The View From 1776

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Maggie’s Farm published a link to the full text of the title essay by Loren J. Samons II, which appeared in The Civic Arts Review.

A central point in Mr. Samons’s essay is the following:

“If, then, democracy has become an almost unimpeachable doctrine, we might seriously consider whether it has begun to function as something like an unacknowledged religion, essentially filling a void left by the diminishing presence of previous social values.”

Other aspects of this topic have been covered in:

Socialism: Our Unconstitutionally Established Religion

The Religion Clause Upside Down

A Federal Republic, Not a Democracy

Equality vs Liberty

Political Correctness and the Downfall of Democracy

The full text of Mr. Samons’s essay follows:

MODERN AMERICA AND THE RELIGION OF DEMOCRACY

Our argument has arrived at something of a paradox. Study of Athenian history and society has suggested that the ancient Greek polls-even a democratic polis such as Athens-organized itself around religious practices, moral principles, and duties that touched virtually every area of public and private life. Indeed, we have seen that religion pervaded Athenian society, to the point that Athens possessed no true secular sphere. Yet we have also noted the tendency of modern democratic societies to attempt to separate the religious and political arenas. This separation “of church and state” and the freedom it ostensibly ensures for religious, social, and political activity are often hailed as very clear ways in which the modern conception of good government has improved on the political systems of the ancient Greeks or Romans.

The stricture preventing the U.S. Congress from making laws “respecting an establishment of religion” in the first article of the Constitution’s Bill of Rights has encouraged the idea that the “separation of church and state” should serve as a fundamental principle of American government and society. Indeed, the phrase “separation of church and state” comes readily to students’ lips when they are asked to quote something from the Constitution. Of course, neither the idea nor the phrase appears in the Constitution, but many Americans’ belief that it does (or certainly should) demonstrates how important the idea of church-state separation is in the American psyche.

Modern Americans have extended the “constitutional” separation of church and state to justify actions at the state and local level, using the principle to attempt to banish nativity scenes from public property, prayer from schoolrooms, and the words “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance. It lies outside my own field of expertise to trace how this interpretation of the Constitution’s position on church and state became codified as both a working judicial principle and an article of American faith. However, there is little doubt that the contemporary consensus about the separation of church and state reflects neither the actual words of our founding documents nor the realities of American government and society in the decades following the Constitution’s ratification. In fact, many states continued to maintain established churches or religious qualifications for office well into the 1800s. Clearly, the Constitution’s First Amendment did not limit the power of a city or state to patronize religion or encourage a particular religious standard. Rather, the First Amendment limited Congress’s ability to interfere in this matter at the national, state, or local level.

Nevertheless, like the idea that democracy represents the best form of government, the view that good government depends in part on a “separation of church and state” has become an American article of faith. Again, we must leave aside the fact that the American Founders made no effort to restrict local religious establishments via the Constitution and that they largely distrusted democracy and did not seek to make the United States into one. Today, most Americans believe in a “constitutional” separation of church and state and maintain that their government is a democracy. Our politicians encourage this belief by talking about heeding “what the American people want” and designating those regimes of which they approve as “democratic” and those they would criticize as “undemocratic.” Having lost most of its historical content, the word democracy has come to stand for the amorphous idea of “good government” centered around personal rights and the practice of casting ballots. In short, like many successful religions, democracy has been put into a palatable and easily digestible form-a form that is only loosely related to its historical origins and that requires a certain degree of faith within the followers. And like many religions, too, democracy sometimes affects public actions and professed opinions more than real lifestyle or private beliefs.

To speak of democracy as a kind of national religion may seem absurd, especially since contemporary American democracy has made separation of church and state such a hallowed doctrine. But let us consider the idea for a moment. Surely it is fair to say that democracy now represents a doctrine that few dare to challenge openly in any serious or fundamental way. Publicly expressed American views about government and society seem to reflect an almost absolute belief in the value of democracy, treating it as something more than a mere political system with certain properties that has existed at particular moments in history.

