林中斌 部落格 / Blog Chong-Pin Lin

Testing the limits of Western ideals

SERGE SCHMEMANN, The New York Times, Sep 14, 2015

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/14/world/europe/a-system-buffeted-by-the-storms-of-history.html?_r=0

 accessed Sep 17, 2015 

l  西方民主遭遇困難，紐約時報編輯做序介紹一系列專文專論

“It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history.”

 That could have been said by many a critic of Western liberal democracy, from advocates of a “vertical democracy” along the lines of Russia or China to the zealous campaigners for an Islamic theocracy. To its legion of critics, the West is no longer a shining city on a hill; more often it is held up as a bastion of selfish capitalism, immorality and hypocrisy.

 Western faith in the universality and goodness of its system of government has also wavered in the quarter of a century since “victory” in the Cold War seemed to clear the way to a world safe for democracy. But it quickly emerged that democracy cannot be imposed from without, that it requires the laborious construction of institutions, evolution of shared values and universal acceptance of the rule of law.

 Broad fissures have appeared in the Western democracies themselves, further contributing to questions about the universality of liberal democracy.

 The partisan divide in the United States has expanded into a broad and bitter chasm over issues like same-sex marriage, immigration and guns, all exacerbated by an increasingly unequal distribution of wealth.

 The European Union has found itself increasingly disunited over how to rescue a heavily indebted Greece, and how to respond to a tide of refugees fleeing Africa and the Middle East.

 Complicating matters is the realization that the Internet, which initially promised to remedy prejudice and ignorance through universal access to knowledge, has also made it easier for racists and terrorists to spread their venom.

 Those questions — about whether, basically, democracy has shown itself to be no less vain, proud, selfish, ambitious or avaricious than any other system of government — are the focus of this special report and a second one on Tuesday, and of the third annual Athens Democracy Forum, convened by The International New York Times in the Greek capital.

 The setting for the forum in Greece, the land where democracy was born and where so many of its travails are being played out, from the ravages of economic disruption to the waves of desperate migrants, can only contribute to the urgency of the discussions.

 Yet the fact that democracy is in turmoil and in need of urgent attention is not evidence of impending demise, nor even that unusual. It would come as no surprise, for example, to John Adams, arguably the most influential of the founding fathers of the American republic — and the author of the words about democracy and its vanities at the top of this article.

 Adams was not advancing a nihilistic notion that all government is equally venal, but making the observation, as he continued, that the “passions” of those in power “are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence and cruelty.”

 It was a denial of the illusion, advanced more recently by Marxists and Islamists, that the right system of rule can create a better race of men. The key to the success of the democracy he helped plant in America, and led as the second president, was “a government of laws, and not of men,” in which no clique could curtail freedom.

 Neither democracy nor any other system of government has shown any demonstrable improvement in human nature, and certainly democracy has had its setbacks in history. Adolf Hitler, it is often noted, was democratically elected.

 But history has also shown that an experience of the values and institutions of democracy make it more likely that nations will rebound from setbacks and return to democratic rule. Germany is one shining example, as are Greece, Spain, Portugal and, by and large, the former Soviet vassals in Eastern Europe.

 There is nothing surprising, either, in the animosity the wealthy Western republics attract.

 It was Pericles, the champion of Athenian democracy, who warned that “if one has a great aim to pursue, this burden of envy must be accepted, and it is wise to accept it.” It is wise, too, to recognize that human passions will forever keep democracy in crisis, and to accept the burden of finding new strength and purpose in those challenges.

 Serge Schmemann is a member of the New York Times editorial board and program director of the Athens Democracy Forum.