Marin Voice: It is time to appreciate what we have in this democracy
The late Winston Churchill said many wise things, among them, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others,” and, “When you are going through hell, keep going.”
Democracy is going through hell. The attacks on it are coming from tyrants on the right and the left. Our institutions are finding it awfully hard to keep giving all the people all of what they want all of the time.
With so much wealth in the country so unevenly distributed, when institutions fail in the eyes of the public, the people don’t blame themselves for being overindulgent, they blame the institutions for not keeping up.
As a society we have become childish and selfish, and we have turned our backs on the democratic system that made us who we are. Once children take over the government, as they most certainly have, the people don’t want to do the work required to negotiate for power and progress, to work with people with whom we don’t agree, to endure the pain and suffering related to ensuring freedom and prosperity for all. They want some clown to come in and do it for them, so they hire a tyrant.
When we disregard democracy, we get stung. Freedoms are not free. Protecting the values of democracy doesn’t happen on its own. People have died for it. The basic rights of free speech, religious freedom and freedom of the press, as well as the separation of church and state, have been earned by prior generations responding to external threats.
The difference now is that the biggest threats are internal. We have a fat, lazy populace whose leaders are unwilling to work with and tolerate opposing views, who are unwilling to explain that there are some things we have to give up for the sake of maintaining a safe, healthy and vital country, and who are unwilling to compromise and accept that sometimes you don’t get everything you want.
What we should be looking for, in ourselves and in our leaders, is maturity and character. Not many people with those traits are present in public life today. If they are in elected office, they are virtually invisible.
We seem unable, as a society, to experience the slightest discomfort. We want freedom to express ourselves, but we don’t want to deal with views and ideas that offend our precious sensibilities. We want freedom to pursue wealth without restriction, but we don’t pay the price of supporting the legal and democratic structures that enable freedoms to exist.
We say we want equality, but we don’t want to face the fact that there are some economic and social discomforts that everyone is going to have to face if we are to advance as a society. There’s always some entitled clown who wants to get it all for free.
By its nature, democracy is a source of pain. The more freedoms we have, the more we come in contact with people who want the same freedoms, who don’t think like we do and whose lifestyles conflict with ours. When we have such a low tolerance for democracy’s pain, we become less skillful at defending its values and virtues.
Today, we are beset with a lot of extremist behavior, inside and outside the United States. Extremists are babies. These pathetic people come in all colors, from all faiths and genders, from all across the country and the globe. You can always recognize a baby in public life. A baby is interested in pleasing a very narrow band of polite society, which is the baby.
A baby doesn’t negotiate or compromise. A baby always thinks a baby is right and everybody else is wrong. A baby thinks he can declassify a protected document just by thinking about it.
Churchill was right when he said democracy is a lousy form of government. I suspect he knew that people who are reared in democracies are overindulged babies, because they’ve never lived in tyrannies, dictatorships and authoritarian regimes. He knew what we now know, that there are very few people who appreciate what they have in a democracy, and even fewer who will act with the maturity and character required to preserve it. He knew that divided we fall.
Craig J. Corsini is a San Rafael resident.