On Demagogracy

DEMOCRACY: n. “government by the people”

The Greeks gave us demokratia. It combines two Greek terms, demos (“common people”) and kratos (“rule”). In simple terms, “rule by the common people.” The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) cites its first appearance in a thirteenth-century translation of Aristotle’s Politics.

The OED offers as its first definition, “that form of government in which the sovereign power resides in the people as a whole, and is exercised either directly by them or by officers elected by them. In modern use often more vaguely denoting a social state in which all have equal rights, without hereditary or arbitrary difference of rank or privilege.”

Complications & Qualifications

But who are “the people”? Ancient Athens restricted voting to free, native-born men over age 18 who had completed their military training. In modern Switzerland, the people are men and women 18 or older. Though typically called direct democracies, they are, in fact, not. Athenians exercised direct democracy in voting on foreign policy, overseeing public officials, and even writing or revising some laws. Yet Athens also had a governing body that conducted most day-to-day governance. Switzerland provides for citizens to vote on many issues, but their governing structure combines direct and representative democracy (a parliament). Even many states in the United States, itself a representative democracy, allow citizens to vote on issues through initiatives and referendums, but these mechanisms do not replace an elected legislature.

Inspired by Greek and Roman political philosophy, as well as by the biblical understanding of the sinfulness of man, America’s founders devised a tripartite national governing structure with a framework of checks and balances to limit the power of any one branch. Constitutionally, the legislative branch makes laws, the executive branch enforces those laws, and the judicial branch decides cases under the national laws.

Confusions & Conflations

Not so long ago, that basic structure of power was well known to anyone who had taken high-school civics. However, recent news reports and social media posts indicate that American governance is unknown even to many of the most educated Americans. For example, when the Supreme Court issued the Dobbs decision in 2022, returning the matter of abortion law to state legislatures, outraged proponents of abortion shouted that the Supreme Court had done damage to democracy by not basing its decision on opinion polls, a perceived form of direct democracy. In fact, any time a judge, legislator, candidate, or private citizen expresses a view contrary to the platform of the Left or the ever-shifting doctrines of the woke, those “true believers” begin to decry an “attack on democracy.”

In Battle for the American Mind, Pete Hegseth explains how Progressives have conflated democracy with their own cause. He quotes from a 1916 editorial in The New Republic:

Democracy has been evolving from a protest into a purpose. It is becoming a philosophy of life, no longer protestant but in its own way catholic. To be a democrat today is  . . . to believe in a scale of human values, to have a morality and to think with certain assumptions.

Clarification

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary offers another definition of democracy: “the principles and policies of the Democratic party in the U.S.,” and requires its capitalization. Since abortion on demand is a major talking point of that party—as it is with the woke agenda—party loyalists tend to style any departure from that position, or any other part of their platform, as a threat to “democracy.” In both the legacy and social media, democracy must now be understood in the Merriam-Webster sense.

Perhaps when their cries of “attack on democracy!” appear, we should replace “democracy” with “the Democratic party,” to distinguish the party’s platform from “rule by the common people.” American democracy is not under attack, but the doctrines of the woke faction are. As, indeed, they should be.