This Thing Called Democracy

One thing I have noticed so far about Obama is that he doesn’t seem to use the word “democracy” a lot. That’s okay with me. We’ve used it a bit too much lately. GWBush went into Iraq ostensibly to teach the Iraqi to be good democrats. His father led us into Kuwait to defend democracy there. We spent eight futile years promoting democracy in Vietnam.
I could go on and on. Our insistence on defending and promoting democracy denotes a certain cultural blindness on our part—a chauvinistic insistence by us that our way is not only best, it is the only way. We’re starting to lose wars to people who don’t agree.
Specifically they are not necessarily enamored with democratic governance. This does not make them bad, benighted or tyrannical. It mainly means that, like the Russians, the Chinese, the Arabs, they were not raised in the Anglo-Saxon tradition. Democracy is uniquely an Anglo-Saxon construct.
It can be argued truthfully that others could master it if they chose to—but they don’t necessarily have to in order to be rich, happy and fulfilled. We, in the United States, Canada, Great Britain and down under have had about seven hundred years to practice and perfect it—to our own ends. It is not shocking that many countries newly introduced to it fail to do well with it.
Seven centuries is a long time to practice a piece in order to play it well. One reason we Americans feel others should just be able to pick it up and play it is that we are not aware of how long it took us to figure it out. It might be useful to take a few days to learn that.
(After all, we are assured that the G-20 has spoken and all will soon be well on the economic front. So while we watch and see how that plays out, let’s take a moment to learn something that could save the lives of a few of our children.)
We’ve all been told that democracy began in England at Runnymede on AD1215. A group of annoyed English barons got together and forced King John (the bad guy in animated versions of “Robin Hood”) to admit to several limitations on his power. Barely did he get out of sword range, when King John repudiated several clauses of the Magna Carta—or Great Charter.
Even the Pope expressed horror that mere mortals might presume to limit the authority of their God-given monarch. The one thing it did create was a Great Council that was supposed to advise the king. It had no power and no effect.
After a series of bloody disagreements between crown and barons, a chap named Simon de Montfort established an actual elective Parliament in 1264. This was actually a real first. Supposedly no new taxes could be levied without the approval of this body. By the 1600s this clause would have real teeth. It would give rise to colonial “no tax without representation” cries in revolutionary America.
In 1295 “the commons” were added to the English Parliament. That meant ordinary citizens could possibly have a say in taxation and other royal laws. For centuries this was all honored primarily in the breach. It certainly did not lead to anything we would recognize as democracy.
Merely because it existed, it didn’t guarantee future democracy. The French created one in 1307. Absolute monarchs crushed it into insignificance. When a meeting of the Estates General was called in 1789, the doors had been rusted shut since the last session—a full century before.
Many other nations—Scotland, Poland, Spain, Russia, Bangladesh, and so forth—established advising councils, but they were suppressed, never contained commoners or just withered away over the centuries. England provided a unique set of circumstances for Parliament to grow.
Here, almost alone, the early Parliament could grow over the centuries to become an actual governing body that ruled. From it have sprung Parliaments and Congresses all over the planet. And ONLY from this one.
The modern French, Italian and Russian ones simply do not work as well. The reasons why one does and the others don’t are historic and profound. Over the next few days we’ll try to understand why one finally became a government of the PEOPLE, by the PEOPLE and for the PEOPLE.