Sometimes our assumptions are so ingrained that we hardly notice they're assumptions. They can seem obvious. So it is with the widespread conviction that freedom and democracy are natural parts of the same whole, or that repression and democracy are at odds.
Events around the world are challenging such notions, and the issue is coming to the United States in the 2024 presidential election. It's hardly inconceivable that the electorate will bring back leadership that will undermine freedoms. And that's no paradox if you stop to think about what we're talking about when we talk about "democracy."
The word, which comes from ancient Greek, has been around since before Socrates. And yet, it would be reasonable to say that there were no real democracies until a century ago, when women first won the right to vote in Britain, the United States and a few other places.
Of course, there are many kinds of "democracies." Some of them don't look like democracies to Western eyes at all. But you should know that it was not just mindless propaganda when they referred to East Germany, without any irony, as the "German Democratic Republic."
It was based on Marxist-Leninist principles, which mattered to many. These held that capitalist systems benefit only the bourgeoisie, while the majority of people, the working class, are so enslaved to their jobs that they are easily manipulated and have no real choices. That the "system is rigged," which perhaps will sound familiar. It may not suggest much respect for the fortitude of the common man, but is it nonsense?
When they were still wrestling with ideas as opposed to robbing people blind, the communists believed the communist system—a "proletarian democracy"—served the broad majority of working people. It didn't quite work out that way because it failed to yield prosperity, but that's not a matter of democracy.
The word "democracy" continues to be twisted in all directions, as we see in the case study known as Israel under the Putinesque incarnation of Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Netanyahu government wants to install an authoritarian-style system in which the executive branch as almost unlimited power. Under a series of proposals currently delayed because of massive protests, the government would directly appoint all the judges, seriously defang judicial oversight, also grant itself "override" powers, and drastically weaken the gatekeepers. Serious mojo for the government; not much left for the people.
They argue that this is "democracy," because the ruling coalition won an election last November. The election was basically a tie, Netanyahu hid his intentions, and the plan is unpopular—but let's put all this aside, because the very possibility that the people might choose this is worth examining. Netanyahu's democracy is majority rule and little else.
The opposition and protesters demand these plans be cancelled and that Israel enact a constitution, and they have united around a single word. That word is chanted by little girls carried on the shoulders of fathers at the weekly mass rallies against the plans. Can you guess what that word is? In Hebrew it is pronounced "democratia."
Their version of democracy involves fine things like checks and balances, minority protections, human and civil rights and lots of basic freedoms. In this version, a majority cannot be permitted to oppress the minority even if that is its desire. There is an accepted term in the world for this version of democracy, and that is liberal democracy.
And that is the version of democracy that has been implemented in the United States—pretty much from the beginning, if you ignore the disenfranchisement of women and African-descended slaves (which, yes, is hard to do).
Many Americans may be confused about the fact that theirs is a liberal democracy because the Latin-origin word "liberal" has itself been bent out of shape in the U.S. Somehow it has come to mean leftist. That, is about as rare a definition of the word as the use of the Imperial system of measurement. And like the use of inches and ounces, it is basically just plain wrong. It becomes increasingly absurd once you notice that today's far left in the U.S., at least when it comes to free speech, is about as liberal as Mussolini.
Liberalism stands for freedoms, just as it sounds. Britain's John Locke, one of the fathers of liberal thought, argued that individuals possess natural rights, including the rights to life, liberty, and property, and that even when not granted by governments they are inherent to human beings. He called for a "social contract" between the government and the people, to ensure the respect for and promotion of those rights.
The U.S. "framers" added the "pursuit of happiness" to the list of natural rights, and ours is not to quibble.
The assumption that people desire these things is engrained in the American psyche and reflected in America's behavior. Even the so-called Bush Doctrine of the 2000s, while aimed at foreign policy goals, espoused democracy and freedom and seemed to assume, with ill-advised indifference to cultural realities in various places, that this would yield stability as well as happiness.
The failure of that assumption soon became evident. You can see the results in Afghanistan and Iraq; in the deep freeze that replaced the Arab Spring; in Hungary, Poland, Turkey, Brazil, and more—all places where democratically elected authoritarians hold sway.
It could happen in France and elsewhere in Europe too. Israel is teetering on the brink. And that brings us to the United States.
You could say the people didn't quite know who they were voting for in 2016, but now we know. About half the voters in 2020 still backed Donald Trump, and next year they might do so again.
There is no way Trump can be seen as a liberal democrat. He clearly projects no fidelity to Locke's theories. He will not only happily take away abortion and other freedoms, but he also cares nothing about any social contract. Certainly not one that provides citizens with a baseline of health care and protection from gun massacres. If you ignore his efforts to overturn the 2020 election (as well as the strange outcomes of the Electoral College), you might say Trump's democracy is, just like Netanyahu's, about no more than majority—or dishonest minority—rule.
That makes Trump sound the same as Viktor Orban of Hungary, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey.
But what about all the people who vote for these unliberal democrats? What about the 40 percent of French voters who backed the decidedly illiberal Marine Le Pen in last year's presidential election?
A few percentage points to this side or that may decide elections, but cannot obscure the obvious truth: liberalism, hugely popular among educated elites, is at best a nice-to-have for the masses. I've covered elections from Romania to Ramallah and have observed this everywhere, with the possible exception of the contented Nordics.
That's because democracy and liberalism are distinct political concepts.
Liberalism seeks to protect individual rights and freedoms, even if that goes against the will of the majority. Liberalism prizes freedom of expression, including for unpopular opinions. Liberalism emphasizes civil liberties and privacy rights and limits government power to do what a majority wants. It insists on capitalism (but with a safety net), whereas democracy can bring a communist to power (as has occurred in Latin America and elsewhere). Democracy might elevate theocracy. It looks to the short term, like many voters, while liberalism is a grand idea.
Democracy can lead to populism—as with Trump and his motley peers around the world—whereas liberalism has no time for this at all.
So, if supporters of liberal democracy were honest, they would fearlessly answer the question: Am I truly a democrat first and foremost? Which of the two words in the label matters more? At the end of the day, is it liberalism you believe in, or the people's choice?
It's annoying, because the right-wing populists are just waiting to call you an elitist. But consume enough beers, and you may shock yourself with your own answer.
Dan Perry is managing partner of the New York-based communications firm Thunder11. He is the former Cairo-based Middle East editor and London-based Europe/Africa editor of the Associated Press. Follow him at danperry.substack.com.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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