Nothing New Under The Sun

Many of us have for years championed the cause for democracy worldwide. Certainly we care for humanity, thus our interest in those who may live under the heel. Primarily however we have championed democracy as a means to our own interests. Thus, Sunday’s general election in Iraq with an estimated 62% turnout of the 19 million eligible voters is cause for great celebration. We gave up hard liquor and cigars recently but figured it was OK to open a bottle of Gentleman Jack given the implications of this development.

Voting in Iraq takes guts. There’s no way we’d get it done, stateside, if we knew that the odds were pretty high that if we were to show up at the polls we’d seen our last sunrise, leaving in pieces. But heck, it’s just another day to these brave folk. From the LA Times, "People in Baqubah, for a long time one of the most violent cities in Iraq, said the attacks would not keep them from voting. ‘Maybe, because of the election, acts of violence will increase, but I don’t think it will affect the people,’ said supermarket owner Najam Shemari. ‘As for myself, I will participate and vote .....as will my family.’"

We had highlighted this spirit years ago when confronted by those who dismissed the idea, who denied that democracy would ever gain traction in the Middle East. In fact, many who had supported the notion with us early on became discouraged (the early champion, Natan Sharansky being one of these), witnessing as they may have the chaotic birthing of this infant.

Our advantage was a singular one - our familiarity with relevant history. History we have learned is the great instructor; she is patient; she repeats her lessons, providing insight to those who trust her.

Let’s back up just a tad. After our revolution, after 1776 most members of the Confederation - states - built their own constitutions. These first experiments were found by many of the Founders to be not only imperfect, but fraught with corruption, repelling really to those who believed in what was then called "public virtue" - the willingness of the individual to sacrifice his private interests for the good of the community. They believed that a successful republic demanded an extraordinary moral character in its people; and, they didn’t see it. "We are not," said Charles Lee in 1777, "materials for such divine manufacture."

The war, Robert Livingston told Gouverneur Morris in 1779, had not produced the effect "expected from it upon the manners of the people." There was disappointment that the people, having been given a considerable amount of power by the new state constitutions (most written in 1776 and 1777) were not qualified to handle it; corruption, vice, licentiousness, uprisings - all seemed common, and everywhere. Benjamin Franklin noted that, "We have been guarding against one evil - the excess of power in the rulers but our present danger seems to be the defect of obedience in the subjects." Too much.

Thus, as in Iraq, early experiments with democracy in America were rough and messy. Many, John Adams among them, lost hope. Adams felt that only scorn of ease, contempt of danger, love of valor were the things that made a nation great and he saw none of these. He saw only a social sickness that would kill the new republic as it did its ancient cousins.

But Benjamin Rush admonished those who had lost faith. It was absurd he said for Americans to "cry out, after the experience of three of four years, that we are not proper materials for republican government. Remember, we assumed these forms of government in a hurry, before we were prepared for them." Finally, he concluded that, "it remains yet to effect a revolution in our principles, opinions, and manners so as to accommodate them to the forms of government we have adopted." "Let us have patience. Our republican forms of government will in time beget republican opinions and manners. All will end well."

And so it did because others too held on, enough of them so that in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 a few gifted individuals crafted the most perfect political document known to man. One who was not at the convention but who understood, who knew there was a way, was Thomas Paine. In Common Sense, Paine said almost exactly what we have maintained these past years - that people would naturally seek out a consensual from of government when living under corrupt monarchies, if only given the chance. And key - he also saw that consensual government was in the best and mutual interests of all countries.

Democracies (with the possible exception of two Greek city states) have never warred upon one another. The reason, as Paine explains, is that "the nature of their government does not admit of an interest distinct to that of the nation." Gordon Wood interprets, "A world of republican states would encourage a peace-loving diplomacy, one based on the natural concert of international commerce." Or, to place it in the 18th century, "Our plan is commerce," Paine told Americans in Common Sense, "and that, well attended to, will secure us the peace and friendship of all of Europe, because it is the interest of all Europe to have America’s free port."

Now overlay Paine’s template onto the 21st century. Curious is it not? And fuel for great optimism.


Robert Craven