Other people, I know, have different ideas about democracy which don’t involve respect for individual liberty. In fact, some people’s idea of democracy seems to depend on abrogating the very freedoms on which I think it depends.
Take the distinguished American historian John Hope Franklin, for example. Interviewed in today’s Guardian, he tells us the US is not a democratic country: “We have undertaken to spread democracy when we ourselves are not democratic."
His reasons (at least those given in the interview):
"Our presidents are elected by electoral colleges, not directly. And our military is not democratic. There's no draft. Bush's children and my children do not serve." He points out that those who do serve are mostly from America's poorer classes, including many blacks, driven into the professional army by economic necessity.It seems, as far as Franklin is concerned, no country can be regarded as being democratic unless the head of state is directly elected. If a country uses some other method to decide upon its head of state, whether it’s an electoral college or hereditary privilege (as in the UK) then Franklin's view would be that country is not a democracy.
This seems to me a very narrow view of democracy, and one that is a long way from our everyday usage of the term. It is also too absolutist for my taste - Franklin views the electoral college system as undemocratic, rather than simply less democratic than other possible electoral systems.
His second point is that the American military is not democratic because there is no draft. I am not sure if this is meant as a separate issue or as support for his contention that the US is not a democratic nation. Is any nation that lacks a conscript army undemocratic, regardless of its electoral arrangements?
In any case, Franklin is using the word democratic here, not in the narrower sense introduced earlier, but in a way completely at odds with common usage. I fail to see how a military in which people are forced to serve against their will can somehow be regarded as more democratic than one made up entirely of volunteers.
I am unsure as to whether or not Franklin regards the military as a special case here - could other areas of government not also benefit from such democratization? The Department of State, for example, which (just like the military) recruits its employees from those who choose to apply. Does this make the State Department undemocratic in the same way that Franklin says the miltary is undemocratic? If all government workers were forcibly conscripted rather than freely recruited would this be somehow more democratic?
Who knows? Maybe we could mix and match Franklin’s ideas of democracy: draft someone to be president but take votes on who gets to join the military.
I’d have more respect for Franklin if I thought his words were anything other than highly politicized rhetoric, in which meaning and logic are switched and twisted to suit the occasion.
As he himself remarks:
“I'm not attached to objectivity as such. If you say my writing is politicised with the purpose of achieving a certain goal, then I have no problem with that."Well at least we agree on something.
