How democracy as self-government is subverted by democracy as universal human rights

Responding to the discussion about “Bush’s idea that freedom is God’s gift to all,” Gibbons C. writes:

I’d be out of my depth in this discussion, probably, but it is a delicious irony that a Republican President is provoking a discussion of political philosophy at such a fundamental level. Willmoore Kendall/Strauss/Voegelin must be enjoying it!

Gibbons C. continues:

You wrote:

“The truth is that the Classical-Christian understanding, which acknowledges man’s fallen nature, and the Secular-Democratic understanding, which denies it, were both present in the American Founding and have both have been present in American life ever since, though the Secular-Democratic has steadily become more dominant.”

This is great—I think Kendall (or Harry Jaffa) pointed out that following immediately after the “unalienable rights” clause in the Declaration, we get: “to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Which can act as a common-sense brake on the “universalist” potential inherent in the unalienable rights clause.

LA replies:

That is excellent. I never thought of that. The rights are presented as universal. Government is instituted to protect those rights. But government’s powers are themselves only derived or delegated from the very people (who are a specific people, not everyone in the world) who instituted a particular government for the purpose of protecting their rights. Thus the universal nature of the rights that the government is instituted to secure does not automatically translate into a government with unlimited power to secure universal rights of all humanity.

Which, in fact, is the way government is increasingly seen today. The “rights-protecting” aspect of government has become the sole aspect of government, while the “instituted-among-men,” self-government aspect of government has been downgraded. Thus in Europe, there is no self-government to speak of. The government does not represent and is not accountable to the people it governs. Rather the government exists for the purpose of protecting rights, and this portfolio is infinite. Homosexual rights, Muslim rights, immigrant rights. All this gives governments unlimited power to protect rights, which means an unlimited power over society, while the notion that government derives its (limited) powers from the people has been lost.

Of course in Europe that notion never really existed. The American phrase, “deriving its just powers from the consent of the governed,” may sound superficially similar to the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen with its phrases, “The principle of any sovereignty resides essentially in the Nation. No body, no individual can exert authority which does not emanate expressly from it…. The law is the expression of the general will.” But in fact the American phrase suggests limited government, since the government only derives certain powers by consent, while the implication in the French Declaration is that the people simply possess all power and the government is simply the “emanation” and “expression” of that power.

Since the government is unlimited, once the protection of universal rights became the main function of government, after World War II and with the growth of the EU, the unlimited nature of the state meant that this rights-protecting task of government was unlimited. So you end up with the unaccountable government in Brussels telling Poland or England what policies it must have toward homosexuals. Democracy thus turns into the opposite of itself: in the name of the universal rights aspect of democracy, the people lose the self-government aspect of democracy, which is of course the fundamental meaning of democracy.

GC replies:

Yes. And we saw it clear as could be in Massachusetts, where a record 170,000 citizens signed a petition to have a proposed constitutional amendment (response to Massachusetts court-imposed redefinition of marriage) put on the ballot. Legislators refused to allow it. Nobody was asking them to vote for or against the amendment, just to put on the ballot so the people could vote on it. And they refused.

Gibbons C. continues:

Here are links on this: here, here, here, and here.

And here’s my (unpublished) letter to the editor of the San Francisco Chronicle:

In Massachusetts, a record 170,000 citizens signed a petition to have a proposed constitutional amendment put on the ballot. (Same-sex marriage survives in Boston; State lawmakers kill constitutional ban push till at least 2012-Chron 6/15/07.) The proposed amendment, a response to Massachusetts court-imposed redefinition of marriage, would define marriage as a union between one man and one woman. The amendment would allow the citizens to have their say on this matter. Now, Massachusetts is the most liberal state in the union. If “same-sex marriage” can’t make it there, it can’t make it anywhere.

They citizens might have voted for it. They might have voted against it. But thanks to Massachusetts legislators (and their lobbyists), who refused to allow the proposed amendment come before the people, the citizens won’t have a chance to vote on it at all.

Two things are sure: self-government took a beating in Massachusetts and same-sex marriage proponents keep their perfect record intact: zero popular victories.

LA writes:

The replacement of democracy as self-government by democracy as rights and freedom can be seen in the rhetoric today about immigration. Immigration supporters constantly state approvingly that immigrants are coming here to “enjoy our rights,” to “enjoy our freedoms, our tolerant way of life.” They never say that immigrants come here to become part of the American people and to participate as Americans in the upholding of our country, i.e., in the self-government of the American people. Rather, rights and freedoms are a kind of vast consumer commodity to be enjoyed, and America exists for the purpose of providing this commodity to everyone in the world.

This is a perversion of democracy, a late, decadent stage of democracy.

LA writes:

Since I’ve based this discussion on the Declaration of Independence, I just want to clarify that the rights spoken of in the Declaration, properly understood, are not solely or even primarily individual rights, but the rights of a people to exist and to have a say in their own affairs. “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” means the life, liberty, and happiness of a whole society, not just of its individual members. It was not the rights of Americans as individuals that were being threatened so much as the rights of the Colonies as self-governing communities. Modern liberalism, neoconservatism, and Harry Jaffa-ism, with their focus solely on individual rights, have lost and covered up this basic truth about the American Founding.

I discuss this idea here. See also my comment of January 1, 2003 8:48 a.m. here. Also, here I discuss the meaning of the Declaration’s description of Americans as “one people.”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 20, 2007 10:18 AM | Send