C.S. Lewis on Democracy

C.S. Lewis:

I am a democrat [proponent of democracy] because I believe in the Fall of Man.

I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that every one deserved a share in the government.

The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they’re not true. . . . I find that they’re not true without looking further than myself. I don’t deserve a share in governing a hen-roost. Much less a nation. . . .

The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.

—C.S. Lewis, “Equality,” in Present Concerns (reprint: Mariner Books, 2002), p. 17.

Ht: Justin Taylor

Comments

[Adrenalin Tim]

Nice one. Reminds me of this one, I just found the other day:

"Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary."
- Reinhold Niebuhr

[Dan Brown]

Lewis got it partially right, but he seems to miss the importance of his own confession of unsuitability: namely, that the fallen nature of humankind is problematic for democracy as well — hence the old saw about democracy as two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. We owe what liberty has been preserved in the USA more to our constitutionally-imposed system of checks and balances (flawed as it is) than to our electoral system.

The final sentence of the quotation is the best one, because it recognizes that the crux of the matter is the exercise of power, not the method of determining who exercises it. I've previously quoted the sentence in bold below, but I'll provide more context this time.

It is no exaggeration, but a literal truth, to say that, by the Constitution — not as I interpret it, but as it is interpreted by those who pretend to administer it — the properties, liberties, and lives of the entire people of the United States are surrendered unreservedly into the hands of men who, it is provided by the Constitution itself, shall never be "questioned" as to any disposal they make of them. [...]

Thus the whole power of the government is in their hands, and they are made utterly irresponsible for the use they make of it. What is this but absolute, irresponsible power? [...]

Neither is it any answer to this view of the case to say that the men holding this absolute, irresponsible power, must be men chosen by the people (or portions of them) to hold it. A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years. Neither are a people any the less slaves because permitted periodically to choose new masters. What makes them slaves is the fact that they now are, and are always hereafter to be, in the hands of men whose power over them is, and always is to be, absolute and irresponsible.

— Lysander Spooner, No Treason, No. 6

[bobhyatt]

Well, I guess there's nothing for it then, except maybe an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We could each take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week?

[Dan Brown]

Indeed, violence is inherent to all systems of government. ;) I find it particularly important, however, to work against the pernicious idea that more democracy equals more freedom. (The Bill of Rights, being pro-freedom and anti-democracy, is an excellent counterexample. From the Supreme Court decision in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943): "The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One's right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.")

[Kipp Wilson]

As one who works in government (county, not federal), I must say I am not sure which depresses me more: that all politicians seem to treat the voters as selfish, egotistical, greedy simpletons, or that the voters en masse seem to act as such. To put it a different way, I hate the political machinations as much as I hate the fact that they work. It feels like politics is no place for an honest person or an idealist.