ON THE RAZOR’S EDGE
“In a democracy,” the Greek historian Herodatus wrote in the 5th century BC, “there is, first, that most splendid of virtues, equality before the law.”
The first democracy was created by decree in ancient Athens. It lasted almost two hundred years.
Our American democracy, also created by a group decree, is now almost 250 years old, and it is teetering on a razor’s edge. The January 6 Select Committee is revealing to us how close we came to losing our equality before the law. And many Americans, including a shocking number of monstrously hypocritical Republican elected officials, continue to support this move toward autocracy tainted with the smell of militant fascism.
Most of western democracies are reeling at the American plight, and are further energized to help preserve the democratic country of Ukraine under attack by a fascistic regime as brutal and poised toward greater domination as the Nazis it fought against in World War II.
What does the end of democracy mean to us, we Americans? Those pushing to undermine it seem to envision the end of melting-pot pluralism, which now they view in their “replacement theory” as an end of white supremacy, of hardline Christian values, of redlined diversity, of selected rights to power.
Twice in its two hundred years Athenian democracy was interrupted: the first when a group of citizens overthrew the democracy and, through constitutional channels, established an oligarchy, which lasted only four months before democracy was again restored. The second interruption occurred following a defeat by Sparta, but democracy was again restored after a year of rule by Spartan appointees.
Can we count the Big Lie and the January 6 insurrection as a near loss, just as the Civil War, had the South prevailed, could have brought an end to our democracy?
We seem to rally to democracy’s defense when threatened by alien tyrannical forces such as the Nazis, the empirical Japanese, El Qaida, and ISIS.
But weakening from within seems to be the fate of democracy as the enduring face of human equality. Perhaps it is the inborn nature of our species, our deep xenophobia, our inherent clannishness, that foments distrust of difference and disdain for diversity, Is that what inevitably brings democracies down? For most of the world and for most of human existence, democracy—equality before the law—has not prevailed. Alpha males have almost always ruled us, and in many parts of today’s world they still do rule. But in those two hundred years of Athenian democracy most of the basic tenets of western civilization were elucidated. And our own record over the recent two hundred-plus years is one we can be proud of. Tyranny forecloses creativity—all creativity, perhaps with the exception of military armament and military strategy. Is that not the Nazi legacy?
We are treading toward that edge. Democracy is in peril. Will we lose it and have to wait another millennium or two or three, and not in our lifetime or our children's lifetime or their children's?
Lean in America. Join hands. Love all thy neighbors. Savor and protect them.
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