The Rejection of Liberal Democracy
Wherein I examine the growing movement to jettison a crumbling ideology…
I think one of the most intriguing aspects of the re-emergence of the real Right, to me at least, is that so many have come unequivocally to reject the norms, the shibboleths, and the hallowed institutions of liberal democracy—all those institutions that have been hijacked by the Left, and drained of whatever clout and capital they may have accumulated over the years.
This is only natural, of course, and it extends to such things as rejecting wholesale something that once—not too long ago—seemed utterly unassailable, such as the American founding documents, including the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and even the form of government that is inextricably linked with the now-defunct “American Experiment.” It’s not that these things are denied the respect that is due them as historical documents—contingent artifacts whose significance is restricted to a particular period of time, and not without some lessons for the future—it’s simply that their inadequacy and lack of applicability to the problems of the present day is now understood and accepted, even though regretfully.
This is, quite simply, a sea-change from the staid conservatism and “Rightism” of yore. “Conservatism” meant in theory preserving the Constitution, adhering to the spirit of the Declaration of Independence against the assaults of the Left, and fostering the long-defunct republic of the country’s youth. But I think a salutary, and long-awaited, maturity has now settled upon the conservative movement, manifesting now in the newly-resurgent Right, and that has meant at long last “setting aside childish ways.”
The so-called “norms” and “institutions” of liberal democracy—including constitutional government, a jurisprudence free of blatant corruption, the right of self-determination, and a whole host of once-cherished freedoms—have proven in recent decades to be but a bill of goods, and not a particularly appealing one either. To those with eyes to see, it has become obvious that a frightening—because all the more insidious and unsuspected—totalitarianism can fasten itself upon the so-called “free” democracies with as much ease, and perhaps a great deal more staying power, as it did upon all those “unfree” people’s and democratic republics in the communist sphere.
The “letter” of the liberal constitutions—whether in the United States, or the United Kingdom, or the Republic of France, or the “democracies” of Canada and Australia—is sedulously and loudly proclaimed, with a great deal of flag-waving and phony patriotism, even as legal circumventions are cleverly devised to obviate them entirely; the “spirit” of these constitutions, few can now doubt, is dead and long buried, with no prospect of resurrection. Much of what passes for “democracy” these days is done against the express will of the people, and ever since the Brexit plebiscite and the ascent of Donald Trump, national referenda and elections have been so “massaged” and “fortified” that their results are…well, questionable, to say the least.
So the men and women of the Right have lost faith in the fairy-tale ability of lofty principles and parchment documents left over from a period of history that is universally loathed and reviled—at least on the Left, and, since they are now our masters, that’s all that counts—to rescue us from the very modern and very pressing problems that beset us. It is not the business of the Right to cling to the dying ship of the Enlightenment, which even its natural heirs—the modern progressives—have long since abandoned; it is for the Right to return to its historical place, seeking in the great thinkers and traditions of the past for the materials of a more hopeful and promising future.
Look, it’s undeniable that there is a great deal of wisdom, as well as much to respect and honor, in the founding documents of America; the principles of individual freedoms and divided government that, theoretically at least, once inspirited the constitutions of the liberal democracies must not be entirely cast aside, even if their limits must be recognized and corrected for.
But the advance of technology, the triumph of atheistic materialism, the growth of nihilism and the rejection of tradition, have rendered these ideals and principles simply ineffective before the assault of a victorious Left that exults in all of these things and—animated only by a mystical notion of a purely subjective “progress”—disdains the past and the principles of those who belong to it with an open contempt and hatred.
And there are many on the Right who are becoming increasingly aware of this new reality. In a recent article on American Greatness, the author Glenn Elmers outlined some of the “hard truths” that confront the Right in the United States, and which require a dramatic shift in mentality that eschews any fond hopes of returning to some long-gone status quo ante—before, that is, the Left infiltrated and subverted the nation’s institutions with scarcely any serious protest from “conservatives.”
