It is an amazing sight,
the arch-propagandists for democracy taking to the streets in the wake of
losing the Brexit referendum in the UK and the Trump victory in America.
But it does make clear
a necessary characteristic of democracy without which it cannot function. Democracy demands a certain confluence of
interests among the opposing sides, a certain implicitly agreed perimeter
within which all agree to abide, and which allows the losing side, even if only
with gritted teeth, accept the right of the winning side to implement its
program.
Yet the fact is that
this idea of a shared ground of basic values is being progressively blown
apart. In the matter of, for example,
abortion, there are people who will never accept its legalisation even if 90%
of the electorate voted for it. And vice
versa, too.
The reality is that the
ideological gaps in society have become so great as to make the compact that
should underlie democracy increasingly fragile.
The world is now full
of ultras, insistent on implementing their full program, no matter what the
cost. It is a practice especially favoured
by those, on both the right and on the left, whose secret aim is to bring
democracy down.
On the liberal side,
the definition of democracy is progressively being tweaked. Democracy is no longer simply a matter of
getting the most votes. A democracy is now
a democracy only to the extent that it entails what Hilary Clinton has
described as ‘the new decency’. That is
to the extent that it implements the liberal agenda on women’s rights and gay
rights and minority rights etc etc etc .
. . . and whatever other new rights may be waiting in the wings to be wheeled
on.
Should a government
fall on this front, then no matter how many votes it may have got, it is not to
be counted a democracy and can be subjected to economic and political pressures
to bring it to heel.
This is the nature of the
new imperialism of the modern liberal world.
And it is not simply a political program, it is a matter of faith, of belief,
of emotion, of something to be embraced no matter what the cost. It is the secular equivalent of a religion.
It is also something
that in a certain roundabout way lies at the root of the debacle of Iraq and
the collapse of the Middle East . . .
But that is for another
day.
