Democracy Isn't Under Threat. Liberal Elites Are Just Losing Control.
Legitimate democratic choices cannot be labeled anti-democratic simply because they run counter to elite liberal orthodoxy.
In a recent New York Times editorial titled “Why Cultural Decline in the U.S. Is a Threat to Democracy,” British constitutional lawyer Jonathan Sumption warns that the United States is at risk of becoming a “failed democracy,” primarily due to the deterioration of the “political culture” necessary to sustain democratic institutions.
Although Sumption believes these institutions are still “largely functioning,” he argues that the real threat to the West lies beneath the surface: a disintegrating democratic culture that, in his words, is “buckling under the weight of increasingly unrealistic expectations of the state from its electorate.”
In his view, the problem is not with democracy as a political system, whose supremacy he treats as self-evident and unassailable, but in the people themselves, whose expectations of their governments have grown, in his words, “unrealistic.”
And what exactly are these unrealistic expectations that trouble defenders of liberal democracy, such as Sumption? One is the “powerful expectation that the state will protect them against adverse economic winds.”
Is this such an “unrealistic” expectation?
Across the West, voters consistently identify two issues as their top concerns: immigration and the economy. These are not radical demands. In fact, they are foundational responsibilities of any sovereign government.
Yet, these issues have been blatantly ignored by politicians, who have focused on the abstract plight of a “global citizenry” and other liberal ideological projects over the material and cultural well-being of their own citizens.
And so it should come as no surprise that the “authoritarians” that worry Sumption are nationalist-populist figures like President Trump, Marine Le Pen in France, Jörg Haider in Austria, Viktor Orban in Hungary, along with their respective political parties, all of which have pledged to restore national sovereignty, enforce immigration laws, and implement economic policies that prioritize the well-being of their citizens above subservience to liberal ideology and “free markets.”
It is here that we also encounter a paradox: those who vote for these “authoritarians” are exercising their democratic will and choosing those whom they believe best represent their interests. What we are witnessing, then, is not a rejection of democracy but rather a reassertion of it from a growing electorate that does not feel its voice is being heard.
Legitimate democratic choices cannot be labeled anti-democratic simply because they run counter to elite liberal orthodoxy.
Ironically, the “democratic culture” that Sumption sees as disintegrating is a consequence of the nature of liberalism and democracy itself.
Sumption points out Adams’ observation that “there never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide” and that the Founders' answer to the “self-destructive tendencies of democracy” was to design a government of 'laws and not of men,’ through the checks and balances mechanisms contained within the U.S. Constitution.
Yet Sumption completely overlooks John Adams' belief that the Constitution was not capable of restraining the excesses of democracy.
Adams understood the importance of a shared culture and its relationship to good governance as he recognized that the government the founders instituted would only work if the people of the United States remained “moral and religious,” and that it would be “wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Here, Adams was speaking directly to the “democratic culture” that Sumption fears is in decline. A culture cannot be held together solely by laws or parchment, but must also be reinforced through shared traditions, values, and customs that enable democracy to flourish within nations.
In Federalist No. 2, John Jay echoed Adams' sentiment,
“With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people--a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence.”
History has shown why it is not laws alone that sustain a civilization, but rather a shared culture.
The Roman Republic did not have a written constitution or an extensive body of laws. Instead, the Romans relied on unwritten rules, traditions, and mutual expectations, collectively referred to as "Mos Maiorum," meaning "the way of the elders."
As the Republic entered its decline, it was not the Roman law itself that weakened, but rather the erosion of respect for the mutually accepted bonds of "Mos Maiorum." The erosion of tradition and mutual expectations was also facilitated, in part, by the erosion and corruption of the Aristocracy due to the expansion of democracy. Citizenship was also expanded and granted to people from newly acquired territories, thereby further undermining cultural and social cohesion within Rome.
Sound familiar? The West is currently experiencing this scenario on an enormous scale.
Like the late Roman Republic, today’s liberal democracies face a crisis of “political culture” not because the people expect too much of their governments, but because their leaders are unresponsive and deliver too little, especially where it matters most: in preserving the cultural cohesion and political integrity that democracy depends on.
Laws and institutions alone cannot sustain a political culture. They require a people bound by social trust, tradition, and a shared sense of destiny. If Western democracies are to survive, they must become responsive to the concerns of the very nationalist-populists they deride and restore the cultural foundations they have so carelessly discarded.