History and Conversion

I am a convert.

No, I did not change religions. My faith is the one thing I will never change. But I did change elsewhere, and this change was brought about by my more-than-passing interest in history.

The change has come in my politics. History has changed my politics.

No, I am not, nor do I foresee I will ever be, a liberal. But as a political conservative, I did come of age believing that representative democracy, the form of government I was born and flourished under, was the most efficient and righteous form of government ever devised by the mind of man. I was a politically socially conservative (small d) democrat, the kind of which you might have found in Ronald Reagan's Republican Party of the 1980's. Plus, I was taking up Political Economy for my university studies and had filled a niche as the Institute's resident straw man right-wing "fascist" (with my then-close friend as the polar opposite straw man pinko commie, he he). I sincerely believed that oft-repeated adage that democracy is a flawed government whose only virtue was that it was better than anything else man has come up with.

Only now, I've grown out of that. I believe democracy, with all its flaws, is no better than the myriad attempts at government our ancestors have mustered. Gone is my ardor for democracy, and now I am merely a political social conservative.

How did I get here?

An interest in history has seen me through some interesting intellectual adventures. The first blow against my political orthodoxy came in the study of both classical and medieval Europe. The most ardent democrats often put these ages down (especially the Middle Ages) as both parts absolutist and backward. Totalitarian kings snuffed out freedom and demanded conformity in the name of their own personal glory, while poor simpleton peasants uttered prayers they barely understood. Little did I know that I would soon discover these ages as both intellectually and spiritually vibrant, as well as the progenitor of the very ideas that democracy has appropriated in order to justify the legitimacy of its supremacy. (The concept of human rights, for example, which I believed to be the product of democratic thinking, was actually conceived by men working under these supposed totalitarian monarchs who *gasp* actually paid them to think of these things. If you think Lincoln vs. Douglas was a stirring contest of orations over the dignity of man, wait til you read Bishop de las Casas!)   

The second blow was going through the histories of recent (as opposed to classical / Athenian) democratic governments. One favored tactic by those arguing for democracy over anything else is the citing of atrocities committed by pre-democratic regimes. In fact, prehistorical civilizations were at war most of the time, and indeed, we have seen long stretches of peace unprecedented in human history in this age of democratic regimes. However, it does not take war to commit atrocities. The way I see it, the long peace only meant that the darker side of human nature had to get more creative. The result of the long peace has not been a general uplifting of the human common good. It only meant that there would be a rapid increase in non-military barbarism perpetuated under various stretches of ideological engineering. One need only tick off a few numbers; 40 million lost to abortion over the last 40 years (that's the Holocaust more than six times over), millions dead of AIDS in Africa, not to mention the shrinking of the populations of affluent First World nations. All these, under the watchful eye of democratic regimes. If there is one profound thing our age will be remembered by, it will probably be the paradoxical destruction of a civilization in the middle of so much peace and prosperity.

And then, there were the wars. The democratic century is also history's bloodiest. We may have gone to war less, but when we did, we put to shame all those petty wars our ancestors fought amongst themselves. Democratic efficiency (for me the greatest single virtue of democracy) meant that we could kill and destroy far more in a shorter period of time than any khan or king could dream of in the deepest reaches of his bloodlust. Some say that if you gave the Holy Roman Emperor the Bomb, he would have destroyed just as many. I counter that the Holy Roman Emperor wouldn't even know what to make of such a bomb. The last time the Holy Roman Emperor found the world laid at his feet, he put a stop to all his conquests and called a conference that would produce that remarkable set of laws known as the Laws of the Indies. The first time democratic Bolsheviks found the world laid at their feet, they proceeded to mutilate it.

Finally, there was beauty. A progressive may remember medieval Europe as a place of mud hovels and mounds of filth. (Ah, bless you, Monty Python!) But it was also an age of Cathedral and Castle builders. Chartres and Notre Dame both attest to the spiritual and aesthetic grandeur of the age. Who says that nothing beautiful was produced under kings? I am hard-pressed to find beautiful art in the democratic age. What will be our monument? The McMansion? Ugly auditoriums for our places of worship and utilitarian boxes for our places of livelihood? The irony of so many people with so much prosperity failing to produce any lasting monument to this achievement is a sad commentary on our state of affairs. It is a symptom of a far deeper malaise. Democracy may have meant a higher standard of living (or is that because of capitalism?), but the spiritual barrenness that came in its wake has produced a new set of problems. De Tocqueville was only half right; it seems to me that democracies can atrophy into laxity and self-contentment as well as any aristocracy. 

I will admit to an element of unwarranted nostalgia. It seems that one is not granted the right to wistfully look back to ages one was not born in. However, I will often read things like this moving tribute to the Habsburgs, and this article on the tragedy of the fall of empires before the First World War, and be moved at what beautiful and noble things these empires and kingdoms must have been in their time, with their shortcomings no longer the inherent malignant blights progressives paint them to be, but rather tragic flaws of the likes that have always hounded even the greatest of human heroes. Romanticized? To some extent, you bet. But I have read the romances of democracy as well, and find very little to commend the human spirit beyond the self-congratulatory back-slapping. (Thomas Paine...good Lord, what a stultified, myopic little hack he was...) The ages of kings and emperors, at least, produce better romances. It's like comparing the Iliad, the Odyssey and the Children of Hurin with Atlas Shrugged. There is no contest. And in an age characterized by a barrenness of spirit, do not underestimate the power of romance.

All this is to say that, while I do not and never will find democracy to be inherently evil, I do not find democracy to be anything special anymore. My exceptionalist love for democracy was predicated on the infantile assumption that democracy holds back more of the darker side of human nature than any other form of government; I have discovered that demoracy, at best, holds back the darkness no better than any other regime. This observation has nothing to do with the Philippines and the process of "state-in-becoming" (to avoid another Clem Camposano lecture on the matter), for I base my observations on what I see coming from the so-called "mature" democracies of the First World. For me, the foremost goal of the state is, as the City of Man, to safeguard the rights and dignity of the human person. It is this end and the means by which it is achieved that would determine what a good government is, and not the form that such a government takes. Whether by king or by parliament, for as long as the dignity and rights of man under God are held sacred, there shall a good regime be. And if any regime, be it democratic, monarchical, anarchic or whatnot fails in this regard, then it deserves to fall. (One more reason to love the American Revolution over the French...) I find this view to be very Thomistic, and quite suitable. When it comes to a regime, it is the substance, and not the accident, that matters.

I do not come by these views overnight. This has been the product of several years worth of musing, pondering and contemplating. Maybe it will change again, though I find it unlikely. The human mind is not without its eccentricities.

I guess I fell out of Political Economy just in time. :)