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Written by Stephen Palmer
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Monday, 28 July 2008 00:00 |
Condoleezza Rice's (Mis)Understanding of Our Form of Government
I recently read a twenty-four page article in Foreign Affairs written by our Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, entitled "The New American Realism: Rethinking the National Interest."
Although I've long been accustomed to politicians purposely exploiting the word "democracy" to amass illegitimate power and deceive the People, I was still amazed and baffled that she is able to get away with such astounding quotes as the following (with my emphases added): "And in the broader Middle East, we recognize that freedom and democracy are the only ideas that can, over time, lead to just and lasting stability..."
Did I read that right? Democracies lead to just and lasting stability? Perhaps she has never read Federalist Paper #10, wherein James Madison, one of the most brilliant political thinkers in history, clearly explained that, “…democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths." Or maybe she has actually read the Federalist Papers but believes that we have somehow transcended 6,000 years of history.
It gets worse. She continues, blatantly disregarding our heritage and common knowledge, "...the United States has not been neutral about the importance of human rights or the superiority of democracy as a form of government, both in principle and in practice."
Are we living in the same country? Do we share the same heritage? The America that I live in and have studied was founded on the incontrovertible understanding that democracy is, in fact, one of the absolute worst forms of government!
Then, several pages in, I noticed her definition of democracy, which is, "...the right [of people] to choose those who will govern them and other basic freedoms."
Interesting. First of all, I could have sworn she was describing a republic. Secondly, notice how she places the most emphasis on our right to choose our leaders (by the way, is that even an unalienable right?), and then casually lumps everything else into "other basic freedoms." Hmmm... You mean like those nice little unalienable rights, like the right to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness? Our right to elect leaders is more important than all of those?
"Then, of course," Rice continues, "there is Iraq, which is perhaps the toughest test of the proposition that democracy can overcome deep divisions and differences." I'm certain that history shows that this proposition has long been tested and settled -- it cannot, it never has, and it never will. In fact, democracies are one of the best ways to exacerbate deep divisions and differences. It's called factionalization, something that the Founders wrote extensively and explicitly about, and their answer to it was republicanism, not democracy.
After reading the article, I went through it again to count the number of times she used the word "democracy" and variations on the word. I found 104. That's an average of 4.3 uses per page. There were an astonishing fourteen uses of the word on one page alone. Out of twenty-four pages, only four had no reference to democracy.
Now guess how many times she used the word "republic." One time. One use of the word "republic" to 104 uses of the word "democracy" in a twenty-four page article intended for power and idea elites.
Here's the point: "Democracy" and "republic" are not just words. They are specific and weighty concepts describing human knowledge amassed over 6,000 years of history. They actually mean important things--so important, in fact, that they mean the difference between tyranny and liberty. They mean the difference between you owning property and using it as you see fit, or the ability of the government to take your property from you by force, based on nothing but a vote of the majority. That's the real truth of democracy.
In reality there are only three possible reasons why a person in power would choose the word democracy to describe the American form of government: 1) they're legitimately unaware of what it means, 2) they're simply using it casually and colloquially because it's become so common to do so, or 3) they're consciously and deliberately trying to deceive people to achieve their ends -- at the expense of the freedom of the People.
I don't know which of these three categories Condoleezza Rice fits into, but I do know that exploiting the word "democracy" was one of the primary strategies of the intellectuals during the Progressive Era (1905-1913) that enabled them to pass the 16th and 17th Amendments and the Federal Reserve Act, the triple-play that has caused more damage to our nation than anything else. As historian Clarence B. Carson wrote, "By the late 19th Century, the idea was gaining ground that the United States was a democracy, or that it ought to be anyway. Reformers began to latch on to democracy...pushed for popular control over government to be expanded, and linked this to progress and progressivism."
Intellectuals convince the People that they (the People) should have more power, and to do that they need a more democratic form of government. What always ends up happening, however, is far less power in the People and far more with the government and the intellectuals. The "power to the People" play almost always results in more oppression to the People.
Words carry power. They persuade and convince. They transform. They mold people and nations. They communicate values and translate ideas into practical action. They change the course of history, either for better or for worse.
It's not pedantic to be particular and vigilant about our choice of words -- it's vital to sustain and preserve a free nation. The consequences of using the word "democracy" both deliberately and casually have arguably robbed us of more freedom than anything else in America.
I respect Condoleezza Rice and her obvious sincerity and devotion to freedom. Yet until we reclaim the accurate definitions of immensely important words and understand the critical concepts that these words describe, our nation will continue our cataclysmic plunge into bankruptcy, hypocrisy, and ultimately tyranny.
How can we create a sustainable foreign policy if we can't even accurately describe our own form of government? How can we preserve our heritage -- and therefore our freedom -- if we don't even know what our heritage is? How can we preserve a constitutional republic if we're focused on creating a democracy, or if we don't even know the difference between the two?
As Condoleezza concludes, "...if we remain confident in the power of our values, we can succeed..." Unfortunately, we can never remain confident in the power of our values nor use them as a force for good if they are systematically eroded and convoluted through misinformed word choices. |
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