Democracy: So What?

As protests rage in Cairo against a government that has ruled by "emergency law" and enforced a suspension of constitutional rights since 1967, you will soon undoubtedly hear a great many talking heads go on about "the necessity of democracy," how to get Egypt to implement "democratic reforms," and the general value of "spreading democracy." In short, we have yet another opportunity to continue a longstanding trend toward enshrining democracy as the ultimate political goal for every country in the world that hasn't yet been blessed with such a system.

Consider, however, a contemporaneous political event in another African country, Uganda: yesterday, a few months after a Ugandan newspaper published a front-page article that publicized pictures, names, addresses, etc. of Uganda's "Top Homos," with a tag that read "hang them," prominent gay rights activist David Kato was bludgeoned to death with a hammer. This disgusting act of vigilantism follows from the Ugandan government's current consideration of MP David Bahati's "Anti Homosexuality Bill," which would make being gay and engaging in same-sex acts illegal, and punishable by death in many cases.

Uganda is, of course, a democracy. It has a democratically elected and term-limited president, a democratically elected National Assembly of 332 members, many of which are ex-officio members nominated by interest groups, and a president-appointed Prime Minister.

In fact, now that this democratic government seems to have gotten behind a piece of legislation--not a dictatorial decree, but a piece of legislation--that not only relegates gays to second-class status, but considers it the duty and prerogative of the government to put them to death, the rest of the world has looked on with interest and with horror. And what do Ugandan officials say when American or European officials and media personalities speak out against this bill, this gross and incredible human rights violation?

Naturally, they say: but we're a democracy. This is the will of our people. This is not your business.

And, at least in a sense, they're absolutely right.

While no citizen of Uganda deserves to be discriminated against for their sexual orientation, or threatened with sanctions (or with their lives) for either being gay, supporting gay rights, or simply refusing to report or turn-in someone known or thought to be in violation of this Anti Homosexuality Bill, the moral dilemma (for lack of a better descriptor) that Europe and North America face in trying to deal with this situation is exactly what we deserve.

For years we've been pushing the idea of democracy uncritically, as though it's a panacea for the world's problems, both in global political discourse and in real terms (military enforcement of democracy abroad). Hypocritically, we've made friends with dictators in order to position ourselves strategically for democracy-building ventures in other, more advantageous or more lucrative parts of the world. We've made democracy the world's most visible empty signifier.

How could we not account for the distinct possibility that groups of people--especially groups who have been influenced in profound and devastating ways by colonialism and intervention for decades or centuries--could democratically arrive at absolutely horrific decisions? And is the irony lost on the Christian West that an African country with no evangelical Christian roots until British occupation in the late 19th century is now using the Christian "God's law" to justify the extermination of homosexuals, to the chagrin and horror of the liberal, industrialized, "developed" West?

It's long past the time to think more critically about democracy, how it's implemented, and what it means. While government by consent of the people is undoubtedly better than autocracy, theocracy, etc., democracy on its own is not enough. It must be accompanied by a baseline understanding of and respect for human rights. And such a respect for human rights must precede democracy, not the other way around. So while the ever-expanding population of technocrat world-savers, NGO managers, political action organizations--in short, what PMB likes to call the "global development set"--is so fond of talking about how to install democracy, what we need to be talking about first and foremost is how to achieve a global human rights baseline. From there, we need to understand that democracy is nothing without a system of checks and balances that can enforce such a human rights baseline, and protect a democratic society from democracy itself.

Brief Notes on Political Ideology

PMB has observed that exchanges of political ideology often play out like a contortion of the Hegelian thesis, antithesis, synthesis paradigm. A better way of putting it: political ideology is transmitted between opponents in the manner of a tennis match with no enforceable boundaries.

Take, for example, a political conservative who supports the right of corporations to offer unpaid internships:

A conservative in the first instance espouses an ideology that supports personal responsibility and industriousness, and holds that these (and hard work) are justly rewarded in an economy of unregulated or un-refereed actors (the serve is in).

A liberal's ideological retort is that unregulated commerce produces over-powerful conglomerates (corporations) that can leverage accumulated power and capital over and against individuals, producing conditions for exploitation (the return is in, but just on the line).

Our conservative volleys back with the assertion that such corporations are the ultimate manifestation of the fruits of individual responsibility, industriousness, and the conditions of unregulation that enable just reward for these pursuits (the volley is out of bounds, but the actors play on).

Our liberal returns with the assertion that, on the contrary, such corporations are the paradigm of unfettered greed and exploitation, grown under the untenable conditions of unregulation (the return is further out of bounds on the other side, but the actors play on).

Our conservative arrives at the ideological position that corporations and their rights and liberties must be supported at all costs against a liberal opposition that hates corporations (the return is up in the stands somewhere by the pressbox, but the actors miraculously play on).

Our liberal arrives at the ideological position that the rights of individuals must be protected at all costs from ruthless corporations, and from a conservative opposition that cares nothing for exploited individuals...

And the actors play on endlessly, smashing the ball carelessly and recklessly in the general direction of their opponent without any regard for the boundaries of the court itself.

What we end up with is a conservative whose underlying ideological principles of just market rewards for the hard work of industrious individuals has become subordinated to a crude and unthinking pro-business ideology, derived oppositionally from a boundless struggle with a liberal opponent. This conservative has undermined the foundational principles of his conservative identity by taking an ideological position against the right of an industrious individual to be compensated for labor in a free market.

And what of our liberal? By the time he gets through with the conservative, he's arguing for the very types of individualisms that constitute the core of his opponent's conservative thought.

This is how American politics can have swaths of Tea Party activists who hate elitist New-England liberals but love the Founding Fathers (a bunch of elitist New-England liberals). This is how we can have swaths of free-market capitalist investment bankers making arguments for government bailouts of failed private firms. This is how a constitutional right to bear arms can turn into a constitutional justification for a psychotic obsession with guns themselves.

A strange world, this.