Democracy or chaos? From Egypt to Wisconsin

Following the momentous political eruption in Egypt, President Obama told the world, “I am confident that the people of Egypt can find the answers, and do so peacefully, constructively, and in the pursuit of unity that has defined these last few weeks — for Egyptians have made it clear that nothing less than genuine democracy will carry the day.”

This, of course, is supposed to be an applause line.

“Genuine democracy” in the Middle East — what could be better?

Well, almost anything.

Let me explain.

First of all, the United States of America is not a democracy. By plan, design and intention, the Founding Fathers rejected pure democracy and instead instituted a democratic republic. Note the order of those two words. Our system of government is democratic only as a description, an adjective, a modifier of The Republic.

We are a democratic government because we have self-rule — but we have successfully defended that self-rule for 234 years because we are a republic. It is the republic which is enshrined in the Constitution of the United States, not a democracy, and it is the institutions and traditions of the republic which protect us from the vagaries of the moment. A pure democracy, on the other hand, cannot resist the winds of change, and bends to every mood and movement like straw in a slight breeze.

That would be well and good IF mankind were uniformly well-intentioned and consistently an influence for good. Then, it would be safe to turn a nation’s future over to the whims of the public will.

But if we can agree that mankind too often follows the path of least resistance and thus is quite capable of being seduced by a convenient profit at the expense of an inconvenient principle, then we can see the danger of pure democracy. The profit may be financial or it may be power, but in any case the sacrifice of principle for self-gain has only one result — chaos.

We have seen the results of such power shifts time and time again in history. And no matter whether they come under the name of democracy or not, it behooves us to study not just the ideals of a so-called freedom movement, but also the reality of outcomes.

It is instructive, as a starting place, to return to the French Revolution of 1789. Like the Egyptian insurrection, it largely took place on the streets of the capital. The storming of the Bastille prison and the march on Versailles provided the spark needed to overturn a long-standing monarchy and to establish a republic, but what followed was not liberty, equality and fraternity; it was disorder, chaos and terror. Indeed, in the absence of  democratic institutions, without the groundwork of an already established power structure, the French Revolution quickly devolved into the Reign of Terror, during which as many as 40,000 people were slaughtered.

Of course, there is a huge difference between the French Revolution and the American Revolution, just as there is a huge difference between democracy and a republic.

In France, the established power base dissolved practically overnight, leaving a power vacuum that was filled by ambitious men who, to use my previous phrase, were “quite capable of being seduced by a convenient profit at the expense of an inconvenient principle.”

In America, on the other hand, while we did have a Revolution, it did not happen overnight, but over the course of five long years. Nor were we fighting to overturn the monarchy, but to separate ourselves from it in order to continue to develop the form of self-government which we had already established over a period of decades. This was not mob rule seeking to overturn a government, but rather a group of organized militias fighting on behalf of a Continental Congress to defend the colonial governments against an imperial power that was based thousands of miles away.

To confuse Egypt and the American Revolution is a dire mistake. To fail to see the similarities between Egypt and the French Revolution is to miss the whole point of what is happening in Cairo. Yes, the protests in Tahrir Square were a manifestation of the urge toward democracy, but in its worst form — mob rule. They no more ensure a period of freedom for the Egyptian people than did the Russian Revolution ensure freedom or prosperity for the Russian people.

Indeed, the Russian Revolution was actually two separate revolutions, which may presage what we can expect in Cairo. The February Revolution in Russia, a spontaneous uprising  of the people against the czarist regime, was well-intentioned and motivated largely by hunger and poverty. It is the equivalent of what we have seen in Egypt’s own February revolution, with the collapse of the Mubarak regime.

But the fall of the czar left a power vacuum as well, and power did not magically wind up in the hands of the people. The “democratic” revolution of February 1917 only created an opportunity for those who were positioned to seize power for themselves. Thus the October Revolution followed just as surely as autumn follows summer, and the long winter of the Russian people under communist dictatorship began.

Democracy, in other words — especially in the form of street riots, protests or demonstrations — does not automatically lead to self-government or a better life. Indeed, if we are to assume that, at a minimum, democracy means some form of “majority rule,” then street riots such as we have seen in Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, Bahrain, Yemen, Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East cannot even be said to be any form of democracy. Allowing a vocal minority to grab power by being unruly is not democracy. It is revolution, yes. It is insurrection, yes. It is rebellion, yes. But it is not democracy. And it is certainly not a democratic republic, where people’s rights are protected, where power is shared, and where minorities are protected but not pampered.

If 2 million people camped out in Tahrir Square to oust Mubarak — fine. That tells us what 2 million people think. But it does not tell us what the wishes of the majority of Egyptians is for the future of their country. It only tells us that a vocal minority can obtain power through fear and intimidation.

Which brings us to Wisconsin.

Yep, right here in the good old USA, we are seeing an effort to legislate from the streets — to create a “people’s power” movement that will dissuade established authorities from taking action that will nominally “hurt” the people.

But don’t be fooled. The people who will be hurt in Wisconsin by the governor’s plan to restore budget sanity are not “We the People,” but rather “We the Special Interests.” This is about teachers’ unions and other public-service unions trying to protect their slice of the pie when most of the American economic pie has vanished altogether. The Wall Street Journal compared what is happening in Wisconsin to the “welfare state riots” seen recently in France or Greece.

Indeed, this is likely to be the first of repeated protests, as entrenched special interests are forced bit by bit to relinquish their stranglehold on state and federal budgets as America navigates its way back to economic reality. In Montana, the same special interests intend to march on the state Capitol on Monday. The Montana teachers’ union, no doubt inspired by the Wisconsin uprising, is joining with the “Montana Organizing Project” (part of the left-wing Alliance for a Just Society based in Seattle) to “rally to save education and public services.”

Don’t believe it. This is a rally to intimidate legislators and scare the public. Fortunately for us, Montana isn’t in desperate financial straits like Wisconsin and other highly unionized states, but the future begins right now. The public-sector unions know what kind of trouble is coming, and so should you.

But in the meantime, we are going to have to listen to tiresome rhetoric about the noble cause of the people who are trying to block government action that is long overdue. For instance, Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Bob Jauch, said, “The story around the world is the rush to democracy. The story in Wisconsin is the end of the democratic process.”

 Of course, Jauch is right, but the scary part is that he has no understanding of why he is right. The “democratic process” he is talking about is something quite different from what is taking place on the streets of Madison. The democratic process in America is the election of representatives and executives to make and apply laws for the good of “we the people,” not to guarantee permanent benefits and entitlements for a narrow class of people such as government employees.

The teachers on the streets, and their Democratic allies in the state legislature of Wisconsin — both of whom went AWOL from their assigned posts — are trying to prevent the democratic process from going forward because they fear the result. What is happening in Wisconsin is not democracy; it is chaos.

And if any liberal can’t see that because they support the cause of the teachers, let them consider how they would have reacted if a similar uprising had occurred in August 2010 when nearly 2 million Tea Party advocates gathered at the mall in Washington, D.C. Suppose those people had marched on the U.S. Capitol and occupied it. Suppose they had refused to disperse when ordered to do so by legal authorities. Suppose the president had ordered the military to break up the demonstration because it was disrupting public order in the nation’s capital. Suppose that the military had refused to fire upon the demonstrators and they thus gained additional power and prestige. Suppose that eventually our president had been forced to resign because of foreign and domestic pressure, and that a new compromise government was established to appease the Tea Party Movement.

No, that is not democracy. It is the end of the constitutional republic. Rome’s republic ended. The First French Republic ended. Don’t be so sure that ours won’t do the same. When power shifts to the street from the statehouse, you can bet that the end is near.