On distinguishing between democracy and liberty

There's an interesting debate going on over at The Corner (it's hard to permalink to a debate over there but the first salvo is here) between Andy McCarthy and John Podhoretz. I think McCarthy has much the better of it on the merits of the initial subject, which was that our President says ridiculous things about the benefits of "democracy," and by both actions and words makes it clear that the central characteristic of "democracy" for him is the elections...in other words, Andy agrees with me on that point. John's initial attempt to refute him includes the statement, "Bush doesn't call [Lebanon] a 'democracy,'" which is probably the stupidest thing anybody has said on The Corner in the past six months and could only be honestly said by somebody who has spent the last year in a Trappist monastery. But as the debate moved on it got more interesting because several other topics came in.

Now, it may be that I am missing McCarthy's point as badly as I think Podhoretz is; I may well be projecting my own views onto McCarthy. I don't think I am, but I could certainly be wrong, and it is important to take note of that fact. But, with that major caveat, here's my take:

1. Podhoretz's belief that "democracy" will reform the Middle East seems to be driven by his insistence that the term "democracy" implies individual rights, and that a "democracy" that tramples individual rights is not a democracy at all. He therefore thinks that running around talking about "bringing democracy to the Middle East" is a good strategy; and he tries to defend the President against McCarthy by saying, "This is what the word means," but without (at least on The Corner) bothering to prove that that's what Dubya means. There are several things wrong with this, however.

a. The fundamental question of the direction of causality is papered over by pretending that "democracy" and "individual rights" are essentially the same thing. From a practical standpoint, it is absolutely critical to ask ourselves, "Which comes first?" if we intend -- as Podhoretz wants us to intend -- to establish both in the Middle East. It is analytically useful to have two separate terms, one of which describes the form of government (which is what the term "democracy" has meant since the Greeks coined it two and a half millenia ago) and one that describes the end to which the form of government is the means. It is, quite simply, obviously clear -- as McCarthy points out and as Podhoretz cannot hope, and does not try, to refute -- to say that the democratic form of government naturally devolves into political oppression, and that only in exceptional cases does that form of government stabilize around protection of individual human rights. When Podhoretz responds by saying, "Oh, well, but if it devolves, then it isn't a Real Democracy," he is in effect trying to redefine democracy as democracy-that-worked-out-well. But in that case, what word would he suggest we use for democracies in which the majority oppresses the minority using the democratic forms of government as a means? By Podhoretz's standards, (a) the Athenian democracy that won Marathon, lost Syracuse, fostered philosophy and killed Socrates, was not a Real Democracy; (b) there is no useful term for democracies like the Athenian one; and (c) it becomes extremely difficult to frame elegantly the fundamental problem with Bush's approach to the remaking of the Middle East, which problem is precisely how to make sure that the democracies you found end up being Real Democracies. For if you point out to Podhoretz that democracies have for most of history been the natural precursors of some form of tyranny -- a point the awareness of which was instrumental in the Founding Father's approach to creating our own Constitution -- he responds, "Oh, but that doesn't count because that's not really democracy." Podhoretz badly needs to stop playing with words and answer the question.

b. Besides, even though that may be what the word means to Podhoretz, it is not in fact what the word fundamentally means to most people in the world. Americans tend to assume that democracies and individual rights go hand in hand, but that is an artifact of our childhood programming. And not even all Americans buy into it; Al Sharpton, for example, famously once said that we had to treat Yasser Arafat with respect because he had been "democratically elected." To most people in the world "democracy" refers to the form of government; it means elections and purple fingers. If Podhoretz wants to run around talking about "democracy" all the time but does not want to be misunderstood by the very people whose culture we are trying to change, then he is a very great fool indeed. What matters is not what Podhoretz thinks when he hears the President talk about "democracy in the Middle East." What matters is, in the first place, what people in the Middle East think when they hear the President indulging in that rhetoric; in the second place, what the President himself means by it; and in a very very distant third place, what Podhoretz means by it.

