I have every good reason to predict the angry ripostes I will get—whether as comments to the online version, or on social media. Of course, we must be democratic—thus will the anticipated angry responses go. I am not too sure, and I think the question has to be raised once more. This is not a question about “the best form of government” that is to me as pointless as it is fruitless. It is rather an ontological question—an inquiry into the nature of things. Is there something about being human that requires that we live in a democracy? Put otherwise: Is democracy that political system that corresponds to human nature? Aside from the notorious ambiguity in respect to “democracy,” “human nature” is also vexatiously elusive. That which is closest, ancients used to say, we cannot grasp. And I always cringe when people claim that there is so much about human nature that they know.
“Government with the consent of the governed” was at one time thought to be an apt summary of a democracy, but Richard Posner correctly points out that a dictatorship, installed into power with the consent of the governed, would still be a dictatorship. For the purpose then of the present discussion, by “democracy” I mean the popular election of officials, a system of the distribution of powers of government between coordinate branches and the resultant operation of checks and balances.
As far as we can tell, the human person is a self-determining, self-governing being. That is usually what is referred to as the autonomy of personhood; in more scholastic terms—the freedom of the will. But there would be nothing counter-human with an authoritarian government for a person might very well, of his own volition, submit to the dictates and commands of a dictator or an autocrat, and not necessarily for reasons of fear. The Pope was—and in many ways still is—an autocrat, and except for a handful, Catholics have not thought of themselves any less human for submitting to the Pope’s authority. That is just one of the decisions people can make—to submit to the authority of one whom they think superior in intelligence, or possessed of the charisma of leadership, or especially chosen by God to lead. Many Islamic states are autocratic, and they are not all the worse for that! What dehumanizes is submission because one has been cowed into submission. But when one freely chooses a leader who has beforehand made clear that he believes that authoritarianism is the antidote to our national malaise, then no strong man has really forced himself on us. We chose to have him there.
Nobody will link separation of powers (which we think to be an essential feature of a democracy) with efficient government. In fact, it is the formula for inefficiency, but we have long thought that the inefficiency that will many times make itself felt is the price we are willing to pay to forestall the concentration of awesome powers of government in only man or in one clique. The theory is plausible, except that when the branches become enclaves of disparate interests, or there is dissonance in the values that each branch maintains as premium, then that can neither be good nor promising at all. It even becomes worse when the departments of government interdict each other—then the lure of the simplicity, directness and efficacy of authoritarian government becomes almost irresistible.
I am a believer in communicative action—and in the discourse theory of democracy that it engenders. But communicative action presupposes such an ideal speech situation that I have tried hard in vain to find in our midst: the willingness to be persuaded by the better reason, and to admit that one is wrong, when it is competently shown that one is wrong. It does seem then indeed that we have assumed the trappings of a system that presupposes a speech-situation that just does not exist.
In response to one of my posts, Professor Clarita Carlos for whom I have tremendous respect wrote: “We need a benevolent dictatorship to deal with our democratic deficits.” At first I thought that odd, as I have always thought all reference to a “benevolent dictatorship” if not oxymoronic, at least paradoxical. But after having given the matter more thought and after having re-read Aristotle and his suspiciousness of democracy, I must draw the sobering conclusion that there is really no ontological necessity that we abide by the democracy that we have. I do not think that the only alternative to the present incoherence that we call a democracy is repression and the crass violation of human rights. That creates too neat—and simplistic—a disjunction where one should rather appreciate gradations. And if we are dead set on rewriting our constitution, then this is no idle question that should preoccupy us!
rannie_aquino@sanbeda.edu.ph
rannie_aquino@csu.edu.ph
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