Let us return to the imaginary dinner party attended by businessmen, teachers, politicians, ironworkers, and journalists described in the introduction to this book, where I argued that scarcely an eyebrow would be raised if one of those present said: “I don’t support the idea of marriage [or the family, God, the sanctity of human life, a citizen army, etc.],” whereas it is not difficult to imagine a rather different reaction if someone announced: “I don’t approve of democracy [or freedom, or rights]” or “I don’t approve of granting the vote to all adults regardless of qualifications.” We also saw in the introduction that the contemporary attachment to democracy is not limited to popular culture; political scientists now sometimes evaluate particular programs, institutions, or policies based on their ability to foster democracy, rather than evaluating democracy’s ability to foster sociopolitical “goods” (like private property).

If, then, democracy has become an almost unimpeachable doctrine, we might seriously consider whether it has begun to function as something like an unacknowledged religion, essentially filling a void left by the diminishing presence of previous social values. Is it so outrageous to suggest that the vote now serves as a kind of Eucharist-as the privilege and duty that identifies one as a citizen and democrat in good standing? (Indeed, those who do not partake in this sacrament are often said to have “no right” to criticize American government.) As in a religion, in modern America various sects within democracy compete for followers and dominance. But, as if mimicking the competing denominations or branches found within other religions, all claim to be the “true” democrats, who are really interested in providing “what the American people want” and thereby guaranteeing as much freedom and happiness to “the American people” as possible.

Obviously Americans’ views on particular political issues differ significantly (just as the faithful in any religion differ on questions of theology or ritual). Yet even these differences tend to remain within a remarkably narrow band of political thought. Democrats and Republicans quibble over fairly small changes in rates of taxation and marginal alterations to social programs. Questions about the principles supporting such programs as the progressive income tax, public education, or Social Security are rarely heard (much less taken seriously). Moreover, in a land that continually praises “diversity,” is it not somewhat odd that there is virtually no popular political opposition to the principle that whatever “the American people” want is an appropriate goal of our society? I do not mean to imply that everyone who uses the phrase sincerely believes that he knows or really cares about what “the American people” want. I only wish to emphasize that this is the rhetorical stance one must take to suggest that one is a good political leader. The idea that American political figures should actually lead the people by telling them what they should want and why-that is, the idea that a politician should risk popular disapproval by attempting to change the opinion of the majority has almost no currency in contemporary public debate. Can anyone imagine an American elected official or political candidate today actually criticizing the populace for their views (and succeeding in changing the electorate’s minds), as Pericles, Cleon, and even (in the end) Demosthenes did?
In the Athenian polls, a matrix of duties and responsibilities arguably limited the deleterious effects of demokratia on Athenian society and restricted its ability to dominate Athenian thought. In contrast, modern Americans’ veneration of freedom through democracy manifests itself in virtually every aspect of life today through the politicization of social, religious, and economic factors. Whereas political, economic, and other factors once played a subsidiary role within society, which itself was ultimately organized around nonpolitical principles, in today’s society-based on the idealization of freedom and the political form (democracy) that is supposed to ensure it-social factors are subsumed by “politics.” Since modern America venerates freedom and treats it primarily as a political value, it is the political manifestation (democracy) of this ideal that acts as the primary organizing force for society. However, other manifestations of freedom receive increasing social endorsement and political protection, including the chemical manifestation (mood altering drugs), the economic manifestation (unrestrained capitalism), the sexual manifestation (promiscuity without responsibility), and the religious manifestation (spiritualism without morality and traditional ritual). Americans’ endorsement and the government’s protection of these “freedoms” strongly suggest that modern American society is organizing itself around a new set of beliefs spawned by our democratic regime and ideals. These new beliefs require the evaluation of each area of life in terms of its connection to the principle of freedom as expressed through and ensured by democracy.

