POLITICS
Evan Thomas
A Bedrock Principle
Two new books point up the power of democracy.
In his second inaugural address President Bush delivered an impassioned paean to the virtues of liberty and democracy. He declared that all peoples everywhere long for the right to be free and to choose their own leaders. It was a terrific speech. If only it were true.
It is clear that many of the world's peoples are more worried about prosperity and security than freedom and liberty. Just look at China and Russia, where autocracy has been accepted so long as it brings economic reward. Africa and South America have long histories of centralized rule, and democracy has never taken root in the Middle East. Democracy seems to be solidly entrenched now in Europe, but it took Nazism and World War II to bring the message home.
The core concept of liberty and democracy—belief in individual rights and equality safeguarded by the rule of law—is really burned into the DNA of only the English-speaking countries: Great Britain and its former colonies. That is a narrow slice of humankind. The message is potent, in part because freedom can be a source of strength, but it's hardly a dominant ideology, much less the "end of history."
I thought of the fragility of what should be a bedrock principle for all peoples recently as I read two new books: "The Day Freedom Died" by Charles Lane and "Some of It Was Fun" by Nicholas Katzenbach. Lane, a Washington Post reporter who has covered the Supreme Court, has written a truly horrifying (and gripping) account of the collapse of Reconstruction in the South after the Civil War. His book is built around the massacre of 60 black men in Colfax, La., by a white mob on Easter Sunday 1873. The rule of law failed that day; the federal government was unable to bring the killers to justice, and the message went out to the Ku Klux Klan and more civilized folk that blacks could be bullied and murdered and denied their equal rights.
And so it went for much of the next century. Not until the U.S. Justice Department under Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy stood up to bullies like Alabama Gov. George Wallace did blacks come to enjoy equality under the law and freedom from oppression. Katzenbach was one of RFK's "band of brothers" who was sent into trying and sometimes dangerous situations in the South to end Jim Crow. There is a wonderful photograph on the cover of "Some of It Was Fun" of Katzenbach unhappily mopping his brow. He is standing in the sun, sweating not just from the summer heat but also from anxiety. It was June 1963 and the Kennedy Justice Department official was about to confront Wallace, who had showily positioned himself "in the schoolhouse door" to block the integration of the University of Alabama by several black students. Relying on the law and the Constitution, Katzenbach patiently waited for Wallace to have his little show—and then proceeded to make sure the first black students were enrolled. That night President John F. Kennedy went on national television to propose a Civil Right Act to sweep away legal segregation in the South. The principle of freedom and equality is as "old as the Scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution," President Kennedy said. But his own country needed reminding (and prodding by brave law enforcement officials like Katzenbach). And the rest of the world is only just beginning to appreciate that human dignity can be truly safeguarded only by a government of "laws and not men."
© 2008
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Member Comments
Posted By: alex08 @ 05/08/2008 9:01:05 AM
Comment: The author writes: "The core concept of liberty and democracy???belief in individual rights and equality safeguarded by the rule of law???is really burned into the DNA of only the English-speaking countries: Great Britain and its former colonies." It seems to me too optimistic. If you avoid words like democracy and freedom and just specify things like 1. Affordable food and lodging; 2. Possibility of reasonable income; 3. Security including protection by law from criminals; 4. Minimal "everyday freedom" of partying and entertainment and having small business; 5. Political freedoms to discuss and elect government; and so on, and poll groups of different income - you will see that "immediate necessities" come first. Need for more general freedoms that are real democracy comes when these primary needs are satisfied. So different social groups understand democracy differently and have different attitudes to it. Plus you need to take into account that peoples of different ethnicities and religions also understand the very concept of Freedom differently. So, any general declaration that ALL PEOPLE want liberty and democracy is wishful thinking and leads to very wrong decisions. Iraq war is a good illustration.
Posted By: Lee Holmes @ 05/06/2008 6:23:34 PM
Comment: Evan Thomas was unable to grasp a fact crucial to the conversation of democracy. It was the lack of this as utilized by the Radical Republicans that brought forth the era of the Reconstruction Klan to begin with. Until Ex Parte Garland in 1869,ex-Confederates,even those who had pledged loyalty to the Union were forbidden the vote,often by force.''How I cannot vote yet the n....r can is not right''said one Pulaski Tennessee former rebel,the coicidental birthplace of the Klan. The Radicals failed to heed Lincolns words to ''Let 'em up easy'', which would have gone far in nullifying the formation of the Klan to begin with,and those still seen as traitors,in lands overrun with the scalawag,the carpetbagger,the freedman,[whose every existance puzzled even unionists who were still grasping the idea],and the federalized militias which acted as little more than freebooters,lashed out in rage,not merely directing their ire at the newly freed negro,but launching three decades of internecine war between white southerners and white unionists that would culminate in the famous Hatfield-McCoy feud of the 1870s-1890s.[legendarily began over the theft of a prize hog,its roots were vested in the same as these other wars. The Hatfields were ex-confederates,and the McCoys,unionists]. The Peacock-Lee War in Texas. The Lumbly War in North Carolina also involving native-Americans. The James-Youngers in Missouri. The Oppam War in Arkansas,and the Brownlow War in Tennessee,were replete with both sides engaging in wanton terrorism,murder and even ethnic cleansing that only the arrival of federal troops would later quell. Thus we find that from this period,all the way to the 1950s Little Rock,''democracy'',even in America,had to be ''shoved down throats''including our own.
Posted By: Thevail @ 05/06/2008 3:38:48 PM
Comment: Democracy is good...for us. It is not necessarily good for everyone. And it is a lot of elitist hot air to ASSUME that everyone everywhere wants to be just like the United States. Many, Many nations don't want to. AND THAT IS THEIR RIGHT.
The idea of democracy is out there. It's had a 200 year airing to the public of the world. If it is indeed what people want, then THEY will fight for it. America fighting to "give" (read that as "shove down their throats") democracy to other countries would be the same as England waging a war on us to "help us" achieve socialism.
This is the root elitism of the American people, to think that somehow, the least educated of us is infinitely smarter about what will work in a foreign country and for its people than the smartest people in their own country.
Just stop it.