Democracy, we are told, is conquering the globe. Contemporary Western democracy is widely thought to represent the culmination of mankind's long struggle for enlightenment and well-being: It is the "end" of history. All that remains is for the progressive forces in the world to bring down such backward, non-democratic regimes as still exist. Democracy is the triumph of universal values, of morally obligatory "human rights." It alone among system of government can claim legitimacy. As democracy takes hold it not only replaces totalitarian, dictatorial and authoritarian political systems, but begins to phase out such other impediments to human progress as old national, ethnic, cultural and religious identities. The peoples of the world will find unity instead in the celebration of democratic and egalitarian ideas. The ideology of popular rule may be called democratism. It has numerous adherents among American intellectuals and politicians, many of whom also believe that the United States should lead an effort to bring democracy to areas of the globe that have been under communist or other non-democratic rule. The peoples of the world are assumed to crave democracy and to welcome American assistance.
It is noteworthy that euphoria about the triumphs of democracy should be a prominent feature of public debate at a time when the Western democracies themselves are beset by internal problems of unexampled severity and scope. So serious, persistent and pervasive are those problems that they even raise questions about democracy's ability to survive. Just a few examples will illustrate an apparent broad decline of Western civilization: A growing lack of personal self-discipline and responsibility, rampant crime and drug abuse, erratic law enforcement, sexual promiscuity, the crumbling of the family, a burgeoning underclass, poor and deteriorating education, tastelessness and decadence in the arts and entertainment, the infantilization of public opinion and debate, brazen political and economic partisanship, social fragmentation, political demagoguery and opportunismthese and many other signs of marked and seemingly inexorable social decline are surely reasons for worry. But what say the promoters of democracy to all of this? Western-style democracy should be bestowed on the entire world. We encounter in the celebrations of democracy a flight from reality or a cynical exploitation of Western moods of escapism.
The spread of democratism exemplifies a virtual collapse of philosophical discipline and of the historical sense among large groups of Western intellectuals and politicians. Fondness for ill-defined abstract ideas and a neglect of concrete historical realities are typical of public discussion. Uncritical and superficial assumptions about popular rule, human nature and the world play a powerful role in shaping the actions of entire countries. Rarely was there a greater need for distinctions and other philosophical clarification.
Discussions of popular rule usually ignore that democracy has sharply different meanings. Perhaps the most influential of those meanings, the one toward which the democratists gravitate, is in substantial conflict with the old classical and Judaeo-Christian view of human nature and society. Contrary to loosely made assumptions, that meaning is very hard to reconcile with the U.S. Constitution. Little attention is paid to the fact that popular rule of the American constitutional and representative type has highly demanding ethical, cultural and intellectual preconditions. It cannot simply be assumed that all peoples are capable of that kind of government.
Another questionable assumption among the democratists is that certain abstract ideasthe ideas of democracy and human rightscan take the place of old national, cultural and religious identities as sources of social cohesion and inspiration. Democratism typically treats historically evolved allegiances as anachronisms and as obstacles to the progress and liberation of mankind. Nationalism is often seen as posing a particularly serious threat to enlightened rule. That nationalism can be a very dangerous force hardly needs proving, but it too can appear in very different forms. Like democracy, it has opposed potentialities.
Any meaningful discussion of either democracy or nationalism or of the relationship between them requires that contrasting types of democracy and nationalism be differentiated so that their strengths, weaknesses and dangers can be properly assigned and assessed. Chapter XII of this volume will distinguish more fully between two very different forms of popular government to which the term "democracy" is applied. Constitutional democracy assumes that human nature is flawed and that individuals have different abilities and qualifications for governing. This form of rule places restraints on the popular wishes of the moment and fives representatives the responsibility for articulating the long-term interests of the people. Constitutional democracy implies the desirability of limiting and decentralizing power. Plebiscitary or majoritarian democracy assumes that people are essentially good and equal. Placing decisive authority in the hands of the numerical majority, this form of government seeks the speediest possible implementation of the majority will. The natural dynamic of this kind of popular rule is to expand and centralize government.
