‘Bush at Year-End’

The word “democracy” is frequently in the news these days. But that word is not so easily defined [“Bush at Year-End,” Editorial, December 20, 2005].

Historically, the term “democracy” has a checkered past going back to the Greek city-states. The Greeks defined democracy differently than we do now. One example: The citizens of Athens, the “demos,” consisted of a privileged class that excluded women, slaves, farmers, and those who worked by the sweat of their brow.

The Romans did not particularly care for “democracy” in its suggestion of direct participation by the people. They used the word “republic” to describe a method of having senators, who were not indifferent to the “vox populi,” elect consuls.

The term “democracy” languished for many centuries but was revived in the 1600s when questions concerning the nature and foundation of the state assumed renewed importance.

Thomas Hobbes, in “Leviathan” (1651), wrote that democracy in any form would eventually lead to anarchy. John Locke disagreed. In “Two Treatises on Government” (1689, 1690), Locke condemned hereditary power and advanced an idea that has attached itself to the word “democracy” to this day: the notion that “the beginning of politic society depends upon the consent of the individuals to join into and make one society.”

In the 18th century, Locke’s thoughts on what might be called a “democratic polity” were debated in Europe. Voltaire preferred an “enlightened monarchy.” Denis Diderot favored a “constitutional monarchy.”

When the discussion about democracy transferred from Europe to America, the word was not accorded the respect we have for it today. Our nation’s founders were divided over its meaning.

The word “democracy” does not appear in the Declaration of Independence or the federal Constitution. Thomas Jefferson, in his first inaugural address, said: “We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.” He did not say: “We are all democrats.”

Alexander Hamilton and John Adams used the term in a pejorative sense. The founders preferred a Roman conception of republicanism to the Greek “democracy.” (In America’s beginnings, citizens did not directly vote for president, vice president, or members of the Senate. It should also be remembered that blacks and women did not receive full suffrage rights when the Constitution was adopted.)

In the 20th century, despots such as Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, and Joseph Stalin used the word “democracy” to praise the tyrannies they headed.

Today, other dictators use the term to describe their regimes. But, for those of us in the developed world, the word “democracy” has taken on a more or less settled meaning. Its key aspect is the freely given consent of the governed to abide by the laws and policies of those agencies whose activities control the life of a community.

How that consent is given expression and by whom is usually defined by a constitution, which is subject to amendment. To ensure that those who have given consent have done so without duress and in a considered manner, freedom of thought and speech must be given the widest latitude.

President Bush believes that “democracy,” in the way we use that term, can move the Iraqi people to have happier and more productive lives. Maybe it can. But maybe people who have been conditioned to accept orders from authorities such as clerics have a different conception of democracy.

Maybe they believe, like America’s founding fathers and the citizens of ancient Athens, that it is within proper democratic bounds to restrict the rights of women and other groups. Only time will tell which definition of democracy will prevail.

MARTIN H. LEVINSON
Forest Hills, N.Y.

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