Colorado Gov. Jared Polis heads a group called “Governors Safeguarding Democracy.” However, Governor Polis and his pals don’t actually know what real democracy is. For them, and for Democrats in general, Democracy is a vague feeling, often expressed as a “bleeding heart” concern about marginalized minority groups, or support for a specific piece of legislation like nationalized health care. (“Democrats still don’t agree on the seriousness of their political problem after election defeat,” Associated Press/apnews.com, 12-1-24)
In fact, democracy has always been defined as a foundational written law that empowers a wide range of people with civil rights, provides them with a process to work out their policy differences and enforces a variety of means to curb anti-democratic forces like ignorance, greed, and violence.
What Democrat today ever mentions such a historically accurate definition of democracy?
Here are a few major reasons why Democrats don’t know what democracy is and are not very interested to learn anything more than what they already know.
1.) Dems have not read and studied the U.S. Constitution and stay as far away from it as possible in their campaign speeches, party platforms, editorials, and social media ruminations. Knowledge of the Constitution casts a bad light the historical performance of Democrat leaders, so they run from it and hide at their earliest convenience.
2.) Dems have not read and studied the history of democracy, which our Founding Fathers asserted was necessary for them to know. National histories important to know include that of the Athenian democracy, the 500-year-long ancient Roman democracy, the Anglo-Saxon republic of early England, and early modern democracies like the Dutch Republic. Our own U.S. political history teaches a master class in what democracy looks like and how it can be frittered away.
3.) Democrats cannot even name the most obvious and most important model for democracy in Western civilization, the Hebrew Republic of ancient Israel.
This is embarrassing because Democrats read the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament almost weekly when they go to Jewish or Christian church. They believe that when they are reading that book they are reading strictly sacred religious history rather than sacred political and government history. Big mistake.
4.) Democrats are so busy raging over specific policies like “pre-existing conditions” and affordable housing that they simply cannot see the forest from the trees. The trees are the policies, but the forest is the process for deciding the policies. Democracy consists of the very scientific philosophy of egalitarian government and the democratic processes necessary to maintain such a government.
The AP article stresses that democrats have no leader now, like that is a dangerous place to be. Having many local leaders experimenting with legislation is actually much closer to democracy than having one single national leader imposing his/her will on the nation.
Another sentiment expressed by Democrats in the article is that “People do not believe that the Democrat Party is fighting for them or their families or gives a damn about their lives.” The problem here is that the people are right. Their leaders are fighting for personal power and wealth rather than teaching folks how to become enlightened and hard-working citizens who govern themselves locally.
Another sentiment expressed by dismayed party leaders is that they feel they need to “do a better job listening to voters instead of pollsters.” But a party that takes its cues from an ever-more-ignorant electorate rather than affirmatively leading the electorate in the direction of true self-determination is only going to destroy democracy. Unfortunately, that is just fine with Democratic leaders today. An ignorant people trigger more centralized power, and centralized policymaking is what Democrats think democracy is all about. The job of parties and governments in a democracy is not to hand out McDonald’s fish sandwiches right before an election, but rather to teach people how to fish.
Bernie Sanders says, “The Democrat party abandoned the working-class people,” so “the working class has abandoned them.” This kind of class-based focus touches upon an important aspect of democracy, namely that a democratic society must stay away from a two-class system where a specially privileged elite aristocracy lords it over an ineffective, uneducated commoner/worker class.
Ro Khanna thinks the solution is to provide higher paying jobs for the middle class. That only works if working people learn how to advocate for themselves and express an educated, nonviolent voice, informed by adult continuing education programs and citizen participation. Sitting around hoping to elect a politician like Khanna who will hand out higher wages to them on a silver platter is not the answer.
Robert Kimball Shinkoskey is a citizen editorialist and historian of democracy. He has written books on the ancient Israelite democracy (Democracy and the Ten Commandments), and the modern American democracy (The American Kings: Growth in Presidential Power from George Washington to Barack Obama).
