After the Revolution
by Patrick J. Buchanan
"Democracy ... arises out of
the notion that those who are equal in any respect
are equal in all respects," said Aristotle.
But if the Philosopher disliked the form of
government that arose out of the fallacy of human
equality, the Founding Fathers detested it.
"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule," said
Thomas Jefferson, "where 51 percent of the people
may take away the rights of the other 49." James
Madison agreed, "Democracy is the most vile form of
government." Their Federalist rivals concurred.
"Democracy," said John Adams, "never lasts long. It
soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There is
never a democracy that did not commit suicide."
"You people, sir, is a great beast," Alexander
Hamilton is said to have remarked. If he did not, it
was not far from his view.
Said John Winthrop, the Pilgrim father whose vision
of a "city on a hall" so inspired Ronald Reagan, "A
democracy is ... accounted the meanest and worst
form of government."
But did not the fathers create modernity's first
democracy?
No. They created "a republic, if you can keep it,"
as Ben Franklin said, when asked in Philadelphia
what kind of government they had given us. A
constitutional republic, to protect and defend
God-given rights that antedated the establishment of
that government.
We used to know that. Growing up, we daily pledged
allegiance "to the flag of the United States of
America and to the Republic for which it stands,"
not some democracy. As Walter Williams writes, Julia
Ward Howe did not write the "Battle Hymn of the
Democracy."
Today, we are taught to worship what our fathers
abhorred to such an extent that politicians and
ideologues believe America was put on Earth to
advance a worldwide revolution to ensure that all
nations are democratic.
Only then, said George W. Bush, can America be
secure.
The National Endowment for Democracy was established
for this quintessentially neoconservative end and
meddles endlessly in the internal affairs of nations
in a fashion Americans would never tolerate.
The democratists are now celebrating the revolutions
across the Islamic world in the same spirit, if in
less exalted language, as William Wordsworth
celebrated the French Revolution, "Bliss was it in
that dawn to be alive/But to be young was very
heaven!"
After 1789 ushered in Robespierre and Saint-Just,
the Terror, the dictatorship and the Napoleonic
wars, enthusiasm cooled. But with the Lenin-Trotsky
revolution of 1917, Mao's revolution of 1949, and
Castro's revolution of 1959, the exhilaration
returned, only to see the bright hopes dashed again
in blood and terror.
Last month, the Egyptian revolution enraptured us,
with "pro-democracy" demonstrators effecting,
through the agency of the Egyptian army, the
overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak, a friend and
ally for three decades.
In the exhilaration of their democratic triumph,
some of the boys in Tahrir Square celebrated with
serial sexual assaults on American journalist Lara
Logan. A week after the triumph, returned Sheikh
Yusuf al-Qaradawi addressed a crowd estimated at 1
million in Tahrir Square.
In January 2009, Qaradawi had declared that
"throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the
(Jews) people who would punish them for their
corruption. The last punishment was carried out by
Hitler. ... Allah willing, the next time will be in
the hand of the believers."
"Qaradawi is very much in the mainstream of Egyptian
society," wrote the Christian Science Monitor.
In 2004, this centrist was apparently offered the
leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Today, we read that, liberated from Mubarak, Muslims
set fire to a Christian church in Sol, south of
Cairo, then attacked it with hammers.
When enraged Christians set up roadblocks in Cairo
demanding the government rebuild the church, they
were set upon by Muslims as soldiers stood by.
Thirteen people, most of them Coptic Christians,
were shot to death on Tuesday, and more than a
hundred were wounded in the worst religious violence
in years.
Revolutions liberate people from tyranny, but also
free them up to indulge old hates, settle old scores
and give vent to their passions.
What are the passions that will be unleashed by the
revolution that has the Arab nation of 300 million
aflame?
Surely, one is for greater freedom, good jobs and
prosperity, such as the West and East Asia have been
able to produce for their people.
Yet if even European nations like Greece, Ireland
and Spain, which used to deliver this, no longer
seem able to do so, how will these Arab nations,
which have never produced freedom, prosperity or
progress on a large scale, succeed in the short time
they will have?
Answer: They will not. The great Arab revolution
will likely fail.
And when it does, those other passions coursing
through the region will rise to dominance. And what
are they but ethnonationalism, tribalism and Islamic
fundamentalism?
What will eventually unite this turbulent region --
when its peoples fail to achieve what they are
yearning for -- is who and what they are all
against.
Ask not for whom the bell tolls.