Democracy—How It’s Changed!

We are seeing very different varieties of democracy in the world today. We see what is being called “post-liberal democracy” and “pre-liberal democracy.” Both of them are very different from the old-fashioned kind of democracy, which was characterized by classical liberal ideas—those that espoused individual liberty, limited government, property rights, and democratic sovereignty.

In America and much of Europe (think Greece), we are seeing “post-liberal” democracy, a form of government that replaces the old and seemingly worn out democracy of classical liberalism with a form that emphasizes social rights, social goods, intrusive government, and transnational law.

Opponents of this kind of “post-liberal” democracy claim that there just is not enough money in the kitty to pay for it; and further stretch of the national bank account will destroy the nations that try it. Furthermore, we have the prime example of this kind of socialistic government obviously before us, i.e., the USSR. (What a failure that was! It could not supply the goods and services the people needed.)

On the other hand, we are seeing in the Middle East, a form of democracy which might be called “pre-liberal” democracy. “Pre-liberal” democracy is democracy shorn of the values Westerners typically associate with democracy: free speech, religious liberty, social tolerance, equality between the sexes, and so on. This “pre-liberal” democracy seeks to replace the classic qualities of Western societies with democratically elected officials who would replace the old Western values with a religious form, i.e., Islam and Sharia law. Of course—this “pre-liberal” democracy is chosen by popular vote of the people. That is why it is called “democracy.”

There are definite limits on what this “pre-liberal” democracy can do for the people in a nation that adopt it. Classical expressions of democracy such as freedom of speech and sexual equality will be suppressed just as soon as they collide with Islamic paradigms. But…this form of democracy is seen by the people as preferred to the governments it replaces—the governments of Saddam Hussein, Hosni Mubarak, and other tyrants of the Middle East.

I cannot help wishing that we could get back to the old-fashioned variety of American democracy—the pre-New Deal variety of democracy. I know there were abuses in that kind of government; but the government take-over we are seeing in America today with Obamacare, the Dodd-Frank bill, and other laws just give me a bleak outlook on America’s future.

Much of this blog post was redacted from an editorial on page A-11 of the Wall Street Journal of 19 June 2012.

Why the Divide Between Liberals and Conservatives?

Jonathan Haidt has written a book titled The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are divided by Politics and Religion. In his book, he notes that in the 1980’s, Lawrence Kohlberg theorized that children go through stages of moral development, culminating in a “post-conventional” attitude that questions social norms and revises them to accord with higher principles of justice. In other words, the mature, morally developed person is a liberal.

 Haidt, a psychologist, has become more and more convinced that our morality flows from our emotional reactions rather than from reasoned responses. 

The author designed an experiment, which determined that our innate moral intuitions fall into six categories: care, freedom, fairness, loyalty, authority, and sanctity. Care, freedom, and fairness focus on individuals. We see someone suffering, and our care sensibility is aroused; we try to help that person. Loyalty, authority, and sanctity focus on social realities. An example of this latter sensibility is our attitude toward desecration of the American flag. That does not harm any individual; but it does damage our moral sense of patriotic loyalty.

Both those who self-identify with liberalism and conservatism participate in the three sensibilities of care, freedom, and fairness; but only the ones who self-identify as conservatives consistently participated in the sensibilities of loyalty, authority, and sanctity on the test administered by Mr. Haidt.

To see how well liberals and conservatives understand one another, Haidt devised a special test. He constructed a list of questions with liberal and conservative bias points. Then, he administered the questionnaire to both liberals and conservatives, asking the liberals to answer the questions as they thought conservatives would answer; and he asked the conservatives to answer as they thought the liberals would answer.

He found that the conservatives understood well the attitudes of the liberals; but the liberals could not answer the questions the way conservatives would answer. Apparently, the liberals could not conceive that anyone with good sense would think like a conservative.

Due to the apparent lack of understanding on the part of liberals, Haidt concluded that the ill-tempered rancor between liberals and conservatives is due to the difficulty liberals have in mentally grasping the moral concerns of conservatives, especially those concerns that are heightened and given shape by religion.

Liberals in general seem to summarily dismiss the thoughts of those who have concerns about loyalty, authority, and sanctity. Liberals would dismiss conservatives to rhetorical extermination and denounce them as “not mainstream.”

I believe that this above attitude may be the root of the difficulties we have in America between liberals and conservatives.