Elmers’ prognosis is stark:
“The constitutional republic created by our founders no longer exists. Most everyone on the Right seems to agree with that—though we differ about how deep the rot is, and whether we are now living under a new regime that is essentially different in kind, not merely degree.”
He then outlines the five key areas in which the old American republic—and, by extension I would say, all liberal democracies, which suffer from the same evils—has essentially become defunct. First, there is of course the matter of elections, which are no longer meaningful, therefore invalidating the notion of popular sovereignty and consent of the governed. Second, the carefully constructed mechanism of checks and balances has evaporated, leaving behind only a distilled bureaucratic instrumentality—the real power behind the throne.
Third, and following from the previous item, this bureaucratic apparatus cannot be checked by any “popularly elected” political figure, of whatever competence; the presidency of Donald Trump is proof enough of that. Fourth, the American citizenry itself has become morally vitiated and dissipated through the long atrophy of the habits of self-government, and it is not likely to reacquire these habits anytime soon. And finally, with the passage of each year, and the continuing meek compliance of the “Right” with the illegitimate results of corrupt elections, our enemies accrue unearned legitimacy and grow ever stronger and more powerful.
“Our current woke oligarchy becomes more fanatical every month, yet instead of getting weaker or provoking a popular backlash, it seems to grow ever stronger. In part, this is because the elites have maintained a semblance of institutional normalcy. No matter how extreme its policies—COVID lockdowns, chemical or surgical castration of children, open borders—the ruling class carries on with a kind of constitutional kabuki theater. Citizens (or rather “people”) vote, Congress meets and passes “laws,” the president pontificates and signs documents. It is largely just a performance; it certainly doesn’t resemble government functioning as the founders intended. But it looks close enough to the real thing to persuade many people that the situation, if not perfect, is at least tolerable. There is just enough veneer of Our Democracy™ to keep most citizens from acting on their dissatisfactions and justified fears.
“But the longer this goes on, and the more phoniness people are willing to tolerate, the more the whole rotten edifice becomes accepted as legitimate. At some point, the people will have consented, by their acquiescence, to anything the regime decides to do. Soon, one suspects, our left-wing masters won’t find it necessary to keep up the charade.”
Ultimately, Elmers foresees that there are certain fundamentals—inextricably a part of human nature and thus of the forms of government that humans build for themselves—which will conspire to overthrow someday the schemes and machinations of the Left. They are, in short: human nature, the basic elements of just government, and moral freedom.
Crucially, these fundamentals are not the founding documents of America; rather, they are the more principial, pre-existent ideas that those documents merely expressed, in a contingent way that was suited to late-eighteenth-century Colonial America.
There are many other new thinkers on the Right who have similarly made their peace with the obvious demise of the constitutionalism of the liberal democracies; in the wake of the numerous usurpations during the COVID-19 hysteria, it would be far more surprising if they hadn’t. “Kaisar” of The Hidden Dominion is one of these; his blog is full of trenchant diagnoses of the ills afflicting the United States in particular and liberal democracies in general, as well as interesting prescriptions and remedies—including new forms of government.
From one of Kaisar’s recent posts:
“People like us do not seek to reinvigorate the system, nor to reform it, nor to ‘beat it’ in a traditional manner. We have given up on all of those pursuits because we have recognized that they simply will not work.
“Most dissidents, nowadays at least, are simply building and preparing for their time. They are no longer directly active inside-the-system or outside-the-system (in the context of challenging the system); they are completely parallel to the system. Dissidents dropped the hope of the system—in a philosophical sense—entirely.
“This is not something natural. It was forced on us by the conditions of our people.”
It is unfortunate, perhaps, but yet there is something salutary in this: sometimes it is necessary, however painful it may be, to make a clean break with the past, in order to build a better future. The liberal democracies had their day, and they may even have been—in their own way—glorious, once upon a time. But that day has passed, and we are now in the decadent, imperial phase, and the luster is decidedly gone.
So then, all you Rightists, what comes next? That’s what I hope to explore, at least in part, in future issues of this newsletter…