We hear people every day praise the virtue of democracy. We hear it from our leaders, we hear it from the press, we even hear it from our educators. One would almost assume that democracy is akin to some life saving righteous force that will eventually purge any government of corruption and injustice. It's almost as if democracy were some sort of god like power, in which rests all of our hopes and dreams.
However, what most people may not know, or refuse to consider, is that the history of democracy is far from desirable. The people of Athens are often credited with being the first recorded democracy. However, do we ever consider the historical success of that ancient democracy?
Looking closer into Athenian life, only the citizens of Athens who were male could vote. This excluded the vast majority of Athenians, which included children, women, and slaves. In fact, there were far more slaves than citizens. In a rather odd way though, slavery was the key to any success democracy might have had in Athens. For you see, the men of Athens who were allowed to participate in democracy spent their days debating and studying topics, so that they were well informed and educated about the issues. This was only made possible because they had slaves to attend to the time consuming chores of every day life. We all know that an uniformed vote is a wasted vote. The irony here is that even the well informed men of Athens paved a path to hell as they devolved into a self righteous and arrogant society that squandered their riches and freedom on wars abroad with such powers as Sparta in order to spread their virtuous form of government. The gospel of democracy led them to ruin. Sound familiar?
So as we see, democracy does not automatically lead to virtue. In fact, the Founding Fathers seemed to think that democracy before virtue was placing the cart before the horse. Many of the Founders, such as Ben Franklin, seemed to think that only a virtuous people could succeed in a free and democratic society. Ben Franklin famously mentioned that he thought that the Constitution would succeed for a number of years until the morality of society waned to the point it be rendered useless and cast aside for a tyranny of some kind. HIs view was that society would eventually become so corrupt, that a tyranny would be needed to restrain it.
Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the Founding Fathers set up a Republic instead of a democracy. As John Adams once said, "
Democracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man’s life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few" Why then does everyone continue to refer to the US as a democracy with the added implication that this has lead to the greatness of the nation? This is a total fabrication.
Does this description of John Adams not sound like society within the US today? Looking at our leaders who seem to routinely break the law with impunity, the US has become a nation of men and not laws. The nation no longer seeks after wisdom and virtue, but after power, wealth, beauty, and knowledge and science. It's almost as if knowledge is equal to wisdom and virtue, if not even better than the two combined. However, a mind full of knowledge that embraces evil is the worst nightmare society could hope for. Knowledge is merely a tool, or weapon depending on the morality of the individual in which it resides.
So the next time you hear democracy being used to describe the United States, or being used to describe the ideal form of government, ask yourself why. What are they trying to sell because the gospel of democracy is a lie.