This book’s examination of Athenian society, and my hypothesis that people wish to live in something like an integral society, may help explain why the manifestations of freedom listed above are increasingly protected politically and endorsed socially. Sexual promiscuity, to take but one example, is socially tolerated and even encouraged by providing birth control and means of “safe” or “safer” sex to younger and younger adolescents. Although often associated with public health concerns, the desire to make relationships safer through means other than increased teenage abstinence and adult monogamy seemingly reflects a belief that sex (and, indeed, especially sex outside of marriage) constitutes a powerful expression of one’s freedom and therefore should not be limited. Through its connection to freedom, sex functions as one of America’s new shared values, and it is not easily undercut even by the known disadvantages faced by children born (in increasing numbers) out of wedlock or to teenage mothers, or even by the sexually transmitted diseases that make a promiscuous lifestyle dangerous. In a society practicing the worship of freedom through democracy and lacking any other constraining social forces, promiscuous sex threatens to become a protected sacrament despite the economic, psychological, and physical risks it entails.

Modern America’s current culture suggests that personal happiness is the proper goal of life, and that only freedom-indeed, the political and social “freedom to choose” how to live one’s life, expressed through the increasingly politicized areas of life listed above-can make one truly happy. We may pause for a moment to demonstrate the weakness of this premise, for it has important ramifications for the modern idealization of freedom and rights. Most human beings in recorded history have not been “free” politically or socially in the sense that we mean by the word freedom today. Many, in fact, have been slaves, literally held as the property of other human beings. Do we believe that all, or even most, of these politically unfree (or even enslaved) individuals were unhappy? Is it actually reasonable to believe that virtually all human beings before the eighteenth century lived unhappy lives because they did not possess democratic freedom? Can we really sanction the idea that only the modern condition of political and social freedom produces or maximizes happiness in individual human beings? Surely, we must admit, those in our own society with the most political and social freedom are the extremely wealthy or powerful. Do we believe that they are also the happiest (or least unhappy) individuals in society?

But if the state of happiness does not result directly from the condition of freedom, how, then, can we explain the pervasive view that freedom will or can make one happy? Arguably, it is derived largely from its negative: the lack of freedom (life in slavery or under political tyranny) can and often does make one unhappy. It seems reasonable, therefore (although it is strictly illogical), to conclude that it is freedom that makes one happy.

If we associate happiness not with political or personal freedom (from tyranny or enslavement) but with the modern “freedom to choose” how to live and thus to enjoy pleasures, we reach a similar result. Let us honestly examine those of our acquaintances who enjoy the most pleasures, or think of the times in our own lives when our active pleasures were maximized should we conclude that those (including ourselves) enjoying maximum pleasure are also the happiest? I would suggest that to confuse maximized pleasure or maximized freedom from control by others with real happiness is to accept either an infantile (happiness = maximum pleasure) or adolescent (happiness = maximum freedom from control) conception of happiness. Thus, even if one agrees that happiness is the appropriate goal of human life, and that society should attempt to maximize it for individuals, there is little reason to believe that freedom or pleasure will produce this result. On the other hand, since life under tyranny or in slavery can make one unhappy and-more important-because enslaving or tyrannizing over others is morally wrong, members of any society have a duty to their fellow citizens to fight against these forces.

The idea that opposition to tyranny or slavery rests on a moral foundation contrasts sharply with the popular view that we oppose them because they infringe upon rights that exist separately from any system of moral obligations. And yet such moral obligations seem necessary to support any attempt to protect individuals from those who would harm them. For, despite the long-standing attempt in political philosophy to provide a firm foundation for the idea of “natural rights,” I cannot see any way that rights can exist except as the reciprocal effects of socially endorsed duties based on moral principles. That is, no one has a right to property: such a thing as a “right to property” simply does not exist. But we all should be duty bound not to steal something that belongs to another person and to protect others from those who would steal because we believe stealing is immoral. As Washington implied in his farewell address (quoted in an epigraph to this chapter), only duties based on moral principles of right and wrong can provide any secure environment for the protection of what moderns call an individual’s “rights.”

To someone who would contradict this conclusion-arguing, for example, that the proposition “stealing is immoral” already rests on a “right to property” (which therefore can be stolen)-one may respond that it is also sometimes morally wrong to allow someone to retain his property (e.g., an individual who would harm himself or others with his own gun or knife). Thus it is the moral duty to our fellow man that is fundamental to the idea of rights and not vice versa. Such moral principles must undergird any society that wishes to protect rights in fact and not just in theory.

