Remember when the Left was the champion of the Little Guy? When they hated the “undemocratic” Electoral College and passed the 17th Amendment to force the direct election of Senators? When Andrew Jackson effectively invented the modern Democratic Party by throwing open the doors of the White House to the people and defying Supreme Court orders?
Well, that was then and this is now, because here comes Kurt Andersen in New York Magazine to tell us that the problem with democracy is… you guessed it:
So now we have a country absolutely teeming with irregular passions and artful misrepresentations, whipped up to an unprecedented pitch and volume by the fundamentally new means of 24/7 cable and the hyperdemocratic web. And instead of a calm club of like-minded wise men (and women) in Washington compromising and legislating, we have a Republican Establishment almost entirely unwilling to defy or at least gracefully ignore its angriest, most intemperate and frenzied faction–the way Reagan did with his right wing in the eighties and the way Obama is doing with his unhappy left wing now.
Just as the founders feared, American democracy has gotten way too democratic.
When it comes to reenacting our patriotic founding story, we’d better keep choosing to play the deliberative gentlemen engaged in careful compromise more than the apoplectic vandals dressed up as Indians and throwing things overboard.
Andersen’s not alone in his contempt for modern American democracy. Don’t forget that New York Times columnist Tom Friedman delivered himself of this classic last year:
Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today.
One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century.
What do you think? Brave forward-thinking progressivism or oligarchical fascism? Now that the Super Bowl is over — congrats, Saints! — let’s hear what you have to say.