Democracy’s Dupes
October 27, 2017
IF THERE is one idea that Americans of all political persuasions hold in common it is that democracy is the greatest of all political systems. More than an idea, it’s an emotional state. Love of country is love of “We the People.” It doesn’t matter how many liars are elevated to power, it doesn’t matter that the democratic state routinely imposes restraints that surpass those of tyrannical kings and make the woes of the American colonists seem utterly petty, it doesn’t matter that the government bureaucracies relentlessly expand, confiscating wealth and brazenly defying the people on issues such as immigration, democracy, we continue to believe, is the foundation of freedom. It will not let us down in the end.
But it has let us down and, according to the Belgian writer and historian Christophe Buffin de Chosal, this is the end. It will never deserve our trust again. Buffin de Chosal has produced a powerful and provocative critique on the nature of democracy. The End of Democracy, originally published in 2014 and recently translated into English by Ryan P. Plummer in a new edition by Tumblar House, is unsparing in its rejection of the modern democratic system.
Democracy has failed us, he argues, not because we are decadent. We are decadent because of democracy. Democracy by its nature promotes “spectacular advances in immorality.” It is not government for the people and by the people. It is government for the powerful by the powerful. Democracy never was a movement of the people. We are democracy’s dupes. Its revolutions were always imposed from above. Offering the masses the illusion of participation, it prevents popular resistance to its absolutist dictates. Both the English parliamentary revolution and the French Revolution were the successful efforts of powerful minorities subjugating the monarchy to its demands. The people were a ruse. “Liberal democracy did not want liberty for all, but only the liberty of the wealthy,” Buffin de Chosal writes.
The reality is that democracy was invented for the purpose of bringing an oligarchy into power and keeping it there.
In his introduction to Buffin de Chosal’s work, historian Charles A. Coulombe embraces this thesis too:
Democracy has been a system in perpetual degradation. it has participated in the decline of the Western world, being both its cause and its fellow traveler. It is a factor of “decivilization,” and it leaves in its wake disappointed and politically immature peoples. Behind the screen of its rituals, it consolidates oligarchic totalitarian regimes which shall one day surprise — indeed this day has come — people who believed themselves free.
Democracy by its very nature leads to the all-encompassing intervention of the state. It controls education, the media (through the political interests supporting it), the issuance of money, the medicine we take and the food we eat. Our government drifts ever leftward because given the choice between freedom and security most voters will choose the security of government handouts. Though Buffin de Chosal is more focused on democracy in Europe, most of what he says applies to the United States too. He writes:
The people in a democracy are the object of all kinds of manipulations and deceptions. They were taken from the land by massive industrialization, instructed by compulsory education, and then informed by television. They believed this to be an effect of their liberation and social ascendancy. In order that they are oblivious to the chains which bind them, the people are filled to excess by a society of consumerism, are overwhelmed by advertising, and their will is eroded by hedonistic pleasures. They get over paying taxes by treating themselves to vacations. The ruling powers encourage them to do so, for inasmuch as they work and enjoy themselves, inasmuch as they pay taxes and consume, they are not involved in politics and they do their part to keep the system going.
Because they are individualistic, the democratic people are not organized. They are incapable of taking a stand. They sense themselves powerless in the face of the state, and indeed they are. This atomization is aggravated today by the mass immigration which the countries of Europe [and America], and which is desired by the states of the European Union. The sense of belonging and popular identity dissipates amidst the fragmentation into ethnic communities, ghettos and lawless areas, and even through interracial blending. Immigration inhibits national characteristics and renders society yet more passive and yet more able to be manipulated by the state.
Political parties, fundamentally, are not all that different from each other (none challenges the premises of the democratic state or central banking), pit segments of voters against each other and create a climate of distrust. Voters are more suspicious of each other than the system itself. Democracy empowers the unprincipled. Only those with no ideals and convictions can be counted on to work for the money powers upon which the parties depend. Candidates come and go, the money powers have no term limits. They remain intact, moving relentlessly toward their objectives.