FREEDOM, CHOICE, AND DIVERSITY

By demonstrating the important role society and extra political values play in limiting the potentially dangerous effects of democratic practices and ideas, Athenian history should encourage us to ask whether it is wise to enshrine modern democratic ideals like freedom, choice, and diversity as values or establish them as goals without any other social framework of moral obligation. Can freedom, choice, and diversity, when set up as goals or values, actually undermine the very notions of values, individual responsibility, and morality, and thus fail to foster even themselves? Is it possible that those things many modern democrats claim to admire most-freedom, choice, and diversity-developed and continue to exist primarily as the by-products of moral principles and individual duties, such as the duty to protect others from violation, oppression, or prejudice because each of these acts is immoral when judged by the once conventional standards of our culture (itself based on the long Judaeo-Christian tradition)? In short, is it more likely that a society based on duties and moral principles will generate a significant amount of freedom, choice, and diversity, or that a society based on the latter will generate sound moral principles?
Recent events in American politics and society suggest that these questions deserve serious thought. Consider, for example, the violent and often brutally anti-woman attitudes expressed in popular music and acted out by the attendees at Woodstock III in July 1999 or in New York City during the Puerto Rico Day celebration in June 2000. In both cases, men mauled and molested young women in broad daylight and in view of hundreds of others. Media commentators and others justifiably complained about lax security and incendiary musicians in the first case and the ineffective police in the second. But the most troubling aspect of both incidents was that they occurred within large crowds of bystanders who simply watched (or cheered.) while their fellow citizens were abused. The perpetrators judged (accurately) that they had little or nothing to fear from those around them. There were no social constraints on them, and surprisingly few analysts after the fact expressed significant consternation about the total breakdown in such constraints. Instead, the musicians and organizers (at Woodstock) and the government institutions charged with protecting the populace (especially the police) received most of the blame.

But unless one wishes to create a totalitarian regime, institutions such as the police cannot be everywhere at once, and thus they cannot act as a consistent check on misbehavior and crime. Such a check is imposed most effectively not by government institutions but by communal moral standards and resulting individual action. However, in a world with few communal standards beyond freedom, choice, and diversity, if a man chooses to hold a low view of women, express these ideas profitably to a catchy tune, and/or treat the women around him accordingly, what is there to stop him? And even if we agree that noxious ideas must be tolerated by the state (in order to prevent political tyranny), can we justify the failure of individuals and society as a whole to condemn and oppose such views and the actions reflecting them on moral grounds?

I suggest that contemporary democratic thought is actually encouraging this situation, because, as we have already seen, the freedom that is idealized by modern society is not in fact the passive “freedom from being enslaved, tyrannized over, or violated” (Greek eleutheria), but rather the active “freedom to choose for oneself” based on personal desires and largely irrespective of moral obligation. Choice itself-instead of particular choices-thus forms an essential virtue and tool of modern democratic faith. Moral judgments and whatever else impinges on choice are often treated as potentially harmful if not evil, and that which encourages choice is deemed virtuous. “Prochoice” is a moniker worn proudly by both “liberals” supporting abortion rights and “conservatives” supporting school voucher programs, while “antichoice” is universally avoided.

America’s democratic ideology and lack of a strong moral matrix-which would designate some choices as good or just and others as bad or unjust-mean that modern Americans have few standards by which to judge their actions and choices other than freedom itself. And in this environment, whatever choices appear most free will seem most likely to produce happiness and therefore will exercise a powerful pull on individual minds and hearts, with little consideration of their effects on others within the society or the chooser’s own character or soul. Thus social ills like divorce, family abandonment, and abortion (three things that I do not mean to equate morally), which can be characterized as choices expressing the freedom of the individual, are not only tolerated but sometimes actually encouraged, even if subtly. And once a society has come to this point, surely we must admit that any theoretical connection between choice or freedom and the creation of a just and healthy society has obviously broken down. Deprived of a moral foundation, freedom’s value rests largely on its status as an environment for choice, which itself can be evaluated only against the freedom that permits it. As Finley saw, freedom and democracy, which were once seen as means of achieving a just society, have transformed themselves into the definition of justice.

