The power of the people is always in danger from those who exercise power, even if they believe in social democracy. They seem to treat it often as some sort of an ideal good while really acting in practice as if it could lead to some sort of tyranny of the uninformed. There is a difficulty with this prejudice. For in supposing that power should not actually rest with the decision of the majority of the citizens of a country, there needs to be at least an implicit supposition of a ruling class. Whether this is one established on the grounds of money, 'nobility', popularity, or even intelligence, does nothing to validate the inescapable fact that such a class is corrupted by its position.
If citizens are called upon, or indeed expected, to maintain the moral order of society it is only right that they have a recognised position or share in that country. In the kingdoms, aristocracies and military juntas of past and present history, people are justified in rising up in unity to establish the properly civilised democratic situation. How this situation is achieved is more morally ambiguous, but its direction is good.
The problem of adopting any other position is that when we assume to inflict any situation whatsoever on another human being without their consent we are doing violence to them. Whenever we are younger, our parents or guardians are the people with responsibility for giving this consent on our behalf, and indeed looking after our interests. This, of course, can be negligently carried out. But on achieving maturity, when we become morally autonomous and therefore responsible, this consent is absolutely ours. Any political arrangement of whatever magnitude which does not accept this principle is essential violent, even if the people are dulled into a non-rebellious lassitude by gluttonness consumerism, or other such pseudo-religions. But that it does not result in a peaceful and just, harmonious society should not be a surprise.
There is of course the obvious difficulty with defending majority rule, shown effectively in the Northern Irish context, where the tyranny of the majority over minorities has been evident. But indeed the minorities often act in a similar manner, their committal of exactly the same sin being limited only due to their lack of opportunity. All dogmatic systems are essentially fascistic where the rights of all separate individuals are not done justice to. This prejudice so often apparent in world history is something that must be tackled doggedly. Its historical regularity is, however, no argument against a properly extensive democracy, as the obverse, the tyranny of the minority, is no more of a 'solution'. The reason why a tyranny of the majority is the best of two evils is that, if we are to be governed at all and not exist in a daily civil war, we have to have faith in the possibility of good guardianship, even whenever there is none actually present. And the inclusive utilitarianism, beginning with what most need and want, but which aspires to serve everyone equitably, is the only one which seems practicable and therefore is the one desirable. For a political morality must work in real life.
If good guardianship is not possible at all then civil war is preferable. At least, we would be acting freely. But we would also be dying freely, and is therefore so far from preferable as to force us to believe in good guardianship for the sake of tolerably secure, valuable lives. Good governance and political harmony are always preferable to just getting our own way, as they are carried out with the consent of all, or at least aspiring to respect that capacity of choice in all. This governance should be performed by human beings just like ourselves. We cannot rely on Kings, prophets, wise men, priests or even celebrities as being in some way special. For as much as it is possible to rely on God for everything in a general sense, decisions and actions are our moral responsibility, or life is robotic and meaningless. And as every human is as fragile and limited as we ourselves are, we recognise that even if they were to be given a special role by God this would still not take away their possibility of error, as this would be to deny them the great reality of their limited human nature. We cannot pretend to know any human being is God or divinely-inspired in a way that all must accept. That is faith, and is private. Political arrangements based on dogmatically accepted inspiration do a great injustice to the rights of others whose beliefs are conscientiously different. Very few religious leaders would dispute this, I believe.
Therefore, no divine vocation such as King, Pope, Rabbi can demand full rational consent, politically speaking. It is possible to interpret the will of the people as a revelation of the will of God in history, but this is unnecessary and problematic. It just is that: the will of the people to which they give what is most human and holy about them - their consent. Where the will of the majority is not represented in the result of presidential or governmental elections, the leader should be most humble and cautious in their actions. For we are co-creators in the divine-human dialogue of history, and the last thing we need is a President acting like a King, much less a god. We should not experience collective guilt for our leaders mismanagement, but we should exercise collective responsibility in putting good people into power and ensuring that a lot of good people are there to share the responsibilty.
In this context, however, the only political reality which seems to respect an acceptable understanding of human responsibility and rights is one where we grant consent or it is granted for us to the governor or set of governors. In every case it is preferable that this consent is made individually. Children should be allowed to learn about their possibility for so doing as soon as is intelligible to them, until when their parents could be entitled to use their vote for them. Consent should be assumed possible by the individual until it is proved beyond rational doubt that this is not so, in the case of the very ill. Punishment should never be used as a reason to withhold the vote, for this would imply that which is not the case that the person has stopped being a rationally responsible human being. If people can still commit crimes in prison, they they should still be able to exercise their positive responsibilty to vote.
With this as a founding principle we quickly arrive at the position which I believe in, that wholehearted,widespread democracy is the morally correct political situation worthy of human beings. Any problems with it should be struggled with as we do with the actual problems of human nature generally. But the body of political democracy should not be severed from the mind and heart of humanity because of these difficulties with it. For this would be tantamount to denying the goodness of our own humanity, and its proper need for respect and refinement.
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