Constitutional and plebiscitary are not different versions of one and the same form of government. They are ultimately incompatible. They assume and generate radically different societies. Only the constitutional form can be reconciled with the classical and Judaeo-Christian heritage. To grasp the contrast between them is to understand better their practical implications. Whatever the theory of plebiscitary democracy, in practice it becomes rule in the name of the people by a central authority. The constitutional form, while placing limits on the momentary majority and giving considerable independent authority to elected and non-elected leaders, tends to spread self-rule widely throughout society. But constitutional democracy cannot be realized by simply proclaiming it in a particular country. It may be the most demanding form of government. It has a chance of success only if certain moral, cultural and intellectual predispositions are strongly present in a people and its leaders. Today, it is no longer clear that those predispositions are sufficiently strong even in the United States.1
Inattention to these and other basic issues of popular rule explains the confused and uncritical nature of so much current discussion of democracy. One result is that populist and generally utopian sentiments carry great weight in thinking about the future of the world.
THE IDEOLOGY OF DEMOCRATISM
It is desirable to take a closer look at the ideology of democratism and the effort to replace traditional loyalties with adherence to universalist ideas. To justify making the United States the instrument of democracy around the world it is often claimed that democracy is quintessentially American. Champions of the democratist cause have been able to draw intellectual support from academic writers who have presented America's so-called "founding" as providing an early model for the democratic transformation of the world. The work of the Founders has been reinterpreted in recent decades as representing the same egalitarian historical movement as does Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the French Revolution. According to Allan Bloom, for example, the principles of America are "freedom and equality and the rights based on them." These principles are intrinsically for export. Bringing out their global implications, Bloom insists that these principles are "rational and everywhere applicable."2 A large number of political commentators today express the same ideological sentiments. Ben Wattenberg wants the United States to be "a powerful global organizer" in behalf of "American values." It may not be necessary "to conquer the world," he writes, but the world must be made "hospitable to our values."3 Charles Krauthammer urges a "robust" interventionism.4 Among the politicians, President Bush may have thought of himself as a pragmatist, but his rhetoric about a New World Order often had the same ideological ring. His Secretary of State officially and explicitly committed U.S. foreign policy to "Enlightenment ideals of universal applicability." Mr. Baker advocated "a Euro-Atlantic community that extends east from Vancouver to Vladivostok." This community, he said, "can only be achieved on a democratic basis." The enormous size and diversity of the region in question did not give him pause. The United States should promote "common . . . universal values" in those parts of the world and "indeed, elsewhere around the globe."5 The surge of globalist political-ideological aspirations is further illustrated by the draft of a Pentagon planning document leaked in March of 1992 to The New York Times. Besides less problematic specific proposals, that document sets forth the goal of a world in which the United States is the sole and uncontested superpower and acts to spread democracy and open economic systems. The United States should have "the preeminent responsibility" for dealing with "those wrongs which threaten not only our interests, but those of our allies or friends. . . ."5 The Pentagon plan was quickly endorsed by influential commentators like Krauthammer and by The Wall Street Journal, which published a lead editorial promoting "Pax Americana."7
Even if the most charitable interpretations are put on these opinions, their element of political-ideological imperialism is hard to miss. Many of the advocates of "democracy" and "human rights" resemble the French Jacobins with their calls for "liberty, equality and fraternity." Both the new and the old Jacobins want to remake the world. They demand acceptance everywhere for an allegedly virtuous ideology.8 The deeply rooted preferences and habits of traditional societies that are at variance with the new democratic order must yield. It is troubling to recall the intolerance and suffering that has been inflicted on mankind in the last two centuries by the moral and intellectual fervor of Jacobinism in various forms. One of its most pernicious manifestations, communism, is now disintegrating. But another panacea, a world safe for "democracy" and "capitalism," spearheaded by the United States, seems to be taking its place. The new vision of humanity redeemed may be less obviously utopian, but in its desire to overturn traditional, "authoritarian" societies the new Jacobinism is not unrelated to Marxism.9
RESPONSIBLE NATIONHOOD
If the current wave of political universalism contains highly dangerous elements, it should not be assumed that the proper remedy is to reject universalism of every conceivable kind. For example, it would be misguided for particular peoples to isolate themselves and to cultivate only what is distinctive to themselves. It may be suggested instead that the desirable approach to both domestic and international affairs is one that avoids both utopian globalism and national self-absorption. Call that approach responsible nationhood. It is possible to conceive of an affirmation of nationality that is not only compatible with a cosmopolitan fondness for diversity, but indistinguishable from it. Responsible nationhood can be defined in contrast with two equally unacceptable possibilities: One is an abstract universalism that wishes to replace religious, cultural and regional identities with an allegedly virtuous homogeneity. The other is a nationalism that is so full of itself that it has difficulty tolerating anything else.
