Democracy and Equality

In conversation with some colleagues the other day, the topic of the American election came up.  One person said that the Americans should amend their system so that whoever wins the popular vote wins the election.  I responded that this was a bad suggestion.  Democracy, I argued, is the worst concept of government there is.  America’s Founding Fathers, I argued, while wrong to give themselves a republican (no king) form of government, at least had the sense to invent the electoral college to filter the popular vote so that their democracy was less direct.

 

Someone else said that I was advocating dictatorship, as if this was the only alternative to democracy.  Apparently he had forgotten that I have explained my views quite clearly in the past. Legitimate government is a representative model on earth of the government of the universe in Heaven.  That means the reign of kings.  Or, should the succession fall to a woman as in the case of our late Sovereign Lady of blessed memory, Elizabeth II, a queen.  Since human beings are fallen and sinful and lack the perfect justice of the King of Kings in Heaven, the institution that provides the governed with representation in the earthly king’s government is also acceptable.  This is the ancient institution of Parliament.  That it is ancient and has proven itself through the tests of time, and not the fact that it is democratic, is why it is acceptable. 

 

Dictatorship is not the opposite of democracy but its ultimate expression.  I don’t mean the original dictators, who were officials of the Roman Republic, appointed by the consuls (co-presidents) to handle an emergency, usually military in nature. I mean dictators in today’s usage, which is synonymous with what the ancients called tyrants.  Whatever you call it, however, a dictator or tyrant, this kind of person is the ultimate democrat.  For he seizes power by rallying the mob behind him.  He is the opposite of a king, whose position in his realm is an extension of that of the father in the home or the patriarch in the older, more extended, family.  A dictator is always “Big Brother”, the first among equals.  Eric Blair knew of that which he wrote.

 

This colleague defended equality on the grounds that the Lord made us equal.  “Chapter and verse” I responded.  There is no chapter and verse, because this is not the teaching of the Scriptures.

 

Like democracy, equality is one of those abstract ideals that Modern man has made into an idol.  The ancient Greeks knew better as can be seen in the myth of Procrustes, whom Theseus encountered and who made his guests fit his one-size-for-all bed by either lopping parts of them off or stretching them.  Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s “Harrison Bergeron” is an updated version of this story.  Equality is a very deceptive idol because of its surface resemblance to the ancient good of justice.  Justice, however, demands that each person be treated right.  Equality demands that each person be treated the same as every other person.  These are not the same thing. 

 

The difference between treating people right and treating people the same can be illustrated by further ripping the mask off of equality.  Equality passes itself off as the virtuous ethic of “You should treat a perfect stranger as if he were your own brother.”  In practice, however, what it really means is “you should treat your own brother as if he were a perfect stranger.”  In the field of economics equality is socialism, the system that presents itself under the mask of Charity or Christian Love, the highest of the spiritual or theological virtues, when behind that mask is Envy, the second worst of the Seven Deadly Sins.

 

The ancients knew that equality and democracy, far from being the goods and virtues they purport to be, basically boiled down to two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for supper.  Modern experience adds that the false idol of equality leads inevitably to the dehumanization of mass society in which each person is reduced to just one number in the multitude.

 

My colleague argued that each person is equal in worth or value and that this can be seen by the fact that Jesus died for everybody.  We should not be making a big deal about people’s worth or value, however, because to do so is to commoditize human beings.  The value or worth of something is what you can exchange it for in the market.  Jesus applied the concept of value to human beings once.  This was in Matt. 10:21 and Luke 12:7 which record the same saying.  Jesus’ point here is not egalitarian.  God cares for the sparrows, you are worth more than them (this is a hierarchical, not an egalitarian observation), therefore you should trust God to take care of you.  The only other time the word value appears in the New Testament – worth doesn’t appear there at all – is in Matt. 27:9 which speaks about the silver Judas was paid to betray Jesus. 

 

Yes, Jesus died for all.  To say that this made people equal is a major non sequitur.  It introduced a new distinction between people.  Those who trust in Him are saved by His death.  Those who don’t, are condemned all the more for their rejection of the Saviour.  Where they are equal, that is, the same, is in their need for Christ’s saving work.

 

I recommend reading Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn for clarity on this matter.  Start with his Liberty Or Equality? The Challenge of Our Times.