In these days preceding the 2022 mid-term elections, many Democratic pundits are prophesying darkly that a Republican takeover of Congress (which seems likely) would signal that “democracy has been lost.” Frankly, though, I find that formula both simplistic and calculating—intended mostly to arouse an apathetic electorate to vote for Democrats. Still, beneath the agit-prop cliché lies a deeper, more genuine anxiety—primarily about the nature of our “democracy” itself. Because, truthfully, what people generally mean when they voice concerns that “democracy will be lost” is not really a fear that government expressing the “will of the people” (the American demos) will disappear. (Where would it go? What external power would suppress it?).
No, what they worry about is that this demos—this “we the people”—has in recent years undergone such a fundamental shift in attitudes/values that it may (by “democratic” vote, but also by “democratic” apathy and “democratic” stupidity) acquiesce to unconventional forms of governance that are incompatible (and indeed irreconcilable) with our long-established legal structures and with the rights guaranteed by our current constitution. Thus, the fear is not that democracy may be lost, but rather that it may have already been irreversibly changed, whether by conscious choice or by mere absent-mindedness of the “people.”
In short, when someone says “save our democracy,” what he/she really means is “preserve our present constitutional conventions!”—i.e., democracy, of course—only not brute and unrestrained mob rule, but rather “limited democracy as we now know it.”
Isn’t it interesting that, viewed from this perspective, the Democrats seem to be the real conservatives in this election?
