Non-destructive democracy, as seen by Toqueville

An article by Nicholas Xenakis on the lack of fit between Islam and democracy is not very well written and ends up being disappointingly superficial. But along the way he finds in Toqueville an idea that is central to VFR: that politics, including democracy and liberalism, cannot be society’s ultimate reference point. Democracy—to parallel what I’ve said many times about liberalism—can only work correctly and non-destructively when it is not the ruling idea of society, but is ruled by something else. In early America that something else was Christianity:

On the ground level, Tocqueville saw that Christianity was so predominant among the American populace that even those who were not true believers would practice Christianity or risk being ostracized. As such, in Tocqueville’s America, “Christianity therefore reigns without obstacles, on the admission of all; the result, as I have already said elsewhere, is that everything is certain and fixed in the moral world, although the political world seems to be abandoned to the discussion and attempts of men.” Christianity as an accepted religion erected barriers around the political sphere, inherently limiting it. The government could define what was legally permissible, but religion established what was morally desirable, and the laws of government were not allowed to extend beyond the boundaries of morality. Therefore, ultimately, any sort of radical political reform was tempered by popularly accepted moral standards. In Tocqueville’s eyes this was a good thing. Religion helped resolve one of the dangers he was perpetually wary of—American society having too much freedom. Limitations, he believed, are necessary for a democracy to run smoothly.

And to avoid any misunderstanding, the Christianity Toqueville was talking about was not today’s emotion-based evangelicalism in service to neoconservative democracy-spreading, but the shared, authoritative spiritual and moral framework of our nation.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 20, 2005 09:52 AM | Send