Is Democracy the Best Government? Is It in Danger?

These two questions might seem rather strange, coming from a citizen of the United States. Yet I have been alarmed by a number of blog posts from people on the political Left suggesting we or other nations would be better off with a more authoritarian type of government. For example, in this 2012 essay on the Huffington Post, the authors state that whether a government is democratic or authoritarian is not as important as whether or not it is successful. What “successful” means to them is defined contextually as a combination of stability and economic development. Much of their essay is used to demonstrate a democracy is most stable in countries that have been democratic for a long time, and that authoritarian regimes are most stable in countries of lesser economic development. They also note that economic development of a lesser developed country can be quite rapid in an authoritarian regime. In support of this statement they point to the Singapore of Lee Kuan Yew. They continue by wondering if non-western nations, with different histories, cultures and values, can progress better with more authoritarian forms of government.

Essays like this proliferated with the authoritarian regime of China. as well as Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew and (less frequently) Putin’s Russia being greatly admired. (See here and here and here and here and here and here.) Most of these essays emphasized the rapid economic growth under authoritarian regimes with non-western values. Taking these points as a starting position, Thomas Friedman, in a 2009 article in the New York Times, took the argument a step further by claiming that the Chinese regime was inherently better than that of the United States. What he claimed was China with its one-party autocracy was superior to America’s “one-party democracy”, because China was not ever frozen into inaction. America’s “one-party democracy” on the other hand was sometimes frozen on addressing critical problems because the ruling party was blocked by the opposition party.

You might justifiably be confused about what Friedman meant by a “one-party democracy”. After all, a one-party state could be considered the antithesis of democracy. Friedman only makes sense if what he considers the “one-party” is the governing party. Presumably the United States would be a two-party state only if the Democrats and Republicans shared power, which was not the case in 2009. However, the Republicans had enough strength in combination with some dissident Democrats that they could stop some key actions by the Obama administration. In particular, Friedman was particularly upset that the Republicans were able to stop “energy/climate legislation” and health care legislation (the Affordable Care Act was not passed into law until March 2010 – against unanimous Republican opposition). Apparently, Friedman felt that since the Democrats had total control over both the executive and legislative branches of government, it was the duty of the Republicans to roll over to support the Democrats in whatever they wanted. That is, until the Republicans could win control through elections, they should become honorary Democrats.

A more honest presentation of Friedman’s thesis is this: China as a one-party autocracy is superior to the two-party democracy of the United States because the U.S. government could be deadlocked in some issues if the powers of the two parties are sufficiently balanced. An autocracy is superior to a democracy because there is no one who will oppose the dictators. The politicians of a democracy may not support each other and deadlock because they must listen to the people who elected them. Friedman’s complaint is implicitly a criticism of the U.S. electorate because they could not make up their collective mind as to which party should be in charge.

Friedman was followed in this position by Richard Cohen in a March 2015 article in the New York Daily News. The occasion of Cohen’s essay was the death of Lee Kuan Yew, whose life Cohen was celebrating. To his credit, Cohen was critical of some dictatorial aspects of Yew’s regime, saying

The suppression of dissent is not praiseworthy. The application of the death penalty is abhorrent. The lack of political opposition and press freedom is not to be admired, and one-man rule — Lee was in major office for about 52 years — is hardly admirable. Lee ran a one-man state and he ran it, on occasion, repressively.

Cohen then turns around and spoils his essay. He first makes the usual comments about Yew’s economic performance in building Singapore’s infrastructure and industries. As was once said of another dictator, Yew made the trains run on time. Cohen then delivers the worst lines in his article.

We suffer from an excess of democracy. We have a Congress that has been gridlocked for as long as anyone can remember. It is at the mercy of any extremist from anywhere in the country who can threaten a primary fight. Our infrastructure is eroding, yet we seem incapable of doing anything about it. Lee Kuan Yew knew what to do about it. If you need a bridge, build it.

You will see the obvious repetition of  Friedman’s thesis.

What makes America vulnerable to these authoritarian instincts are the many occasions when the electorate can not decide how to deal with very serious problems. If they go unresolved for too long a time, the pressure might become irresistible to act undemocratically. In situations like that, for example, you might find a President who tries to solve problems by unconstitutional fiat. Saying this is not the same as saying that “we suffer from an excess of democracy”. What it does say is that if we want to keep our republic, we have to discuss these problems intensively so that we can do our collective duty at the ballot box.

Progressives have had this fascist tendency at least since Woodrow Wilson expressed his contempt for the Constitution because it blocked him from doing what he wanted to do. In the same way Friedman and Cohen both expressed their contempt for American democracy because it puts roadblocks in the way of what they considered progress. If these ideas take hold in this country, democracy in America is in very deep trouble. At the very least it is a subject that deserves discussion.

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