How democracies perish
Jean-Francois Revel was a Frenchman who some twenty-five years ago wrote a book called How Democracies Perish. And although we’re a republic rather than a democracy, I think his words are important to read, especially right about now:
Exaggerated self-criticism would be a harmless luxury of civilization if there were no enemy at the gate condemning democracy’s very existence. But it becomes dangerous when it portrays its mortal enemy as always being in the right. Extravagant criticism is a good propaganda device in internal politics. But if it is repeated often enough, it is finally believed. And where will the citizens of democratic societies find reasons to resist the enemy outside if they are persuaded from childhood that their civilization is merely an accumulation of failures and a monstrous imposture?…
But democracy can defend itself only very feebly; its internal enemy has an easy time of it because he exploits the right to disagree that is inherent in democracy. His aim of destroying democracy itself, of actively seeking an absolute monopoly of power, is shrewdly hidden behind the citizen’s right to oppose and criticize the system. Paradoxically, democracy offers those seeking to abolish it a unique opportunity to work against it legally. They can even receive almost open support from the external enemy without its being seen as a truly serious violation of the social contract. The frontier is vague, the transition easy between the status of a loyal opponent wielding a privilege built into democratic institutions and that of an adversary subverting those institutions. To totalitarianism, an opponent is by definition subversive; democracy treats subversives as mere opponents for fear of betraying it principles.
At Wiki, Revel is described as having been a philosopher of freedom in the tradition of Raymond Aron (you may remember Aron as the French writer and anti-Left intellectual about whom Roger Kimball wrote so eloquently):
A socialist until the end of the 1960’s, (he ran as a socialist candidate in parliamentary elections in 1967 but lost), [Revel] was known during the Cold War as a champion of the western version of values such as liberty and democracy at a time when the majority of European intellectuals praised Communism or Maoism.
We need such champions today. And we need to heed Revel’s insights about the special vulnerabilities inherent in democracies.
Very interesting. And very appropriate for our time.
Then again, very appopriate for any time of my 46 years . . .
I haven’t read this one, though I read Revel’s Anti-Americanism, which explores related themes. He has always seemed remarkably sensible to me.
If that weakness is inherent to, and inseparable from a self-criticising culture, then the only counterbalance must be in the integrity and good sense of the citizenry. Come to think of it, if we haven’t got integrity and good sense in the citizenry, there’s not much we’re preserving anyway.
Echoes of the USSR
President Obama’s penchant for czars finds another Soviet-style expression.
See Andrew Klavan’s The Art of Corruption: The National Endowment for the Arts violates its founding principle on the City Journal website.
The president is following the precedent established by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
From the Literary Dictionary: socialist realism:
socialist realism, a slogan adopted by the Soviet cultural authorities in 1934 to summarize the requirements of Stalinist dogma in literature: the established techniques of 19thâ€century realism were to be used to represent the struggle for socialism in a positive, optimistic light, while the allegedly ‘decadent’ techniques of modernism were to be avoided as bourgeois deviations.
From the Art Encyclopedia: Socialist Realism:
In the summer of 1934, at the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers, Socialist Realism was proclaimed the approved method for Soviet artists in all media. Andrey Zhdanov, who gave the keynote address at the Congress, was Stalin’s mouthpiece on cultural policy until his death in 1948. In the words of his leader, the artist was to be ‘an engineer of the human soul’. The aim of the new creative method was ‘to depict reality in its revolutionary development’; no further guidelines concerning style or subject-matter were laid down. Accordingly, the idea of what constituted Socialist Realism evolved negatively out of a series of cultural purges orchestrated by Zhdanov in the pages of Pravda, the party newspaper, and enforced at local level by the union branches.
avi,
I would add to integrity and common sense an emotional attachment to the country that begins in the family. Have our mobility and ever smaller nuclear family units along with age-group segregation and taken-for-granted wealth hindered the formation of emotional bonds to anything as large as an imperfect country?
A revel…
after him there was a process to fixing a state, and doing so in such a way that it cant go back. latvia, czech, and poland may not be directly controlled by the other country, but inside their states never went back to their roots. the reason is the purges and war removed at least 1/3 of the population, and replaced them with others.
in the US the process took a lot longer. as abortion was eliminating the old people with family connections and so forth, others were let in the borders so that the numbers didnt show much in the demographics.
once this is accomplished, the state can never go back, because the fabric and the families and structure connected to the past have been severed.
the battle of left and right is seldom shown as a battle between the disconnected and disaffected, against those who are grounded. the prior have no way to be connected. socialist realism in our art in tiny bits constantly over the past 40 years with the past 10 years showing nothing but rewrites of the old classics and breaking them (especially childrens stories).
its a process… one would think not, that it would be too big to pull off. one would think a diamond couldnt be cut with a tap in the right place either.
and this process is out in the open. you can read about it. someone like me can show you the people doing it. and just as revel said, without the social cue to discern (not relitivate), and the social ability to stigmatize such (replaced with pc), one has no way to stop them.
unless something happens like in indonesia. or there are other players. or the rest of the world moved on beyond that.
the game they are playing is not the same as it was before or in smaller less powerful countries. if things dont go good here, there are a huge number of other states and other negative entities of weight that are just waiting for a chance.
the other side does not want to be friends they want to be owners.
note that it took feminism to do most of the work. since the keystone was family. regardless of what argument anyone can make, it was feminism that created the destruction of the family in favor of being liberated. that was the trade off… they get liberated, society changes, they become slaves of the state as replacement to mates, we all become slaves to that state as there is no other helpmate to appeal to and no other telling them it can relieve all their defining responsibilities.
