Democracy Explained

19 November 2006 at 12:29 am Peter G. Klein Leave a comment

| Peter Klein |

My student Christos Kolympiris sends along a version of the heaven and hell joke in which the protagonist is a US senator. The punch line: “Yesterday we were campaigning. . . . Today you voted.”

I personally like the definition — often attributed to Benjamin Franklin, probably mistakenly — that “democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner,” while “freedom is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.”

If you like political cynicism, it’s hard to top this passage from the great H. L. Mencken, writing in 1920:

The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.

The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.