Winston Churchill, England’s great World War Two prime minister, once wryly remarked that “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” It was Churchill’s ironic way of acknowledging that democratic governments are messy, inefficient, rancorous, prone to mistakes, and dependent for their survival on finding compromises among competing interests. Sometimes problems are allowed to fester; minorities can be discriminated against; long term needs can be sacrificed to short term election pressures; money and power can have a corrupting influence. We have seen all these things and more in our democracy over the past 230 years, especially in recent decades.
However, democracy has one overriding virtue that all the other political systems lack. It is, at its best, “government of the people, by the people, and for the people,” in Abraham Lincoln’s immortal phrase; it is self-government. Only in a democracy do the citizens have the collective power to exercise control over the government – to choose their leaders, to constrain and influence their government’s actions, and, if necessary, to “throw the bums out” as the old saying goes. Indeed, the capacity to “control the controllers” lies at the very heart of a successful government, as the ancient Greek philosopher Plato stressed in his great dialogue on social justice, the Republic.
A modern democracy, at its best, is supported by an array of institutional safeguards – competitive free elections, fixed terms of office, a separation of powers, a bill of rights, the rule of law, an independent judiciary, a free press, and more. A democratic government is obligated to serve the “public interest,” or the “general welfare” (as our Constitution calls it), with everything from national defense to public health, a postal service, public education, and much more. And it must be responsive to public petitions for a “redress of grievances” – an obligation that dates back to the Magna Carta in 1215. A democracy can also be “fixed” – reformed and improved if something goes wrong with it. Or if somebody does it harm.
None of these things are true in a dictatorship, or an oligarchy. These could be characterized as government of the few, by the few, and for the few. The leaders typically use their power to exploit the citizenry for their own interests, or goals, and the legal system is a tool for controlling the citizenry, not an instrument of social justice and honest government. A leader’s primary motive is to stay in power, not to serve. These systems do not have a soul.
Does Democracy Have a Soul?
by Dr. Peter Corning
It has to do with how the citizens view themselves, and their society, and how they relate to their government – and vice versa. It is a shared state of mind.