PERSPECTIVE UKNORTH
People and their profiles: dukes, archbishops, actors, writers, monks, oddbods, the garish, the gregarious - here they are in single file, chosen by chance, by inclination, or by necessity ... and all reflecting, one hopes, the essential, but indefinable, spark that makes one human being interesting to many. Geoffrey Mather
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
—VoltaireIs democracy dead? The touchy-feely route to... what?
Democracy is under test every day of the week and on the whole, it is having a rough time.
We are, I think, all familiar with those plans to scrap free guided walks in the Lake District because they appealed only to white, middle-class people. Is that democracy?
When 40,000 people complain to the BBC about showing a Springer opera are they representing freedom or censorship? When Ken Livingstone, irritated by questioning, makes a remark about a Jewish journalist sounding like a Nazi concentration camp guard - is that so world-shattering that the entire nation is called upon to condemn it? Is it really a mortal insult to Jews as a whole so that they call for instant and public apology from Livingstone?
I am not supporting the opera, or anything that might be in it. I would not know what is in it because I had no inclination to watch and find out. .I do not particularly like Livingstone's policies as Mayor of London. I merely suggest that in a democracy conflicting and robust views are allowed, however repugnant others find them. And that is the strongly-stated opinion, also, of those at the heart of American administration, as we shall see.
Definitions of democracy revolve around the right of each individual to express his views in a free society.
European Charter of Fundamental Rights: Article 11
Freedom of expression and information1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.
The individual, in the American view, is paramount. The Creator gave Americans inalienable rights.
Yet we need to ask questions about a world where the word ‘black’ can be considered offensive, but not ‘white’. Where we have to refer to chairpersons as if they were items of wood.
Vast numbers of Americans are enraged because they think themselves victims for not being able to flaunt Christmas as a festival.
Citizens everywhere watch their tongues in case they fall foul of the myriad groups dedicated to structuring both our way of life and way of speech in what they consider to be a proper order.
Are they part of the democratic process? Or would a historic understanding of democracy ban them to the lunatic fringes?
Are leaders of the various democracies always up to the job? Socrates (below) taught that the principal fault of democracy was that it did not require proof of special knowledge in its leaders, “that it surrendered the direction of the people’s destinies to men without adequate experience in
government, and that on the question of the morality of justice of a policy it treated the opinions of all citizens as equal in value."
He had a point. Some leaders of recent times do not deserve much applause. Inattentive in class. Foggy on detail. Inclined to commit impetuous and embarrassing acts. And that is just the democratic ones.
In Britain, the Magna Carta was the big deal. It did not do much for democracy as we know it. For that we had to wait until 1688 when England managed to establish a lasting constitutional monarchy with Parliament as the supreme law-maker. Reform of Parliament itself as a broadly representative, democratic institution took another century.
The U.S. Department of State's Bureau of International Information Programs is helpful in explaining the ethics of that country.
But first, what did Thomas Jefferson say about the way of life a man could expect:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
It is a splendid statement. But of course, there is nothing self-evident about it at all since men do not consider themselves created equal. Those who have the greater power grab the greater reward. The meek do not inherit the earth. They lose what bit of earth they have. One man’s equality of opportunity is another’s downfall. Publications class their readers as A, B or C. But perhaps democracies with all their faults are infinitely preferable to the alternatives. Mr Mugabe might not agree.
The U.S. web site explains its point of view this way:
Governments in a democracy do not grant the fundamental freedoms enumerated by Jefferson. Governments are created to protect those freedoms that every individual possesses by virtue of his or her existence.
Inalienable rights include freedom of speech and expression, freedom of religion and conscience, freedom of assembly, and the right to equal protection before the law. This is by no means an exhaustive list of the rights that citizens enjoy in a democracy -- democratic societies also assert such civil rights as the right to a fair trial -- but it does constitute the core rights that any democratic government must uphold.
A historian, Leonard Levy, has said, "Individuals may be free when their government is not."
Well that is fine and upstanding, but there are a lot of controversies around which do not seem to reflect what democracy is supposedly all about.
Here, I take at random from the American Press, a report on Christmas in World Net Daily::-
" A first-grade teacher in Sacramento Co., Calif., says her principal has prohibited instructors from uttering the word "Christmas" in class or in written materials;
"A school superintendent in Yonkers, N.Y., banned, then unbanned, holiday decorations that contained religious themes more than the generic "season's greetings";
"New York City schools are being sued for alleged discrimination against Christians;
and atheists reposted their vandalised winter solstice sign in the Wisconsin Capitol, as they declare "Christians stole Christmas" from ancient pagans."International columnist Mark Steyn: For US columnists, the end-of-year column bemoaning the fanatical efforts to expunge all Christmas traditions from public life has become an annual Christmas tradition in itself. This year, there's no shortage of contenders for silliest Santa suit. In one New Jersey school district, the annual trip to see Dickens's A Christmas Carol has been cancelled after threats of legal action. At another New Jersey school, the policy on not singing any songs mentioning God, Christ, angels, etc, has been expanded to prohibit instrumental performances of music that would mention God if any singers were around to sing the words. So you can't do Silent Night as a piano solo or Handel's Messiah even if you junk the hallelujahs.