c. And what the President means by it is much more, it seems to me, what McCarthy criticizes than it is what Podhoretz defends. The President absolutely does talk about the "democracy" of Lebanon, and we had to endure lots of rhetoric from the President early in the Iraq War about how the people of Iraq were "ready to take over their own government." That the people of Iraq were ready to vote, was certainly true. That the people of Iraq had a sufficiently widespread passion for equal rights for all (and a dominant majority must have that passion or else your democracy will not wind up a Real Democracy), was always pretty dubious and the longer we go the more clear it is that that passion was not, in fact, sufficiently widespread among the people of Iraq (with the notable exception of Iraqi Kurdistan). When you ask the question, "Which comes first?" and then look at Dubya's decisions and tactics, the weight of the evidence seems to me clearly to imply that Dubya thinks that democratic forms of government naturally produce a widespread respect for human rights. And this is a catastrophic error.

2. Now, in his basic idea that the Middle East should be remade, Podhoretz (due allowance having been made for his unwise use of the term "democracy") is quite right.

I say it's still the case that the only way to win under these conditions is to offer up a rival doctrine to Islamism — liberty rather than submission, the rule of law rather than the rule of Sharia. And this war against Islamism is going to take a very long time, as I think even Andy can agree.

This is absolutely true. As a refutation of McCarthy's position it seems to me to be a straw man; but as an idea in its own right it is absolutely correct. The problem is that what we ought to be talking about is precisely liberty and the rule of law, not democracy. But Podhoretz is absolutely right in the substance of what he's saying. He's committing himself to an extremely foolish rhetorical strategy that threatens the success of that very project; but he's absolutely right about the necessity of the project. If he could bring himself to shut up long enough actually to listen to what Andy is saying, he might learn something that would make it much more likely that his project would actually succeed; but that might be asking too much.

Podhoretz, in short, thinks that Andy is saying that we ought not try to bring individual liberty and the rule of law to the Middle East. In fact Andy is saying that we ought to be trying to bring individual liberty and the rule of law to the Middle East rather than "democracy," because the more you focus on and hold up as your goal "democracy," the less likely you are to establish individual liberty and the rule of law. Podhoretz's response is essentially, "Well, if the democracy doesn't produce liberty, then we've failed; but we still have to try." But McCarthy's point is that the more we and the President run around talking about and focusing on "democracy" the more likely we are to fail to establish liberty and the rule of law. Does Podhoretz think that it doesn't matter whether we fail as long as we try? I don't imagine so -- but then it would behoove him to pay attention to the point Andy is making.

I think the whole debate, in the end, reduces to this question:

Does it matter whether we call it "the Democracy Project" instead of "the Liberty Project"?

McCarthy says, in effect, yes.

Podhoretz, in whose mind Real Democracy and liberty are essentially coterminous, says, "No, it doesn't matter whether we call it the Democracy Project or the Liberty Project."

I think Podhoretz is disastrously wrong. The Middle Eastern Liberty Project is absolutely essential. The Middle Eastern Democracy Project is likely to fail precisely because people like Podhoretz and the President refuse to admit that the two are distinct, that the direction of causality is critical, that the order of implementation is therefore equally critical, and that the failure to distinguish between the two in one's rhetoric imperils everything Podhoretz and the President wish to accomplish.

UPDATE/CLARIFICATION: In saying that we should bring liberty and the rule of law to the Middle East rather than democracy, I mean of course that we should focus on liberty and the rule of law rather than on democracy. Naturally the long-term goal would be to have both. But the highest priority ought to have been to establish security and liberty without worrying about voting rights, rather than to get millions of people voting while Baghdad was still a place of sectarian and criminal chaos. Moqtada al-Sadr has significant political power in the Iraqi democracy, and the Afghan democracy recently did its damndest to execute a man for converting away from Islam. Anybody who wants to convince me that Bush has not tried to establish democracy first in the hopes that a flawed democracy will usually correct itself in the direction of individual liberty for members of small minorities, is going to have a very tough sell indeed. We would have been much better off, I think -- if we really want to bring liberty to the Middle East -- had we said bluntly from the very beginning, "We will stay here and keep control of this country until such time as you people are willing to recognize the fundamental human rights of every individual including the ones who decide they disagree with your theological opinions." Had we established liberty, democracy would eventually have followed. Since we started with democracy, we are unlikely in the end to see the flowering of liberty.