Montana Maven's
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Francis Moore Lappe named her 2005 book "Democracy's Edge".  She examines what we have now and declares it a "thin democracy".  She challenges each of us to start feeding what we have  so that we can enjoy "living democracy".  My co host of our weekly alternative radio show and I thought "On Democracy's Edge" would be a great name for our show.  But we had listeners objecting the the name.  They used a definition of democracy that says that it is rule by the mob.  It is the "tyranny of the mob".  I asked callers to find out other definitions and we'd examine them in our civics class aka radio show.

(Note:  the callers mentioned that in Sam Johnson's dictionary democracy was defined as "tyranny of the mob".  Well maybe it's the 7th defintion or so.  But I actually own a copy of Selections from Johnson's Dictionary and the definition that made it was this: 

One of the three forms of government; that in which the sovereign power is neither lodged in one man, nor in the nobles, but in the collective body of the people.

The next entry in the dictionary, interestingly is demonocracy i.e. the power of the devil.)
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Lappe reminds us of the Abby Hoffman quote "democracy is not something you have, it's something you do."  It's active.  Sheldon J. Wolin in "Democracy Incorporated" makes the point that Superpower "redefines the citizenry as respondents rather than actors and as objects of manipulation rather than as autonomous."  We lose our premier position as citizens and become customers and even worse, cogs that can easily be replaced.  The masters have also cut our sound and we are permanently muted.
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Democracy started in Athens amongst the farmers, the crafts people, and the merchants.  They wanted a voice, a say in how the city-state was being run.  In return for power, they served on juries and in assemblies.  Plato thought it was a crock and made fun of the rabble, says Wolin, and "satirized it as  encouraging the lowliest citizens to take on airs beyond their 'place'..."   But Aristotle was more generous.  He "interpreted democratic freedom as meaning 'to rule and be ruled in turn."

But it didn't last long.  Wolin writes  "...the flourishing of the Athenian economy became strongly intertwined with the transformation of a city-state into an imperial power with an appetite for expansion."  Just like the Americans many centuries later, the Athenians were restless and not content to live small and within the walls.  Wolin draws "a twofold moral" from Athens:

First: "that it is self-subverting for democracy to subordinate its egalitarian convictions to the pursuit of expansive politics with its corollarries of conquest and domination and the power relationships they introduce...As Athens showed and the United States of the twenty-first century confirmed, imperialism undercuts democracy by furthering inequalities among its citizens.  Resources that might be used to improve health care, education, and environmental protection are instead directed to defense spending, which, by far, consumes the largest percentage of the nation's annual budget."

Second, "if Athens was the first historical instance of a confrontation between democracy and elitism, that experience suggests that there is no simple recipe for resolving the tensions between them...the downfall of Athens was attributed to the wiles and vainglory of leaders who managed to whip up popular support for ill-conceived adventures."

"Wiles and vainglory of leaders" is what always gets us into trouble.  It is their belief in their own greatness and virtue.  Whether they were narcissists to begin with our acquired it because of cheering and adoring crowds, elite leaders and movie stars start to believe their own PR. 

The story of democracy and the story of it here in the U.S. is the constant tension between those who believe that The Few chosen from our elite institutions should lead us in great daring imperial adventures and those who believe that the duty of our leaders should be to expand equalities here at home and to get over themselves.

 

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