THE MOST compelling argument monarchists have against democracy as a political system is right before our eyes: modern-day America. Is there any doubt that if Tocqueville were reborn and journeyed through America today he would conclude that democracy is man’s worst political innovation, that it produces stupidity, moral cowardice, soft slavery, and a ruling elite that diffuses and cloaks its rule with meritocracy? All of Tocqueville’s worst prophecies have come true. Our democracy is tyrannical.

At VFR, readers give bleak assessments of this great experiment in equality and representative government. Matthew H. writes: 

More and more the State and the majority of the centers of power and influence seem to be controlled by people who somehow combine the topsy-turvy nuttiness of an old Batman TV show villain with the clinical efficiency of the SS. We are beset by hosts of smutty, totalitarian buffoons.

We talk amongst ourselves, “Isn’t it awful…. ” But we are on the outside, awaiting the next enormity to be flung out at us. All our commentaries and chronicles seem to drown in the pandemonium. There are lots of us out here but we are disunited with no real institutional foundation whatsoever. America has indeed become what leftists and foolish conservatives have so long said it was, a “proposition nation.” It is a proposition nation in the sense that it no longer exists as anything but an idea. Its concrete manifestation as a proud nation and culture is finished. America, the nation, is … dead.

And Steve W. writes:

I think any objective observer of contemporary history and politics would conclude that the United States of America–the nation represented by the Founding Fathers and the pioneers and the farmers and the inventors and the industrialists and the sturdy men and women who raised families, maintained their communities, prospered, and prevailed in two world wars–no longer exists and, more to the point, will never exist again. That nation has been wiped out in the past 50 years by demographic and ideological and commercial forces that cannot be undone.

Socialism, multiculturalism, hedonism, consumerism, et al., are running roughshod over their opponents. This nation never again will be 90 percent white European stock. It will never abolish the welfare state. It will never roll back the power and intrusiveness of government. It will never restore modesty and decency and civility to the public square. Our culture will become only more stupid and cheap and vulgar. (The movie Idiocracy is positively prophetic on this point.)

Sure, there still is fighting to be done on the margins (e.g., amnesty, Obamacare, taxes), but the traditionalist side is losing and will continue to lose. We all know it. We all are struggling with this realization. We all are trying to decide what this means for how we should live our lives. I think we are in the midst of an existential crisis of civilizational proportions. I don’t have any answers. Frankly, I don’t think there are any. The nation that we know and love is as doomed as the Titanic. Believing otherwise won’t make it any less so.

Please understand: I am not saying that, on balance, we do not lead good lives in this country. We do. I am not saying that there is no value in “fighting the good fight.” There is. And I am not saying that, every once in a while, the traditionalist side might win an important battle. It will. But “the forces of darkness,” as Matthew puts it, have won the war. I think the election of Barack Obama as president proves this point, conclusively. What we are witnessing now is simply the mopping up operation of contemporary liberalism (which infects Democrats and Republicans alike). Will that liberalism “destroy the [nation] in order to save it”? Surely. But destroy it, it will.

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