Serious dangers are posed by a pseudo-universalism that scorns historical realities and craves unlimited power for itself. Yet, in criticizing this mind-set, it would be a mistake to denigrate universality in every sense. Some dismiss universality in favor of national particularity as the defining feature of political and cultural life. At the extreme, the assertion of nationality becomes self-absorbed and intolerant. Paradoxical though it may seem, unbounded nationalism has a good deal in common with abstract universalism. Both tend to hate whatever challenges their uncontested hegemony. But both of them clash fundamentally with universalism of an entirely different type. That universalism, which is marked by a strong historical consciousness, needs to be explained at some length. It is compatible with national self-regard in a higher sense. The latter is perhaps best called patriotism.
In explaining the meaning of non-abstract universalism it is helpful first to indicate a general outlook to which it is opposed: that of unchecked partisanship, nationalistic or otherwise. One of the pioneers of Western nationalism as of plebiscitary, majoritarian democracy is Rousseau. What he calls the general will unifies only a particular people. There is no moral authority beyond it with reference to which conflicts between peoples might be mitigated. In his book on Poland Rousseau advocates inculcating an ardent nationalism in the citizen. "The newly-born infant, upon first opening his eyes, must gaze upon the fatherland and until his dying day should behold nothing else." And in The Social Contract he insists that the citizen should receive from the general will his very "life and being." This collective identity must supplant every other membership and be the sole source of personhood.10
For Karl Marx, social and political existence is defined not by nationality, but by class. But Marx too splits humanity into separate camps. His notion of unrelieved and inevitable conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat actually denies that groups of mankind, whatever their divisions, have a common humanity. Marx excludes the possibility of reconciliation. He denies, in effect, that people of different backgrounds might resonate to the same poetry, art, music, or moral example. Had Marx admitted the existence of a shared human frame of reference, he would have had to allow for the possibility of a muting of hostilities .
The criticism that can be directed against nationalism or Marxism on this score applies to any social and political analysis that treats a particular attribute or membershipnationality, class, individual, tribe, sex, stateas salient, distinct and self-enclosed: Life becomes a struggle of "me" or "us" against "them." Individual persons or collective entities must confront each other as belligerents. Whether of a materialistic, nationalistic, or biologistic cast, this kind of analysis creates philosophically artificial categories by trying to separate the particular from the universal.
RESPONSIBLE NATIONHOOD AND UNIVERSALITY
A particular human being, like a particular society, is and remains unique, but personhood develops within family and other associations and within civilization as a whole. True civilization always carries the person beyond tribe, region, nation and time period. Although it is in the nature of genuine civilization to discriminate against whatever threatens its central values, it is never idiosyncratic and self-enclosed. Its sense of the good, the true and the beautiful connects it, however tenuously, with mankind at large. The great figures of morality, thought and art speak, at least potentially, to all of humanity, however difficult it may be for particular individuals or peoples to absorb their achievements. In times of acute domestic or international strife, passion may dim the universal in the minds of the most intense partisans so that they pursue the foe with unrestrained intolerance and viciousness. In more civilized persons not even violent conflict will obliterate the awareness that behind the warring interests of the moment lies our common humanity and that today's enemy is a possible future friend.
