a religious assembly last weekend that she is “tired of this separation of church and state junk. The church,” she avowed, “is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church.”
It grants liberty to Senator Josh Hawley, who encouraged the January 6th mob with a fist pump as they prepared to ransack the Capitol and murder the politicians they abhorred.
They and their ilk favor less democracy, not more. Just like the state legislators across the land who have manipulated election laws to make it harder, not easier, to vote. Just like the insurrectionists on January 6th, and the officials in the White House and Congress who egged them on. Just like the plotters who created lists of admittedly “fake” electors to overturn the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. That’s less democracy, not more.
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger used to say that America was democracy’s beacon and its crusader. It has always been our moral conviction. To a degree that is still true. Although bad actors are chipping away at the Constitution, they haven’t disfigured it. But we must not lose sight of what democracy means, and what it means to us, or they might.
I never tire of quoting Winston Churchill, who famously said (and graciously offered in the wake of his removal as Prime Minister mere months after winning World War Two), “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”
Which is why we must continue to champion it overseas to those who will listen, and defend it here at home against those who would exploit it— at our expense— to their own ends.
Over almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies and politics at home and international crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.
I lived and worked in Egypt for a couple of years (Mubarak years) and got into a discussion with an Egyptian Copt in my office. He maintained that democracy was impossible in a Muslim country because all decisions were finally arbited by Islamic authorities. and 'free and fair' elections would be undermined by factional disputes. I responded that real democracy is only partly about elections, but more importantly about what happens between elections. Independent judiciaries, free press and speech, civilian control of the military, and economic policies that reduce excessive income inequality are as important as the actual elections. l think these are perfectly possible in an Islamic country.
Bravo Greg
Very glad you wrote this — timely and important reminder