In my book Still Common Sense, and in my thriller Team Walker series and historical fiction Gritt Family series, I regularly reference the political system of what I call the “imperfect but extraordinary America.” My upcoming novel, Tempest North contrasts citizens from the new United States with those of four other nations and systems.
The foundation of our nation and government is our unique structure. We are a republic. In pure democracy the people meet and exercise their government in person. In a republic, they assemble and administer through representatives elected using democratic means. Pure democracies must remain small so that everyone can participate while a republic can extend over a large region. In the United States, the rule book for the process is our Constitution.
This representative process is its strength, but also a weakness that can lead to chaos. This is especially true in a world where independent journalism is replaced for many by opinion as expressed on social media. We now struggle with any form of agreement, even on facts or truths. For example, we cannot agree on when life begins. Was January 6 a raucous demonstration that spun out of hand, or an attempt to overthrow the government? We should follow the science, but science told us that the seas would be free of ice by 1990, grilled meat would kill us, and if it didn’t, eating eggs would. Science once told us that Europeans were superior to all other races.
Even facts might not be facts. For example, science once taught that the atom was the smallest component of the universe. We now know that the atom contains three smaller particles: protons, electrons, and neutrons. Maybe gravity is a fact, maybe.
So how does this affect our democratic process? It has driven us to discard debate between competing ideals and replace it with personal attacks instead of philosophies. What we now call debate over contentious issues is now reduced to name calling because the other side simply doesn’t understand the truth I understand or the facts I believe.
We no longer want simple representation, we now want government by the knowledgeable; that is by representatives who refuse to consider anything but what we believe. That system might be a little less fair, at least to the unknowledgeable, but it makes better decisions because we agree with them. Or, if you are on the losing end, it reeks of totalitarianism.
Majority democracy is not stable, it is messy with shifts in direction. For four decades this country has become more progressive. Now it’s becoming more conservative which has shocked a lot of people. It’s all right, we’re all right. Our Constitution gives us hard rules that govern how we change. That document exists partially to protect us from the excesses of democracy. After all, it delineates inalienable rights, including the Bill of Rights, but they aren’t really rights if 51% of our neighbors can vote them out of existence.
Our form of democracy, as Winston Churchill once wrote, “is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” It’s not pretty, but it keeps the elites, those who know best from running our lives.