True civilization embodies the quest for universality in the historical particularity of individuals and peoples. Although made distinctive by the needs and opportunities of historical circumstance, the particular tradition points beyond itself. It has a cosmopolitan dimension. By virtue of the element of universality in his own background, the civilized person can, to some varying extent, be at home in other cultural settings. He may be acutely aware of the flaws of other societies, but he also recognizes the universal in them, even if that family resemblance be faint, undeveloped or distorted.
The same higher values can be realized differently depending on time and place. The civilized person delights in the diversity and richness of human life and in what other societies can contribute to his own. The mutual dependence of universality and particularity is as significant within the particular society. The phrase e pluribus unum (our of many one) as applied to the intent of the American Framers does not mean that the desirable unity was to obliterate the diversity. On the contrary, the union would harmonize diversity and draw strength from it. What holds the national union together is the self-limitation and mutual respect of different interests. The ordering of society is made possible by recognition of a moral authority that transcends diversity while embracing it.
Jacobin ideological unity, by contrast, is centrally imposed homogeneity. It can be achieved only at the expense of diversity. Like nationalism of the bad kind, Jacobinism produces an artificial unity that is inherently hostile to everything but itself. In fact, as it tries to extend its monopoly on right to other parts of the world, Jacobin ideological fervor becomes difficult to distinguish from imperialistic nationalism.
There is plentiful historical and philosophical evidence to connect nationalistic expansionism with plebiscitary democracy. Both exhibit an unwillingness to place restraints on the presumed will of the people. It is only to be expected that a people full of its own superiority will be disinclined to grant a hearing to others. Especially under irresponsible leadership such a people will sooner or later want to throw its weight around.
To nationalists who stress what separates them from the rest of humanity, the word "cosmopolitan" has the distasteful connotation of cultural rootlessness. By a "cosmopolitan" they mean one who resents traditional religious and cultural identities and opts for radical universalist schemes. People fitting this description are common today, but they should not be called cosmopolitans. They are actually Jacobins in spirit, and they are typically provincial in their intellectual and cultural prejudices.
The real cosmopolitan is hard to distinguish from the patriot. He looks for universality not in abstract principles, but in concrete historical achievements. Like the patriot, the cosmopolitan is rooted in the best of his own heritage and ready to defend it. Affirming that heritage against subversion, the cosmopolitan may appear to the Jacobin pseudo-universalist to be a fervent nationalist or "nativist." But his pride of country is not of the self-absorbed, idiosyncratic, bullying kind. Patriotic pride, as distinguished from nationalistic self-glorification, flows from a sense of the universal good and of the merits of one's own country under that same standard. The patriot, therefore, is not blind to the failings of his own people, but is the first to want to repair them.
There is an affinity between patriotism and constitutional democracy in that both recognize the need to order the collective and individual self with reference to a standard beyond partisanship. The cohesion and inspiration provided by patriotism is a great asset to popular government. But the constitutional temperament also is a support for responsible nationhood. Patriotism can obviously flourish outside of constitutional democracy, but if the two are joined, the self-restraint, respect for diversity and sense of common purpose that are characteristic of each can become a powerful harmonizing influence.
Those who treat nation, class, or other entitles as ultimates and view conflict as the essential truth about politics like to think that they are cutting through moralistic verbiage to the power realities. In the fragmenting societies of the West and elsewhere thinkers like Machiavelli and Hobbes do offer important lessons about the requirements of political order, but a political philosophy is deficient that does not fully recognize the reality and political significance of what transcends particularity.