The first quality of a candidate is not his ideals or his popularity, but the ability to betray ideals and lie to the voters… The goal of a political party is to conquer the state, to occupy it in the strategic sense of the word. It must be in control of the state’s machinery and people its administration not simply to transform society, but above all to gain maximum advantages for the party members.
Political campaigns and elections are not the means by which the people express their political will. They are rituals of mock participation. When one looks at the growing abstention rate in elections one sees that this participation does not even amass anything close to political majorities in many elections. The elected represent a minority seizing power from the majority. “Abstentionism lifts a corner of the veil. It is an important indicator” of the loss of confidence in democracy itself, Buffin de Chosal writes.
Ultimately the power of the parties is secondary to the power of those who control them.
Political power, in a democracy, thus has a tendency to grow weak and the money powers to grow stronger. The latter, however, will keep watch so that this is not seen, lest their be a popular movement rendering political power inaccessible to their advances, thereby harming their interests. It is in the vital interest of the two partners, the corrupter and the corrupted, to keep their agreements secret. What is more evident today is the extent of the media’s submission to the political power and the money powers. That is why the general public knows practically nothing of these dealings, and when they do accidentally come to light, the political power is able to easily denounce them as baseless calumnies.
Buffin de Chosal adamantly rejects the idea that a moral people can restrain the worst tendencies of democracy. In this point, he differs from American conservatives.
Christian democracy’s vision of a democracy subject to moral principles which would limit its powers and safeguard both its morals and its liberty is a pipe dream. No limits on the democratic state’s powers do or can exist, except those it freely chooses to impose on itself. Any limits beyond these would contradict the principle of popular sovereignty.
Some think Christianity has a vocation to imbue democracy with values. They are right in theory, but they will labor in vain, for democracy is a relativistic system and is hostile to any moral constraints it has not given itself.
What is more Christians do not today constitute a real threat to democracy; on the contrary they are its victims, something they are not yet ready to acknowledge. Christians working to stop abortion and euthanasia are still far from realizing that if there were a true representation of the people and a truly accountable and impartial executive authority, it is unlikely their fight would have ever been necessary.
It is the “triumph of some private interests, effectively served by democracy, which has permitted these spectacular advances in immorality.”
What is the alternative? Critics of democracy are not obliged to provide one, the author writes. He sees democracy headed for a collapse and those who survive will relearn “solidarity, authority and loyalty” and put these in democracy’s place.
I hope you will read this book if only so that you will withdraw, if you haven’t already, from the constantly disappointing electoral process, especially at the national level. At 162, crisply-worded pages, it can be read in a few hours. Even if you do not accept the author’s argument that democracy is the most dangerous and deceptive political system ever devised, you are likely to come away with your trust in the American civil religion undermined. And that would be a good thing.
— Comments —
Pan Dora writes:
Fortunately, the United States is not a democracy. It is a Constitutional republic.
A democracy would have given us Hillary Clinton as the current occupant of the White House. Whatever failings President Trump has, his presence there sure beats the alternative.
Laura writes:
The United States is founded on the democratic principles Buffin de Chosal discusses.
The checks and powers outlined in the Constitution have not restrained the federal leviathan which seizes the wealth and property of citizens. The Constitution can be interpreted to justify anything, even the right of pornographers to express themselves, even a police state. There is no provision in the Constitution for the income tax or the Federal Reserve.
The fact that Trump beats the alternative does not change the reality that he is a lying, depraved, unprincipled politician — a perfect representative of latter day democracy. I wouldn’t even want to have him over to my house for dinner, let alone trust him to protect this country.
Beverly writes:
Please list Trump’s lies.
Laura writes:
Remember how he promised he would be a non-interventionist and wouldn’t take us to war?
Within four months of his election he’s acting like Killary:
Thursday’s US missile attack on Syria must represent the quickest foreign policy U-turn in history. Less than a week after the White House gave Assad permission to stay on as president of his own country, President Trump decided that the US had to attack Syria and demand Assad’s ouster after a chemical attack earlier in the week. Trump blamed Assad for the attack, stated that “something’s going to happen” in retaliation, and less than two days later he launched a volley of 59 Tomahawk missiles (at a cost of $1.5 million each) onto a military airfield near where the chemical attack took place.
