Thursday - July 15, 2004
Our Vulnerability
A democratic republic is the best form of
government yet found by mankind. Its freedom promotes capitalism and prosperity
and makes for great wealth and power. But a democratic republic such as ours,
as well as any democratically-based society, has a vulnerability that can allow
us to be destroyed if we're not
careful.
What is the weakness of a
democracy? It is simply that we are free to be disunited, inconsistent, and
destroy ourselves. A clever enemy would take advantage of that tendency and
work to destroy us.
What are some
examples? Again, I will go back to my favorite topic, Athens.
Athens throughout the Peloponnesian War continued
to amaze everyone with its enduring power in the face of adversity and even
tremendous setbacks. They endured years of plague that wiped out perhaps a
quarter of their population, they endured constant destruction of their lands by
marauding enemies, but they were unconquerable. Time after time, they managed
to overcome the odds and claim victory after victory over their enemy. Athens
lasted a few decades longer than anyone expected them to last. Even after
losing almost their entire army and navy in the Sicilian campaign, they reformed
and held off the Spartans again and
again.
But after a few poor decisions
by a general or two, they lost command of the sea and unfettered access to the
Black Sea, their source of food and wealth. And their people began to be
desperate.
With their desperation they
struggled to find a way to win, but that desperation also created a climate for
power seekers to take advantage of the situation. Making wild promises of
bringing in the Persian Empire as an ally, a cabal got the people to vote in
emergency measures that were exploited to destroy the democracy and institute an
oligarchy, and through a reign of terror, and dictatorship of a few elites. It
was fear and desperation that caused the demos, the people, to fail to unite
behind a winning plan and to become vulnerable to traitors. Fear made them lose
intelligence and reason, and the demos became a mob that was
manipulated.
So how does this apply to
us? Terrorists cannot defeat us militarily or economically. They can't
directly defeat us at all. But if they manage to scare us, it is possible that
we might become disunited enough to descend into a self-made chaos.
We're starting to see some hints of
this. Men like Howard Dean are incredibly popular still. Dean's calls for an
end to our campaign against terrorism and Iraq stirred up a pacifist element,
and the socialists who failed to create the chaos needed to disunite us during
the cold war may finally succeed in overthrowing us. The Athenians were
convinced to repatriate the traitor Alcibiades with the promise that he would
bring Persian aid with him, but ended up voting in a power mad cabal to
overthrow the democracy. Likewise, we may, after the socialists failed to
overthrow us in the cold war, finally be vulnerable to their treachery. If the
terrorists are clever, and we have every reason to think that they are, they
will exploit this rift in our politics to their
advantage.
This is the weakness of a
democracy. We can be misled by demogogues and rabble rousers. We can succumb
to fear and lose the unity of principles that makes us so strong.
The demogogues are being very
effective now. We have a leader who is doing most of the right things in this
war, but he has so far been unable to overcome the demogogues. We need a leader
who can unite us and keep us committed to the war effort. Our current leader
has been waging the war well, but he hasn't been very effective yet in uniting
the people behind his actions. Let's hope he can learn to articulate the danger
to us in a way that will restore our
unity.
Because our unity is our only
defense against this vulnerability of democracies.
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