The idealization of freedom through democracy has led modern America to a precipitous position. Implicitly denying man’s desire for a society based on beliefs and duties that lie beyond a system of government and the rights this government (democracy) is designed to protect, we have replaced society’s extra political goals with the potentially antisocial political doctrines of freedom, choice, and diversity. These words have been made to resonate in the citizens’ hearts in a way that God, family, and country once did in America (or gods, family, and polis in Athens). At the turn of the twenty-first century, freedom, choice, and diversity represent America’s absolute “moral” goods and have become the would-be unifying principles of American society. They cannot be questioned in polite company, while God, family, and country are fair game. What could more clearly demonstrate America’s apparent conversion to this new religion than the fact that basic elements of traditional American society-such as the Pledge of Allegiance or the prayers opening Congress-seem to cause embarrassment to many intellectuals, media figures, and even politicians, who seem at most other times to be virtually incapable of embarrassment (much less shame)?

Despite modern Americans’ veneration of freedom and diversity, there is little sympathy or tolerance for those members of society who would make judgments about the moral worth of others’ actions. While it seems perfectly acceptable in some circles to upbraid someone for holding politically “incorrect” views, the act of informing another person that his or her actions are morally wrong and socially unacceptable is itself considered rude if not immoral! The “freedom” to make such a statement about immoral actions, the “choice” to hold such beliefs, and the “diversity” that such differences produce do not seem welcome in contemporary America. But no society with real values (that is, values beyond the anti-values of freedom, choice, and diversity) can continue to exist under strictures that prevent the reaffirmation of those values through the public and private disapprobation of individuals who violate them. Without the ability to inspire shame in those who violate societal norms and reward those who uphold them, a society possesses no effective means to reproduce its own values and structures.

America’s loss of cultural structures that reinforce moral values has not gone unnoticed. The American political theorist Jean Bethke Elshtain, in her youth a “Nixon loather,” who was surprised upon finding herself with feelings other than hatred of the former president after he died, concluded that
in his own way, this complex man, humiliated and disgraced, struggled for the last two decades of his life to regain a measure of respect from his fellow citizens. If we no longer create in America men and women who can be shamed and made to pay a price for dishonoring the public trust, but who, in turn, strive to recover just a few moments of civic grace, we will have lost a culture that is strong enough to censure presidents and kind enough to permit them to recover their dignity through civil accomplishment.

Those words, penned in April 1994, seem strangely prescient (and ominous) in view of the past decade of American history. It is no longer surprising if a president, a corporate executive, or even an archbishop-admittedly or obviously guilty of antisocial and immoral behavior-instead of seeking the public’s forgiveness, rather trusts in its indulgence. One cannot help feeling that we may have already crossed into an age when public shame, collective kindness, and the moral notions that generate both are disappearing from American society.

In stark contrast, the classical Athenians never lost the ability to pronounce or enforce their collective standards of morality and thus to produce shame in individuals. Even the democratic icon Pericles spoke of those “laws which, although unwritten, yet cannot be broken without acknowledged disgrace” (Thuc. 2.37). The negative and positive requirements for Athens’s citizens analyzed in chapter a show that the Athenians placed real strictures on one another and could not have endorsed modern Americans’ idealization of freedom, choice, and diversity. Respect for the laws, obedience to magistrates, and shame or disgrace for those who violated society’s written and unwritten codes always formed a central part of Athenian life, which exhibited significant amounts of freedom, choice, and diversity as a result.

In the United States today, the anti-values of freedom, choice, and diversity have become so powerful (and dangerous) in part because-note the supreme irony-they admit of no philosophical opposition. One simply cannot oppose treating these ideas as society’s appropriate goals without risking being labeled a reactionary, heretic, or worse, as if it had been empirically proven that only peoples or regimes that worship these deities can produce justice or happiness. Has America seen the amount of social justice and personal happiness increase proportionately with its rising estimation of this trinity?