President Trump said it is in the “vital national security interest of the United States” to attack Syria over the use of poison gas. That is nonsense. Even if what Trump claims about the gas attack is true – and we’ve seen no evidence that it is – there is nothing about an isolated incident of inhuman cruelty thousands of miles from our borders that is in our “vital national security interest.” Even if Assad gassed his own people last week it hardly means he will launch chemical attacks on the United States even if he had the ability, which he does not.
Remember how he said that the World Trade Center Towers could not have been brought down by jet fuel fires? He has since promoted the lie that they were.
Robert Manning writes:
About your reply to Beverly:
Donald Trump was elected to be our Commander-in-chief, of our existing military, already engaged for years in a “war”. He didn’t “take us to war”.
You argue that the U.S. (not US) “had to attack”, meaning I guess, that our President said that “we had to attack”. You don’t think it was justified. The Catechism, in discussing Just War, says that the presence of evil should provoke a righteous anger, which if absent constitutes a sinful insensibility. “While one may desire, and employ, physical force for the sake of correction, restraint of evil and restoring justice, even if it entails injury and death, one may never desire it for its own sake.”
Do you actually believe that destroying an airfield from which airplanes departed, allegedly with the deadly chemicals that were allegedly used to mass murder civilians, was not justified? You obviously believe that the chemical attack was a hoax, and therefore not evil, and that our President knew that, and that therefore his is evil? Certainly you can acknowledge a massive disagreement, since neither you or I was there?
That’s one.
Are you admitting that you first accepted Donald Trump’s expertise on jet fuel fires and building demolition? But, now, after he learned otherwise from his experts, he is a liar? Can anyone in your world learn and have a change of mind or heart?
That’s two “lies”.
That’s your list of indictments; two events about which you and millions of reasonable people may disagree?
Is anyone and everyone who disagrees with you a dupe?
Laura writes:
Those who reasonably disagree with me are not dupes.
Those who deny the laws of physics are.
The reason I rejected Trump’s “change of mind or heart” was not that I was simply looking for affirmation and denouncing contrary opinions but that it contradicts the laws of physics. Do you think I don’t accept the “change of mind or heart” when I admitted I was wrong, wrong, wrong on the issue of 9/11 and changed my mind? I don’t recall Trump ever presenting evidence from experts on 9/11 and explaining why he changed his mind. In any event, I don’t believe for a minute that he has changed his mind about it. He knows far, far too much about skyscrapers to believe that two of the strongest tall buildings in the history of civil engineering, built to withstand just the sort of trauma they went when planes hit them, imploded — not long after they were hit — in large mushroom clouds of pulverized concrete, leaving molten steel that far exceeded the temperature of jet fuel in pools for many weeks.
People can certainly reasonably disagree for the time being on the issue of who planted explosives in those buildings and what kind of explosives they were. But it is far too late in the day for anyone to assert with scientific credibility that the buildings came down in the way they came down because they were hit by planes.
You write:
Donald Trump was elected to be our Commander-in-chief, of our existing military, already engaged for years in a “war”. He didn’t “take us to war”.
And he was highly critical of these ongoing wars when he was running for president.
As for the alleged chemical attack, his action was no different from that of Hillary in Iraq and Libya who could also justify her support for military intervention because of alleged atrocities. And, yes, I do not accept reports of Assad’s chemical attacks against civilians.
By the way, I did not mean to divert the discussion into the issue of 9/11. I think Trump has lied about other things too and that lying is way of life for him, as it is for most of our leaders in latter-day democracy. That is not to say that he does not also say truthful things or that everything he does is useless or that Hillary is not a much worse liar.
I will have to give a longer list of some of his lies.
