“Our (Illiberal) Democracy”

Do progressives even listen to themselves?

Poem unlimited versus ideology profane…

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In Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, Harold Bloom remarks that Master Will’s greatest characters possess the gift of self-overhearing. Hamlet, for instance, truly hears and understands what he’s saying to himself and others, hence his radical self-consciousness. I was struck by this claim of Bloom’s and have pondered it many times. And recently it came to me that progressives exhibit the opposite tendency. When they talk about “our democracy” and evils that endanger it, they seem deaf to what they’re really saying.

Between Hamlet the Dane’s infinite intelligence and the ideology of postmodern progressivism there stretches a great gulf, psychological and spiritual. But a fellow Substacker of progressive views (never mind who; it doesn’t matter) helped me toward an understanding of their perverse kinship. Recently in her newsletter she lamented that America is a country where the minority rules. What she meant by this was that the will of the majority does not necessarily prevail—which is, apparently, one of America’s greatest moral failings. Vox Populi, vox Dei and all that.

Now of course she’s right that in the land of E Pluribus Unum, the will of the majority is sometimes frustrated. But only if the voice of the people reliably embodied a moral standard superior to that of individuals or minorities could this justly be called a moral failing. But the will of the majority has no such claim on superior morality, and there are dozens of historical examples, boringly familiar hence not worth listing, that go to show it does not.

No matter. With the passage of time progressives have grown increasingly critical of the admittedly undemocratic features of the Constitution of the United States: the Electoral College, the equal suffrage of states in the Senate, the Supreme Court. They also complain bitterly about the Senate filibuster, which is not a constitutional provision but a procedural rule of that body. Less remarked upon but equally objectionable from the viewpoint of majoritarians is the process by which the Constitution may be amended. A supermajority of states is required to ratify a proposed amendment, tiny Rhode Island enjoying equal status with giant Texas.

Nor is that all. The first ten constitutional amendments—the Bill of Rights—also raise barriers to majority rule. Read carefully those amendments and you will notice that often they specify what the government may not do. The First Amendment begins with the words “Congress shall make no law...” and that can be taken as the mission statement of the Bill of Rights, which was added to the Constitution for the specific purpose of affirming civil rights and protecting civil liberties—regardless of the will of the majority.

On their face these progressive complaints exude the rank aroma of hypocrisy: There was no such hand-wringing about the undemocratic Supreme Court when a majority of its justices were of a liberal persuasion. But I don’t really think that progressives are mere cynical hypocrites: They’re just victims of confused thinking. Their ideology is, so to speak, a mashup in which principle has become confused with outcomes. Thus despite their talk of “democratic norms” progressives are rigidly goals oriented, which is a polite way of saying they believe that the end justifies the means.

The leak of a draft Supreme Court decision that would overturn of Roe v. Wade exposes the unscrupulousness of the postmodern progressive mentality. Scarcely anybody on the Left is concerned about the great damage that has been inflicted on the Court as an institution—and in that indictment I include the Court’s liberal minority, who have remained disgracefully silent about the leak. No, all that matters is the goal: to preserve “abortion rights” at any price, regardless of the damage done. And this progressive contempt for institutions is wide ranging, extending to the fabric of the constitutional order itself.

While abortion, which is not actually mentioned in the Constitution, is held to be a fundamental, untouchable constitutional right, various civil liberties that are specifically named and protected get no respect from progressives. And while the right of the people to keep and bear arms is the example that springs most readily to mind, the Left is scarcely less dismissive of freedom of expression. There's no denying that progressives do want freedom of speech and freedom of the press to be abridged in cases where the opinions expressed offend them. Thus for example they were thrilled when Donald Trump got kicked off Twitter, and when the Department of Homeland Security established its short-lived Disinformation Governance Board. The doctrine of repressive tolerance—suppression of minority rights for the sake of the greater good—has long been an ideological staple of the Left.

So when progressives appeal to “our democracy,” what do they actually mean?

What they mean is illiberal democracy—government by plebiscite—ascertaining the will of the majority and governing accordingly. There would be no nonsense about minority rights, judicial review, the Senate filibuster or anything else like that. But since the will of the majority cannot always be relied upon, “our democracy” as the Left envisions it would be consigned to the care of a progressive nomenklatura: Vox Populi, vox Dei perhaps, but curated by a hierarchy of experts and social scientists with untrammeled power to interpret the Vox Populi.

This is what progressives don’t overhear when they talk about the glories and virtues of majority rule: the destruction of the work of generations and the recreation of America as a sham people’s republic. No thanks, comrades.