Finally, does real religious freedom actually exist in this society ostensibly based on the principles of choice and diversity? Would, for example, serious or organized dissent from the church of freedom (if any actually arose) be welcomed or even tolerated? It may seem to some unlikely that the state itself would suppress such opposition. But such suppression by the state is unnecessary where the people themselves enforce their own social (anti-)values. Dissent from freedom, choice, and diversity is suppressed informally at virtually every turn, and this as much as anything else demonstrates that our society has already reorganized itself around new principles. In short, our society still attempts to impose shame on its members, but only on those who violate the now sacred tenets of democratic ideology”

It thus seems true that even a society that ostensibly rejects unifying ideals or morals will inevitably organize itself around some defining principles. For the United States in the early twenty-first century, those principles arguably derive from freedom, choice, and diversity expressed through democracy. Contemporary Americans become “democrats” in the same ineluctable way that serfs or cobblers in the Middle Ages became Christians, and ultimately we may be just as subservient to our church as was the medieval shoemaker. Our priestly caste in the media and government speaks ex cathedra to the people, who, however unsatisfied in their daily existence, can at least comfort themselves with the belief that theirs is the one true faith.

In classical Athens, religion suffused every aspect of public life, from the theater to the military to the political assembly. The state (that is, the citizens) sponsored religious festivals and actively participated in the propitiation and worship of the gods. This fact well illustrates the way the various aspects of Athenian society-religious, political, economic, and social-overlapped with and affected one another, and the way every Athenian found himself set firmly within a matrix of duties to the gods, to his family, and to his fellow citizens. The principle of necessary duties (especially to protect the family, to serve the polis, and to propitiate the gods) formed the basic structure of Athenian society, and gave meaning to each religious, economic, military, and political act. In such an environment, it was impossible for the Athenians abjectly to worship a form of government, demokratia, even after they had made it a goddess. The idea that the “freedom to make choices” or “diversity” were absolute goods and thus could serve as goals or ideals (on a level with, much less above, family, gods, or polls) contradicted the very premises of Athenian society. Thus while democratic practices ultimately had a marked and deleterious effect on Athenian national strength and public morale and arguably contributed to the loss of Athenian independence, Athenian society managed to stave off the most harmful aspects of democratic theory. Even after they lost their democracy and autonomy, there is little evidence that the Athenians completely lost their fundamental conception of a society based on the principle of duties.

American history suggests that the Athenians might not have been able to withstand indefinitely the threat posed by the ideal of virtually unbounded freedom (had they ever developed it). Confronted with perceived tyranny from England, and enjoying what was (at worst) a semi-integral society, the American Founders constructed a regime that praised freedom (from that English tyranny) and reflected the modern liberal idea that individual human beings possess inalienable rights (even if most of them associated these rights with a creator). But, as some of the Founders may have recognized even at the time, they were largely free to encourage this view of rights because they were grafting a government onto a society whose values had been long established. For this reason and others, American government could theoretically be designed to interfere as little as possible in American society, which already enjoyed a firm foundation in civic duty, faith in God, and the belief that work would bring rewards. And even those Founders most committed to separating the government from any religious establishment never doubted the need for the beneficial social by-products of Americans’ religious practices and beliefs.

As the nineteenth century wore on, a philosophical and social democratization occurred within America, whose form of government eventually came to be known as democracy, a concept that had given Madison and other Founders serious misgivings. The supposed ideals of democracy eventually began to supplant older ideals, which the American Constitution theoretically had been designed to leave untouched. The twentieth century’s breakdown in social forces derived from extra political sources (especially basic ideas of duty, personal responsibility, and Judaeo-Christian morality), which initially were capable of restraining the latent dangers in the American system and the emerging democratic ideology, and the development of a thoroughgoing theory of rights and freedoms to be ensured by the state, expressed through active choice, and (theoretically) leading to diversity, have provided new fundamental beliefs for American society.

If, in the end, democracy has become a religion and the attempt to separate church and state in America has therefore failed, it may be because human societies have such a strong tendency to organize themselves around a set of interlocking principles and beliefs. A church of freedom has arisen amid the ruins of previous American ideals, and the message proclaimed from its pulpit is clear:

Choose anything but not to believe.
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Loren J. Samons II teaches in the department of Classical Studies at Boston University. 
Excerpted from What’s Wrong With Democracy? Published by the University of California Press and printed with permission.

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