But let's not obsess on New Jersey's litigious secularists. In Plano, Texas, in the heart of God-fearin' Bush country, parents were instructed not to bring red and green plates and napkins for the school's "winter" parties, as red and green are colours with strong Christmas connotations and thus culturally oppressive. In Massachusetts, in the heart of Bush-fearin' country, the mayor of Somerville issued an apology for accidentally referring to the town "holiday party" as a C-------- party.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph long ago got the heave-ho from the schoolhouse, but the great secular trinity of Santa, Rudolph and Frosty aren't faring much better. Frosty The Snowman and Jingle Bells are offensive to those of a non-Frosty or non-jingly persuasion: they're code for traditional notions of Christmas. The basic rule of thumb is: anything you enjoy singing will probably get you sued. At my little girl's school, the holiday concert is a mélange of multicultural dirges that are parcelled out entirely randomly: she seems to have got stuck with the H's - last year she wound up with a Hannukah song, this year she's landed some Hispanic thing; next year, no doubt, a traditional Hutu disembowelling chant. It would be offensive to inflict Deck the Halls or God Rest ye Merry Gentlemen on any hypothetical Hutu in attendance, but it's not offensive to inflict hot Hutu hits on bewildered moppets.
Now who represents democracy here? Is it the Christians who want the symbols of their faith to be available to them because it is their inalienable right? Or is it fundamentalists' and aetheists' rights that must take priority?
That is the sort of stuff that makes you feel like retreating for more guidance. So back to the State Department’s information programme: :
Freedom of speech and expression is the lifeblood of any democracy. To debate and vote, to assemble and protest, to worship, to ensure information.
It doesn't seem to matter what kind of information so long as it is information because the right sort will find its proper level. Or so runs the theory.
American essayist E.B. White put it this way: "The press in our free country is reliable and useful not because of its good character but because of its great diversity. As long as there are many owners, each pursuing his own brand of truth, we the people have the opportunity to arrive at the truth and dwell in the light....There is safety in numbers."
In contrast to authoritarian states, democratic governments do not control, dictate, or judge the content of written and verbal speech.
Democracy depends upon a literate, knowledgeable citizenry whose access to the broadest possible range of information enables them to participate as fully as possible in the public life of their society.
Ignorance breeds apathy. Democracy thrives upon the energy of citizens who are sustained by the unimpeded flow of ideas, data, opinions, and speculation.
But what should the government do in cases where the news media or other organisations abuse freedom of speech with information that, in the opinion of the majority, is false, repugnant, irresponsible, or simply in bad taste? The answer, by and large, is nothing. It is simply not the business of government to judge such matters. In general, the cure for free speech is more free speech.
The corollary to freedom of speech is the right of the people to assemble and peacefully demand that the government hear their grievances. Without this right to gather and be heard, freedom of speech would be devalued.
If you do nothing about "information that, in the opinion of the majority, is false, repugnant, irresponsible, or simply in bad taste" because the cure for free speech is more free speech what brings about all these rules governing the sort of words some people might use in relation to ethnic minorities or in matters of sexual equality?
Untold numbers of committees have been set up to decide which word is acceptable and which word is not. People go through amazing mental contortions to comply. Colleges and universities have leapt onto this concept and spread it among staff and students to a degree that challenges the fundamental right to freedom of expression. It is a form of mental glue. This agonising suppression of anything that might remotely be considered offensive pervades our public institutions and our police forces. It engulfs us all in a paralysis..
Democracies today do not accept the fact that you can say what you like; that a wiser view will prevail; and that in the democratic process what is best for all will come out.
In the great funeral oration on democracy given by Pericles, were the words: " There is no exclusiveness in our public life, and in our private business. We are not suspicious of one another, nor angry with our neighbour if he does what he likes; we do not put on sour looks at him which, though harmless, are not pleasant." Not so today, is it? There are sour looks all over the place. We even have neighbours from hell monitored by TV for our entertainment.
Wherever the word "democracy" is bandied about, it is obvious that there are some confused areas. If all were given equal rights would it not be anarchy rather than democracy - all the opposing forces exercising them at once? If doctors in a hospital say they are not going to treat smokers, is that their right or is it a denial of the smokers' right? Ditto smoking in pubs. Plainly, there is much more to the word than freedom of choice in a carefree society.
The question now has to be asked:
Is Democracy terminally ill, or dead? Or did we misunderstand, totally, all those resounding and noble words of description coming down to us from Athens and Runnymede and the United States in the first place?
Geoffrey Mather © 2005
3 March, 2007