A reductionistic stress on partisanship reveals too narrow a conception of politics. It often results in a preoccupation with "practical politics" that is less than hard-nosed in that it does not fully understand the meaning and sources of power. Often missed is the decisive influence wielded by those who can shape man's innermost aspirations and fears, those, in short, who capture and hold the imagination. Whoever dominates the culture and inner life of a people dominates the well-springs of action. Practical politics as commonly understood is to that extent an epiphenomenon. To take an example, the prerequisite for any real and lasting change in the floundering Western societies of today is a moral-cultural quickening of the spirit that redirects the people's imagination and reduces the appeal of Jacobin schemes.
Heavy-handed assertions of particularity, national or otherwise, that neglect or deny universality can accomplish no genuine renewal of national character. A healthy reinvigoration and development of the national heritage along the lines of responsible nationhood would treasure and cultivate national identity, but not as pitting "us" against the rest of humanity. A properly restored national character would in a sense strengthen the bond with mankind at large, for such a restoration would be inspired by a love of one's own that also transcends the particular. Nationality would be cherished as the particular lovable manifestation of resurgent universality.
CONCLUSION
A renewed quest for the universal must not be confused with fondness for ideological abstractions and an indefinite outward push for power. Especially in a time like ours, when the moral center of the West is barely holding, the universal must be sought first and foremost in a deepening of the ethical life of the individual in his own communities. True moral universality manifests itself first and foremost as personal character, not as nice-sounding "principles." Urgently needed is a rediscovery of our primary duty, which is to shoulder responsibilities that are near, immediate and concrete. Our chief, if not exclusive, obligation, as individuals and societies, is to remedy our own most glaring flaws. To set out instead to remake the world according to an ideological blueprint reveals not only moral conceit but a flight from responsibility. The Jacobin blending of presumed benevolence with the will to power is always dangerous, but in the morally and intellectually disoriented Western societies the susceptibility to escapist appeals gives the democratists the potential for enormous mischief. Many who shudder at the talk of a New World Order do so because, to a considerable extent, that order is being defined not by cosmopolitan realists but by power-seeking ideologues.
The new Jacobinism presents itself as a moral response to the crisis of "liberalism" and relativism, but it is likely to aggravate rather than mitigate the deterioration of constitutional democracy and national character. Its "virtue" of abstract "principles" and "values" bypasses the central need of all moral and political life, the shaping of character and the fostering of self-control. It inspires instead an arrogance of power. A salutary defense of constitutionalism and proper national self-regard would deflate, not fan, democratist ambitions and utopian schemes.
It is neither possible nor desirable for any country, especially not a world power like the United States, to isolate itself. All countries derive indispensable benefits from contacts with other countries and nationalities. But domestic and foreign policy must be bounded by urgent and basic needs at home and by the self-restraint and realism of cosmopolitan patriotism. The present, we keep hearing, is an era of great opportunity for mankind. The appetite for ideological imperialism and international adventurism shows that it is also an era of great peril.
The Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C.
1. For an extensive discussion of constitutional and plebiscitary democracy and their implications, see Claes G. Ryn Democracy and the Ethical Life, 2nd. expanded ed. (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1990). See also in this volume my chapter entitled, "Democracy as an Ethical Problem".
2. Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), p. 153.
3. Ben Wattenberg, The Washington Times, August 8, 1991, December 1, 1988.
4. Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, March 22, 1991.
5. Secretary of State James A. Baker, speech to the Aspen Institute in Berlin, Germany, June 18, 1991.
6. New York Times, March 8, 1992. The Pentagon planning document was produced under the supervision of Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.
7. "Pax Americana," lead editorial, Wall Street Journal, March 16, 1992.
8. These similarities and their disturbing implications are analyzed in Claes G. Ryn, The New Jacobinism: Can Democracy Survive? (Washington, D.C.: National Humanities Institute, 1991).
9. Ibid., especially Ch. X.
10. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Government of Poland (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1972), p. 19, and The Social Contract (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1970), Bk. II, Ch. 7, 84.