When Democracy Becomes an Idol

Malcontent And Envy Inimical to Democratic Liberties

With the rise of Donald Trump and the prospect that a conman could become the Republican candidate for the President of the United States, a familiar quotation has once again begun circulating in the United States.  

The quotation has been unreliably attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee FRSE (15 October 1747 – 5 January 1813) who was a Scottish advocate, judge, writer and historian who served as Professor of Universal History, and Greek and Roman Antiquities at the University of Edinburgh.  The quotation runs:

 A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.

The average age of the world's greatest civilisations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to complacency; From complacency to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.

Tytler may have written the above, or not.  But in any event, the observation is worth considering.

Firstly, the contention that democracies cannot and do not survive.
 It is undeniable that the West's recent experience over the past two hundred years or more with democracy tends to offer some support for this idea.  It is incontestable that Western democracies have steadily and successively removed political power from the demos, the people, and concentrated it more in the hands of the state itself.  In particular, the property rights of citizens have eroded drastically, as expenditure from the public treasury has increased.

Public debt now hangs over most Western democracies like a damocletian sword.  Moreover, Western democracies have reached the stage where fundamental freedom rights of opinion and expression are beginning to come under attack in a way that our forbears would have found astonishing, if not inconceivable.  Just ask the couple in Oregon who refused to bake a cake celebrating a homosexual relationship, or the pastor in Northern Island who publicly criticised Islam from the pulpit.  For those who still think this increasing authoritarianism is overstating the case, consider this report on cases throughout Europe.

Secondly, it is clear that so much of modern Western political discourse has to do with the State providing material benefits to some, which necessitates government-voted spending from the public exchequer.  Most election seasons are like public bribery contests as electoral success turns around who can offer the biggest bribes to the voters--bribes which must be paid for by either extracting money from some to distribute to others, or by increasing public debt, which represents a non-consented extraction of property from generations not yet born.  Thus, the second and third sentences of the quotation ring true to our experience of democracy:

A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.  From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury . . .

How have democracies fared in the matter of public debt?  Bloomberg provides a table:

http://www.bloomberg.com/visual-data/best-and-worst//most-government-debt-per-person-countries

What this table illustrates is that the top public debt per person is held by thirty democracies, ranging from Japan to Brazil.  After the worst (Japan) comes Ireland, the United States, Singapore, Belgium, Italy, Canada, France, and the United Kingdom--and so on.  

Taken far enough, the collapse of the democratic system inevitably looms.  Rising personal, corporate and government debt risks leading to rampant inflation, an eventual deep depression, mass unemployment, rioting, chaos, the emergence of a Strong Man, mass nationalisation of industries and property, and then Tyranny emerges, licking his chops.

What this dismal quotation implies is that democracy is not the natural form of government in a fallen world.  It is unsustainable--at least insofar as a society lacks a Judeo-Christian moral foundation.  Public morality based upon a widespread, overwhelming commitment to the following ethical mores is required to sustain democracies in perpetuity:

Honour your father and your mother
Do not murder
Do not steal
Do not commit adultery
Do not lie
Do not covet, nor envy anything belonging to your neighbour's. 

But these ethical foundations in turn depend upon an abiding commitment of a society to the God who issued  the above commands and Who holds all men to them because they arise out of His character and being.  Thus, the six commandments above will only be held and maintained in a society, if that society also acknowledges and holds to the foundations upon which they, in turn, are grounded, namely:

I am the Lord your God.  You shall have no other gods in my presence.
You shall not make any image or likeness of Me, or in any other way act as if I were a creature.
You shall not take my Name in vain.
You shall labor for six days, but rest on the seventh making it a holy day to the Lord.  

Without these divine laws and a commitment to these laws being written on the hearts and consciences of the strong majority of the people, democratic government cannot be sustained over time.  It cannot last.  It will ineluctably morph into one form of authoritarianism or another.

Without a compelling belief in the first four commandments, what could be wrong with dishonouring our parents, with murder, with theft, with adultery, with lying, and with coveting what belongs to our neighbour?  Moreover, what could be wrong, if a democratic majority want or approve any of these evils?

A society that denies God, ends up denying His law.  But it is God's law which nourishes and nurtures and protects individual freedoms and liberties of conscience.  It is God's law which sets limits upon the powers of neighbours, and of the state.  The people who refuse to acknowledge God end up being bound over to the lusts of mankind.  At that point, democracy risks becoming a facilitator of tyranny, not a bulwark against it.

Democracy can only be sustained in perpetuity if it continues to be grounded upon the foundation of God and His laws for all mankind.