Democracies are inherently unstable and, therefore, short-lived. That was true for the first “cradle of democracy,” Athens, in the fifth century B.C., and is demonstrably true now.
Madison noted in Federalist Articles 10, 14, 19, and 39, 240 years ago, reasons the United States was established as a republic; not a democracy. Socrates pointed out to the Athenians their democracy would not last very long. We know how they, in typical tolerant democrat fashion, responded to that, although he was right.
Nevertheless, his student, Plato, and in turn, his student, Aristotle, refined the concept and gave us the concept and structure of a Republic. The Greeks gave us vowels and taught us how to defend ourselves, how to govern ourselves, and how to think and laid the foundations for Western Civilization which has led the world, with some slow periods, providing innovation, advancement, and prosperity for its people for the last 2,500 years.
Democracies have been tried repeatedly and seem to work for small, homogenous societies, but not for larger societies with a diverse cultural background. Social homogeneity seems more critical to a stable democracy than society size; increased diversity undermines democracy as what Madison called Factions vie for dominance and control.
The longest form of government under one system was the Venetian Republic. Historically democracies and republics are rare, which made the U.S. Founding as a Republic an interesting experiment.
“Progressive” changes to the U.S. government and Constitution in the early 20th century whittled away many republican characteristics. After World War II, a brave new world embraced democracy wholesale; that expansion has now run its course. Democracies are being rolled back, undermined, and weakened – many by their own citizens (those Factions again), others by a general weakening of Western Civilization, and others by infiltration of Marxists and Fascists.
The first obligation of a civilization is to survive. In the last few decades, what is generally known as The West has abdicated that responsibility and Western Civilization is crumbling from its own neglect. In retrospect, Western Civilization reached its culmination roughly in the late 1980s and early 1990s with the re-unification of Europe and the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
For me, two cultural events define the emotions of the time. First, at Christmas,1989, one-and-a-half months after the opening of the Berlin Wall, Leonard Bernstein, a Jew, conducted an orchestra of multi-national musicians in Beethoven’s 9th Symphony and modified the words from an Ode to Joy to an Ode to Freedom. The mood was commemorative of the unity of man in freedom. Seven months later, for the World Cup in Rome, The Three Tenors concert in the Terme di Caracalla was an optimistic celebration of the ongoing decay of the Cold War and Soviet occupation of eastern Europe. I never hear the music from those concerts without reminiscing about the optimism of the time. The optimism turned to euphoria with the end of the Soviet Union, which soon turned to hubris which turned to denial and neglect.
Multiple threats from elsewhere were neglected. Policy makers were influenced by the idea that democracy had triumphed and would prevail everywhere forever. Wrong. Those threats were fundamental, effective, and dangerous. The West ignored them and was unprepared when they suddenly manifested themselves. It did not understand the nature of the threats, how they would be implemented, the effectiveness of their methods, or their scope. The West floundered, divided, and became its own worst enemy.
The shock of the 9/11 attacks with no strategic preparation for new threats led to a poorly-thought-out, emotional, over-concentration of attention on the Middle East. Other areas continued to be neglected, even with ample warning signs of problems in Latin America, southeast Asia, Africa, and particularly China. Was anyone paying attention to these areas? Apparently not. As a result, with little obvious concern, the U.S. sponsored China as a member of the World Trade Organization which China used, in accordance with its published plans and intentions, with little regard for WTO rules, to get rich, gain influence and challenge the U.S. for world dominance.
The neglect and concentration on the Middle East also led the West, and the U.S. in particular, to ignore the most insidious threat of all: the penetration and co-opting of our institutions by Marxists determined to destroy Western Civilization from within.
This infiltration has been persistent over several decades and shockingly effective throughout what are known as the Western democracies. Removal of required freshman courses in Western Civilization from many university curricula in the early 1990s, although to many students’ relief, was an obvious harbinger of this infiltration.
The left is using the inherent instability and weakness of democracies to cause them to destroy themselves, although it proclaims intent to “save democracy.” This is one of the most perverted uses of the language since the 1930s; Goebbels would be proud.
Western Civilization needs to be saved. Defeating the attempt by Fascists/Marxists to use the vulnerability of democracy to destroy it is the first and most critical step.