“They can even receive almost open support from the external enemy without its being seen as a truly serious violation of the social contract.”
Another country can openly work to colonize you. Put almost 50 Consulates in your country- which I bet is a world record- Their “Dual citizen” who once worked for their government now works for a major party- the supposed conservative one- can openly state he wants citizens of that country- who live in yours- to think of the homeland first for 7 generations. Their citizens can march in your streets by the tens of thousands with foreign flags and we are told not to offend them by the moderates- after all soon their numbers will be so great we have to welcome them or they will turn on us— Truly we have lost our ability to recognize a threat!
Hello Neo,
Thanks for your suggestion about Jean-Francois Revel’s book. I’d like to also suggest his “The Totalitarian Temptation”, which was originally published (French edition) in 1976, and subsequently in English. To quote the blurb on the back of the Penguin paperback edition, “Seduced by Stalinist or Leninist or Maoist ideology, many Western intellectuals see Communist nations as progressive societies; this is “the totalitarian temptation.”
Keep up the good blog!
Now they plan on reducing the number of agents on the southern border:
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/54514
Revel was, to me, an absolute revelation.
I read, as young adult, the `Totalitarian Temptation’, published in 1974.
My own thoughts, at the time as a wavering leftist, were almost completely in sync with Revel’s.
I also read `Ni Marx Ni Jesus’, his 1970 book about `revolutionary America’, and while I think that Revel was too enamoured with the counterculture of that time, it was a good book too.
Also in 1991, he wrote `The Flight from Truth’, which in French was published as (broadly) `Useless Knowledge.’
All titles worth reading…
Michael in Penn says `Totalitarian’ published in 76 – I said ’74.
however, since that book mentioned the post-Franco period in Spain, I think Michael is correct…
expat, an intriguing question. I will likely post something on this in the next few days. I will have opportunity to contemplate it while clearing out my father-in-law’s attic – an excellent setting for such musings.
“To totalitarianism, an opponent is by definition subversive; democracy treats subversives as mere opponents for fear of betraying its principles.”
It is a sad but true reality, that the beauty of our noble system, namely the first amendment, is our achilles heal, and will ultimately spell our doom.
If John Adams and the Federalists, who were so aware of the fragility of the young republic could see the state of what passes for political discourse today and the grip the enemy has on the country they would be spinning. Even Jefferson could probably be persuaded as to some form of limitation of “false, scandalous, or malicious writing.” (see Sedition Act of 1798)
Neo, you said, “we need such champions today”. -True.
With the POTUS falsely, scandalously, and maliciously in in collaboration with any, and all third rate anti-US thugs and dictators we need such champions.
Neo, you said, “we need such champions today”. -True.
yeah… but with everyone being an intellectual and reletivist with reasonable answers to calm everyone. such a person is not possible.
he would get attacked for trying to teach the history, the methods, the ideologies quirks, and such. marginalized for basically saying much of the same stuff as revel, but new rather than old. though even if he quotes all the old ones, and all the others, he is still going to be marginallized and ignored in favor of others confidence in their own reasoning to a personal reality.
while the times need such men, the times and people that need them are too busy pretending to be them and to get social cache, etc. to ever allow such to have any weight.
i know this for a fact!!!
🙂
to sum the point..
how can a man today serve such a purpose, if they wont even listen to him quote those from the past?
revel above is not saying anything more than what i and a few others ahve said.
we have been conned and manuipuated by outside forces, specifically in majority the soviets.
however, revel doesnt name them… so there is no way to say, aha! and then peg him for some conspiracy.
and because of history we cant talk withotu naming or insinuating the ones that accomplished it.
so any attempt for someone to rewrite what revel said and insert the actual players in current time is met with derision, tin hatter, and so on.
revel would have been seen through pc eyes as a kook.
“To totalitarianism, an opponent is by definition subversive; democracy treats subversives as mere opponents for fear of betraying its principles.”
to the communists/socialists/progressives, capitalism by definition is subversive. democracy treates communists/socialists/progress as just one more opinion for fear of betraying its principles.
and as soon as you try to explain how it worked before… to try to transfer the same knowlege that revel was saying in the abstract, and update it (or not) is not to be heard.
this force is so powerful, the desire to be reasonable so strong in a republic and democracy, that the method to accomplish this is the army of the reasonable!!!
how could someone like revel inform us if someone like huxley is always making us reasonable and refusing to accept any coordinated enemy exists, acts, or has an effect if it does.
i listed out 20 or 30 items that are very bad that obama did that any less populus president would not get away with one. nope, he is naive, which is the reasoanble answer in a democracy.
