aking the world safe for democracy sums up the mission of American foreign policy. We think that if we can accomplish "free elections" and self-governance in another country, then it will be only a matter of time before freedom will ring throughout their land. We believe that because it has worked so well in this country since the late 1700's, it will automatically work the world over.
Aside from the monumental historical and cultural differences between this country and those we are trying to help, this utopian belief is based on several false premises, one of which is that rule by the few (monarchy or aristocracy) is per se corrupt. All such governments are caricatured as tyrannies driven only by the lusts and self-interest of the rulers. This caricature is then pointed to as the root of all social evil, and is of course vigorously opposed. It is a historical fact that this caricature is sometimes accurate, but it is not the inevitable result of monarchy or aristocracy.
Another false notion about popular democracy is found in the reaction to the above caricature. It can be expressed as vox populi vox dei; the voice of the people is the voice of god. The people, speaking collectively, can do no wrong. Therefore, whatever the people want is what the politicians should give them. Unfortunately, it ignores the fact the people are acting just as much in their own self-interest as a despot is acting in his. Liberty and freedom are still compromised by widespread sin. The point is that no form of government will guarantee liberty if the theological foundation of that government is rotten.
Democracy is essentially government by the people. Citizens gather to administer the government either directly or through elected representatives. As Webster's puts it, democracy is "rule by the ruled." Decisions are made by majority vote; we count noses, and the policy with the most noses becomes law. The underlying premise of democracy is that man is basically good, capable of using his reason to discover right and wrong. While men are not perfect and will occasionally stray, the majority of men at any given time will be rational and morally sound. This moral majority can always be counted on when any moral issue is put to a vote.
The reality of democracy looks nothing like the theory. When applied, democracy results in what is called "populism" — the art of appealing to the passions of the populace. Since everyone has a say in how the government should be run, those who are given the proxy to run the government, the elected representatives, must appeal to the most commonly shared passions of the masses in order to be elected. Since man is not basically good, but is instead corrupted by sin (Romans 3:10-18,23), it is not surprising that these common passions are base and selfish in the extreme. A man who has rejected the law of God is not seeking to love his neighbor when he advocates a particular public policy. He is seeking his own self-interest. This is true of both the elector and of the elected.
As George Will recently stated, "Populism has a chip on its shoulder and self-pity in its heart. Its fuel is resentment, usually of some conspiracy directed from afar by an alien elite. Populism often has been xenophobic, racist, nativist . . . anti-Semitic . . . and paranoid." One needs to look back only as far as the Third Reich and the Soviet Union, to name only two examples, to see the truth of this. Both regimes were founded on popular movements and justified themselves as reform movements. Both were among the most evil and oppressive systems ever known.
The record of Korah's rebellion (Num. 16) provides a biblical example of a failed democratic reform movement. That episode exhibited many of the fallacies still present in the concept of popular democracy. Not content to spend forty
years in the wilderness, a band of rebels convened and decided that the cause of the present discontent was the leadership of Moses and Aaron. The rebels declared that "all the congregation is holy, every one of them," and it was therefore unfair of Moses and Aaron to rule by themselves. They gathered themselves against Moses and Aaron and demanded a place in the government.
Korah and his followers had very short memories. They forgot that their time in the wilderness was the punishment God meted out for the results of the last popular vote, which decided overwhelmingly that Canaan was not a good place to go when it still had Canaanites in it. That vote was taken in spite of the fact that Canaan was God's promised land. Likewise, in Korah's rebellion, the people forgot (or ignored) the fact that Moses and Aaron were chosen by God to rule Israel.
The modern egalitarian, upon reading Numbers 16, would side with Korah. However, the Bible clearly
denounces what Korah started as a rebellion. Those who took part with him were put to death. But it should not be concluded from
this lesson that democracy per se is any more corrupt than monarchy or aristocracy. However, neither is democracy an
exception to the rule that any form of government will be corrupt if the people are seeking their own will rather that God's. If we
blindly seek after government by the people without taking into account the sinful natures of the people, then we will only
multiply the corruption, oppression, suffering — and judgment — which is to come.
