Posted by
The Bell Tower on Friday, February 15, 2008 8:27:09 PM
NOTE: This post also appears on my personal blog at
www.thebelltower.org
Only just scratching the surface of Acton but this short excerpt about ancient Greece should sound eerily familiar to any lover of freedom living in modern America. The erosion of liberty under the tyranny of Democracy is not a new occurrence. The collapse of values and good government under the weight of man’s arrogance at the height of his power is as old as history itself.
It is important I think to note here that when Acton refers to “minorities” he’s referring specifically to minorities of opinion. Our understanding of minorities today has been so corrupted by political correctness and antiseptic groupthink that we often fail to understand that minorities of condition (race, gender, sexual orientation and other accidents of birth) are separate and apart from the minorities that Acton, Tocqueville, many in the founding generation and other classical liberals (not Al Franken liberals) referred to.
It is not that race or gender cannot be part of such minorities and indeed, we know well from history that they can be wholly oppressed based on their condition. But minorities here refer to democratic minorities - opposed in other words to majority opinion. For example: smokers, gun owners, people who don’t wear seat belts, snowboarders, sky divers, people who love cheeseburgers… individuals who take advantage of the freedom of this country to pursue their own happiness in the manner in which they see fit. Sometimes racial or ethnic minorities are part of democratic minorities but the concept that the thinking of any person can be confined by the accidents of his or her birth is anathema to every notion of classical liberalism. In other words: blacks can be Republican, white men can be liberal, homosexuals can be radical conservatives and women can be Patriarchal traditionalists. Conditions of birth do not dictate habits of mind. That is the essence of freedom of conscience.
Anyway, I’ve rambled on long enough. From The History of Freedom in Antiquity:
“Two men’s lives span the interval from the first admission of popular influence, under Solon, to the downfall of the State. Their history furnishes the classic example of the peril of Democracy under conditions singularly favourable. For the Athenians were not only brave and patriotic and capable of generous sacrifice, but they were the most religious of the Greeks. They venerated the Constitution which had given them prosperity, and equality, and freedom, and never questioned the fundamental laws which regulated the enormous power of the Assembly. They tolerated considerable variety of opinion and great licence of speech; and their humanity towards their slaves roused the indignation of even the most intelligent partisan of aristocracy. Thus they became the only people of antiquity that grew great by democratic institutions. But the possession of unlimited power, which corrodes the conscience, hardens the heart, and confounds the understanding of monarchs, exercised its demoralising influence on the illustrious democracy of Athens. It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority. For there is a reserve of latent power in the masses which, if it is called into play, the minority can seldom resist. But from the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason. The humblest and most numerous class of the Athenians united the legislative, the judicial, and, in part, the executive power. The philosophy that was then in the ascendant taught them that there is no law superior to that of the State - the lawgiver is above the law.
It followed that the sovereign people had a right to do whatever was within its power, and was bound by no rule of right or wrong but its own judgment of expediencey. On a memorable occasion the assembled Athenians declared it monstrous that they should be prevented from doing whatever they chose. No force that existed could restrain them; and they resolved that no duty should restrain them, and that they would be bound by no laws that were not of their own making. In this way the emancipated people of Athens became a tyrant; and their Government, the pioneer of Europen freedom, stand condemned with a terrible unanimity by all the wisest of the ancients. They ruined their city by attempting to conduct war by debate in the marketplace. Like the French Republic, they put their unsuccessful commanders to death. They treated their dependencies with such injustice that they lost their maritime Empire. They plundered the rich until the rich conspired with the public enemy, and they crowned their guilty by the martyrdom of Socrates.
While the absolute sway of numbers had endured for near a quarter of a century, nothing but bare existence was left for the State to lose; and the Athenians, wearied and despondent, confessed the true cause of their ruin. They understood that for liberty, justice, and equal laws, it is as necessary that Democracy should restrain itself as it had been that it should restrain Oligarchy. They resolved to take their stand once more upon the ancient ways, and to restore the order of things which had subsisted when the monopoly of power had been taken from the rich and had not been acquired by the poor. After a first restoration had failed, which is only memorable because Thucydides, whose judgment in politics is never at fault, pronounced it the best Government Athens had enjoyed, the attempt was renewed with more experience and greater singleness of purpose. The hostile parties were resolved to govern by concurrence. The laws, which had the sanction of tradition, were reduced to a code; and no act of the sovereign assembly was valid with which they might be found to disagree. Between the sacred lines of the Constitution which were to remain inviolate, and the decrees which met from time to time the needs and notions of the day, a broad distinction was drawn; and the fabric of a law which had been the work of generations was made independent of momentary variations in the popular will. The repentance of the Athenians came too late to save the Republic. But the lesson of their experience endures for all times, for it teaches that government by the whole people, being the government of the most numerous and most powerful class, is an evil of the same nature as unmixed monarchy, and requires, for nearly the same reason, institutions that shall protect it against itself, and shall uphold the permanent reign of law against arbitrary revolutions of opinion.”