McCarthy was demonized becuase he was unreasonable… but he was right! that dont matter, since he was unreasonable.
when i say obama is copying all the prior playbooks, and taking the best from all following darwinistic soviet style, its unreasonable.
so for revel to talk today and be heard is an impossiblity, because he is going to try to say something unreasonable within the framwork of a democracy.
no birth cert (rule of law compliance)
breaking rule of law for auto (breaking the foundation of a republic)
nationalization of industry and economy (somehow when hitler did it, lenin and stalin did it, and when mao did it, all bad… but in our republic its good. how?)
centralized state school more devoted to indoctrination of future ideology (need i really explain?)
alienating our coalition of free states and allies
engratiating our leaders to communists, and revolutionaries.
and on it goes. we can EASILY list out more things he has done in the past 6 months
only 3.5 years more to go!
but how cuold one be like revel. its not PC to be unreasonable. its not PC to take those sides on the argument. its not PC to say mean things even if they are the truth.
after all, what is PC?
it started with the feminists…
and its basically state mediated morals..
to us its called Pollitically Correct
to the leaders its called Party Control
another one of those dual things where you can speak honestly and sound like your saying something differnt.
but of course that is an unreasonable angle, and any one taking it will nto be heard, nor their evidence, etc.
in fact, they will ot be read.
so revel could write all he wanted today.
but he would probably be said to be too long
he would be said to be saying unreasonable things
he would not be read out of hand since he is not following the PC rules of conduct.
Artfldgr, you seem to be a smart man, but you are behind.
We had hundreds of thousands of us in DC just a couple of weeks ago saying these things. Who cares about being PC now? You seem to have no idea what 9-12 meant or what’s happening at this moment in America.
You see the signs the appointed oracles want you to see, and you give up. You think we have already lost, but the fulcrum has been shoved in, we have found a place to stand and the world is about to be moved.
If you aren’t part of it, it’s nearly impossible to see what the Tea Party movement is doing now. But you can see what’s happening to ACORN, Van Jones, and others. You can go to PJTV, to HotAir, Big Government, Smart Girl Nation, and to other emerging news outlets and sense the ground shifting. They are the visible shakings of a deep and powerful phenomenon.
You seem to be intelligent, well-read, and a fellow traveler in philosophy, but you’ve already accepted defeat. Wake up! The fife and drum beckon. The revolution is just about to begin.
Tom,
all that is great news… cant argue against any of it in detail. Its just that i have seen this transformation go only in one direction all my life, and I know the back histories and some of what has been tried, some of what has been discussed in countries we in the west commonly know very little about.
You seem to be intelligent, well-read, and a fellow traveler in philosophy, but you’ve already accepted defeat. Wake up! The fife and drum beckon. The revolution is just about to begin.
yeah thats all well and good till it starts. too much first family experience on that front to want it in any form. it facilitates things, not stops them.
we shall see how it goes. putin puts himself back in office 2012. right now the oligarchs there are buying up american companies and properties.
Graph of the Day for September 25, 2009
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/09/graph_of_the_day_for_september_8.html
“Those who do not live in Fantasyland understand that the only options are:
To greatly increase taxes on middle- and lower-income groups (a political nonstarter).
To ‘fund’ all of the new spending by selling bonds to the private market at much higher interest rates (thus sucking out private capital and increasing the cost of homeownership, which will lead to slower growth and higher unemployment).
To have the central bank (the Fed) buy the new debt (leading to higher rates of inflation, making everyone poorer).
Or for the government to act responsibly and reduce spending.”
Richard Rahn, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and Chairman of the Institute for Global Economic Growth. From the Copenhagen Institute.
Congress in Fantasyland
http://www.coin.dk/default.asp?aid=1620
or this laffer graph of how they have been printing money
tinyurl.com/ybny9zy
you let me know how 2 million people are going to fix that one…
I dug out my copy (1st US Ed.) a few weeks ago. Although the enemy list has changed (some), his points remain just as valid. From the back jacket:
– Democratic civilization is the first in history to blame itself because another power is working to destroy it
– Not only do democracies today award themselves sins they have not committed, they have formed the habit of judging themselves as defendants who are automatically guilty
– We have become so accustomed to surrender that it is now the norm
Artfldgr,
Sorry I’m late to return. When you say “yeah thats all well and good till it starts. too much first family experience on that front to want it in any form” I should note that I’m talking about a PEACEFUL revolution.
Yeah, if you want to see a scary graph, check out the GAO’s 2008 citizen’s guide — before 2040 all US government revenue combined will go to pay for only four things: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest on the national debt. Unless we change our wicked ways, of course. That estimate was before the bailout and before Obama ramped up spending.