Tag: liberal democracy

2,418 words

Part 9 of 9 (Chapter 1 here, Chapter 6 Part 1 here)

In a representative “democracy,” “public opinion” is a fiction. The people have no voice. They are never consulted directly on policy matters, and they are not given any mechanism through which they can express their honest opinion. Instead, an illusion of public sentiment is artificially generated by a small minority of private actors controlling institutions with disproportionate power and influence that can circumvent organic social pressures and coerce people into conforming to their artificially-produced social norms. (more…)

On Election Day in 2020 the AFL-CIO, then led by Richard Trumka (pictured), issued a joint statement with the US Chamber of Commerce calling for “all votes to be counted,” signaling a little-noticed alliance against American populism between corporate America and the Left.

4,237 words

Part 8 of 9 (Chapter 1 here, Chapter 5 Part 2 here, Chapter 6 Part 2 here)

All of them portray themselves as defenders of democracy, but they’re attacking liberal democracy from the inside and using its concepts against it. That makes these people both new and potentially dangerous. – Alejandro Castrillón, Contemporary Far-Right Thinkers and the Future of Liberal Democracy (more…)

The National Guard imposes racial integration at gunpoint in Arkansas, 1957.

3,973 words

Part 7 of 9 (Chapter 1 here, Chapter 5 Part 1 here, Chapter 6 Part 1 here)

The other most recent example of the progressive top-down technocratic elite transformation of society is the LGBT agenda. As the LGBT scholar Gary Mucciaroni explains, “sexual politics” in America is “a narrative about a heterosexist majority that has used religion and ideology to maintain its cultural and legal privileges.” The literature of the LGBT movement has always self-consciously identified itself as an elite, minoritarian revolution against this heterosexual majority. (more…)

President Lyndon Johnson signing the 1965 Hart-Celler Immigration Act into law, surrounded by his supporters.

3,031 words

Part 6 of 9 (Chapter 1 here, Chapter 4 Part 2 here, Chapter 5 Part 2 here)

When a term has become so universally sanctified as “democracy” is now, I begin to wonder whether it means anything, in meaning too many things. — T. S. Eliot (more…)

Karl Popper, one of the intellectuals who gave rise to the anti-populist conception of democracy that has prevailed in the West since the Second World War.

3,535 words

Part 5 of 9 (Chapter 1 here, Chapter 4 Part 1 here, Chapter 5 Part 1 here)

Whereas liberal elites had always harbored a cynical and technocratic rejection of the fundamental premises of popular government, after the Second World War “the highly educated [also began] to deplore working-class movements for their bigotry, their refusal of modernity,” and their apparent instinctual tendency towards nationalism and authoritarian leaders. They became openly and dogmatically hostile towards all forms of “collectivism” and solidaristic political movements because they identified popular social organization as fundamentally incompatible with liberalism’s hallowed individual rights and liberties. Post-war elites embraced anti-fascism and anti-populism as two necessary tenets of contemporary liberalism. (more…)

Walter Lippmann, whose anti-democratic skepticism changed the course of American politics in the twentieth century.

3,142 words

Part 4 of 9 (Chapter 1 here, Chapter 3 here, Chapter 4 Part 2 here)

Politically, democracy means the sovereignty, not of the average man — who is a rather narrow, short-sighted, muddle-headed creature — but of a matured public opinion, a very different thing . . . In the forming of this opinion the sage has a million times the weight of the field hand. With modern facilities for mind influencing mind, democracy, at its best, substitutes the direction of the recognized moral and intellectual élite for the rule of the strong, the rich, or the privileged. — Edward Alsworth Ross, Changing America (1912) (more…)

The Founding Fathers were not what they are often seen as today.

6,140 words

Part 3 of 9 (Chapter 1 here, Chapter 2 here, Chapter 4 Part 1 here)

Of the things for which I summoned the people to assemble,
was there one I compassed not? . . .
This is how the people will best follow their leaders:
If they are neither unleashed nor restrained too much. — Solon, circa sixth century BC (more…)

Mark Weber

266 words / 1:01:23

Mark Weber of the Institute for Historical Review was Greg Johnson‘s guest on the latest broadcast of Counter-Currents Radio, which was a pre-recorded discussion on the perils of empire, and it is now available for download and online listening. (more…)

Alain de Benoist

6,688 words

Introduction here; Chapter 2 Part 1 here

Translated by F. Roger Devlin

Opinion democracy? Televisual democracy? Market democracy? Democracy is in crisis, and the pathologies which affect contemporary democracies increasingly occupy observers’ attention. The common opinion is that these pathologies, far from being inherent in democracy itself, result from a corruption of its principles. (more…)

2,263 words

Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)

The Question of Public Virtue

When Lasch wonders whether American democracy can survive crime, drugs, and urban decay, he is sounding another populist theme that harks back to classical republicanism: the dependence of popular government on public virtue. (more…)

Christopher Lasch

2,180 words

Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)

Christopher Lasch
The Revolt of the Elites & the Betrayal of Democracy
New York: W. W. Norton, 1995

Christopher Lasch (1932–1994) was an American historian who taught for many years at the University of Rochester, authored a number of important books, and spoke beyond academia to the broad, educated public. (more…)

3,216 words

William A. Galston
Anti-Pluralism: The Populist Threat to Liberal Democracy
New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018

“It is time for an open and robust debate on issues of immigration, identity politics, and nationalism that liberals and progressives have long avoided.”—William Galston

Galston is right. (more…)