Another whopper, of course, was his claim that he is Christian. Okay, lots of people who are not Christian say they are. But in his case, I believe he has no sincere intention to be Christian. That is a matter of opinion.
Laura adds:
You mention the Catechism and Just War doctrine.
Firstly, war is not justified when it will perpetrate more evil and civilian deaths than it was designed to correct.
Secondly, war is certainly not justified when that evil just doesn’t exist — as in the case of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Iran’s alleged ability and intention to bomb Israel out of existence, and Assad’s alleged attacks against his own civilians.
May I ask you a question?
Do you believe the mass killing of Palestinian civilians by Israel, which is undeniable, justifies a “Just War” response? If not, why not? How are those civilians different from the alleged victims in Syria?
You don’t need to answer if you prefer not to get into that. But on the issue of democracy, which is the real subject here, ordinary Americans, I believe, do not truly have a voice in how and when we go to war. We are presented with massive pro-war propaganda when the powerful want to go to war.
Nov 4, 2017
Mr. Manning writes:
I intended to discuss “democracy”. I was derailed by Beverly’s request.
I’ll say one thing about the “mass killing of Palestinian civilians by Israel”. If the killings aren’t justified, then it is evil. So, no, I prefer to not get into that. Thank you.
If Trump was highly critical of these ongoing wars when he was running for president, how did he take us into them? Again, you suggest that he has “taken us to war”.
About democracy. You use the term loosely. Sounds like you’re against voting, which is the essential nature of democracy.
Of the “Americans of all political persuasions”, there are socialist, communist, anarchist, fascist and even Nazis. Democracy isn’t a political system, it’s a general term that conjures the idea that within various systems, there is some voting going on. The United States is a constitutional republic. It’s a failed one, but that remains the operating scheme, at least on paper. De Tocqueville should have titled it otherwise. Democracy in America, was too short and snappy.
I agree with much of what you say. But, voting is not our problem. It’s modern liberalism and our general lack of virtue, knowledge and common sense. The Trivium should be an app on everyone’s cell phone.
We have established, corrective procedures. We don’t have the will or good sense to work them. Our government is populated at all levels by elected or appointed liars, thieves, hypocrites and frauds. It’s where the power is, so that’s where they gather. That, along with our weak and feckless and alien populations is turning most people cynical or insane.
I don’t however, think that Trump, by any stretch of the imagination, is close to being the worst of them. I’m all for the creative destruction of much of our failed government, its laws and regulations and repugnant judges. That’s what I hoped for and expected from him.
You are obviously a devout Catholic. To the majority of “Catholics”, you defend the highest ground, while the rest pay lip service and occasionally perform vaguely meaningful rituals.
I don’t imagine that any U.S. president meets your needs, certainly not even a JFK, who gave it up to get elected. That Trump says that he occasionally turns to Christian principles is not a bad thing if he adheres to them. If he doesn’t then he’s just another hypocrite, making his way through a political system that demands hypocrisy and lies.
Hell. He’s more honest as a president, than Francis is as a pope.
We have a people problem, a spiritual problem, a reality problem, not a system problem.
There’s no perfect model on this Earth, because there are no perfect people.
Laura writes:
According to Buffin de Chosal, part of that “system problem” is democracy. By democracy he means a system of representative government in which ordinary people are led to believe they have a meaningful say in national government. The enormous time and energy Americans devote to presidential elections is evidence that this assumption is operative here.
I didn’t say Trump was the worst. He can’t be anything other than a creature of the system. My point about his hawkish actions is that he had promised otherwise. I brought up his comments about his faith not to complain that he is not a devout Catholic, but simply to say he had misrepresented himself.
On the Palestinian issue, I recommend the work of Alison Weir, including her website, If America Knew, and her book, Against Our Better Judgment. As of September, 2,167 Palestinian children had been killed by Israeli forces since 2000, as opposed to 134 Israeli children killed by Arabs. There have been atrocities committed on both sides, but the Israelis’ aggression far exceeds that of the Arabs.
Perhaps you might read Buffin de Chosal and consider his argument in more depth.
