Continued from Part Three

Democracy and the Degradation of Man

Thanks to Machiavelli and his philosophical successors, Democracy has become the religion—the idolatry—of modernity, more immune to questioning than any revealed religion. Democracy, which until Machiavelli, and even well into the eighteenth century, was deemed a bad form of government, is today firmly established as the only good from of government—even though it is the seedbed of moral relativism.   Still, it may be argued that the freedom and equality which thrive in democracy have facilitated the conquest of nature enjoined by the Torah: “…replenish the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28).   This was not to be expected of Greek political philosophy, given its aristocratic and agrarian orientation, nor of Christianity, given its otherworldliness and asceticism. But this means that the Greco-Christian tradition had to be overcome to facilitate man’s conquest of nature. Consider the positive consequences.

The conquest of nature liberated countless men, women, and children from stultifying toil and suffering. Of course, much stultifying toil and suffering were exacted in the process, especially in the early stages of Capitalism. But even Marx, in his fusillades against the bourgeoisie, had to admit that Capitalism, despite its “naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation,”

has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals. It has created enormous cities and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life.[28]

Meanwhile, liberal democracy has liberated countless people from political bondage. By virtue of equality of opportunity, it opened the door to hitherto suppressed talents. Also, it introduced humane penal codes. The Idea of Equality destroyed much good but also contributed to human progress—or so it may be argued.   It may also be argued, however, that democracy represents not the progress so much as the degradation of man!   Let us explore this hypothesis.

No less a friend of democracy than Alfred North Whitehead has written—and this was before the soul-shattering and stupefying effects of television: “So far as sheer individual freedom is concerned, there was more diffused freedom in the City of London in the year 1663, when Charles the First was King, than there is today in any industrial city in the world.”[29] Industrial democracy breeds its own kind of bondage. True, Democracy put an end to human slavery; but human slavery in the past was not, in all instances, the unmitigated evil it is made out to be, even though its abolition in modern times was certainly justified. Paradoxical as it may seem, the demise of slavery was not the result of moral progress so much as the result of moral decline![30]

Of course, there have always been masters unworthy of having slaves. Nevertheless, when individuals were historically important, were of the caliber of a King David or of a Plato, it was fit and proper that they should be served by lesser men. Indeed, it was an honor to serve such great personages, to behold their virtues, to imbibe their words of wisdom.

But when the importance of leading individuals declined and they were no longer worthy of human servitude, Divine Providence brought about the rise of Democracy and Science on the one hand, and the eradication of slavery on the other. The process was gradual. The less men merited slave labor, the more they had to rely on animal and hired labor. Eventually, mankind sunk to so low a level as to be unworthy even of animal labor. (Only consider how biologists began to exult in tracing their genealogy to apes and to be offended by the idea of a higher origin!) Providence therefore accelerated the development of science and technology so that animals could be replaced by machines, progressively automated (and now very much geared to the gratification of paltry desires). In other words, given the increasing selfishness and hedonism of modernity, man no longer merits being served by any living thing![31]

However, concomitant with the moral decline of the individual, there has been an outward improvement in the character of society. This dichotomy is not paradoxical.   The progress of science and technology, the hallmark of Western civilization, was actually the result of egoism or moral decline (facilitated by Machiavelli’s corrosive attack on Greco-Christian morality). Rousseau writes in his First Discourse, “our souls have been corrupted in proportion to the advancement of our sciences and arts toward perfection.”[32] Rousseau was not merely referring to the moral depravity of his own times, the peak of the “Enlightenment.” He regarded the relationship between corruption and the progress of the arts and sciences as if it were a law of history, a phenomenon, he says, that “has been observed in all times and in all places.”[33] By corruption Rousseau had in mind the decline of civic virtue, of dedication to the common good, in other words, the ascendancy of egoism. But as we have seen, egoism is the basis of Machiavelli’s godless political science to whose advancement Rousseau contributed.

This political science, whose skepticism or agnosticism underlies all the social sciences and humanities, has thoroughly secularized man, stripped him of sapiential wisdom, while atomizing society. The intellectual functions of Secular Man are limited to the operations of pragmatic reason placed at the service of a welter of desires. The once ordered soul is now the disordered “self.” All the emotions of the self, love included, are self-regarding—as the sexual revolution has made clear.[34] The only “natural” good is the private good.[35] Thus Machiavelli.

And now consider the negative aspects of his offspring. Democracy, which enlarged freedom of expression, is witnessing an appalling decline of intellectual standards. Democracy, which elevated the principle of equality, has engendered a leveling of all moral distinctions. Democracy, which championed human dignity, is now yielding to abject vulgarity.

In the process of this degradation, however, Democracy, with its all-pervasive moral relativism, is destroying all ideological competitors to the Torah—including democracy itself![36] The truth is:

Democracy is nothing more than Machiavelli’s own creation; it has no intrinsic validity. Democratic freedom and equality have no rational foundation and can have no rational foundation when severed from the Torah and man’s creation in the image of God.  

The same may be said of the Sovereign State, another offspring of Machiavelli. If Louis XIV said L’etat c’est moi, he was only echoing Machiavelli’s reference to Louis XII as “France” in Chapter 3 of The Prince. The State is simply a human creation, in which respect there is no difference between L’etat c’est moi and Vox populi vox Dei. In both cases law is dependent solely on the will of the sovereign, be it the One, the Few, or the Many. The jurisprudent Isaac Breuer draws the only sensible conclusion: as long as states insist on their sovereignty and recognize no higher authority than their own laws, there can be no social or international peace. “The anarchy of mankind shows itself in continuously recurring historical catastrophes, foretold with tremendous insistence by all the Prophets, to which only the law of God can put an end.”[37] The experience of six decades of the misnamed United Nations—a frequent instigator of conflict—lends weight to this conclusion.   But then, is not the UN General Assembly, which renders all nations equal regardless of their moral and intellectual character, the pinnacle of relativism?

Continued in Part Five