delcielo's Journal: Spreading Democracy

"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union...

The 13 colonies didn't necessarily get along all that well. There were disputes over water navigation rights. There were trade disputes, and there were some condescensions from the Eastern states against the more rural Western and Southern states. We had gained enormous attention abroad for our secession from Brittain and our experiment in governing under the Articles of Confederation. But we'd also attracted more than a little derision for our disorganization and non-payment of debts.

Much of the world watched to see if we would succeed in forming one or more solid governments or devolve into anarchy and be swallowed by some creditor nation. Or would Brittain resume governance over its errant children?

It was clear that as things were going, the Articles weren't sufficient to keep the organization of states peacefully cohesed as a single entity. Shay's rebellion in particular highlighted the fragility of the governments that made up the Confederation as well as the whole itself. So a meeting was called to discuss changes to the Articles. Any action, of course, would have to be approved by the member legislatures, etc.; but it was obvious that something had to happen to change the direction in which our young country was headed.

50 delegates were invited, though no more than 30 were ever present at one time for the convention. They came from all walks of life and worked together in the sweltering heat of summer, cramped into a surprisingly small room with the windows shut to keep secrets in and insects out.

It soon became apparent that amending the Articles would not be sufficient. The secrecy of the meetings then sprang from the fear that if it became common knowledge that a new form of government was being proposed and drafted the delegates might all be called back to their states and chastised. So over the next 3-4 months the delegates hashed out a common form of government, debating such things as the value of a strong judiciary, the necessity of a military, and how these things would be paid for.

There was even a serious debate about whether or not George Washington should be appointed King and his heirs given hereditary rights to the throne.

As the convention wore on intermediate drafts were made of various positions. Toward the end of the convention the "Committee of Stile and Arrangement" drafted what whe now know as the Constitution. At the top of this Constitution was the now familiar Preamble excerpted above. It had not been agreed upon. In fact, the Preamble was a bit of a surprise, and had not been discussed in the larger "Committee of the Whole". Gouverner Morris had drafted it himself. But it struck a chord with the delegates. Particularly striking was the bold declaration of Unity referenced twice in the first sentence alone. It redefined the delegates who had thought of themselves as former British citizens, or revolutionaries, or Virginians. To these things, and perhaps around them, they added the idea that they were citizens of the whole. They were citizens of the United States of America. Strange that it had not been so plainly put before as it was the very root of the need for some new government.

Despite their differences and indeed through their differences, these men recognized their common purpose and existence. They and their fellow Virginians, New Yorkers and Carolinians were a society. They had a consensus that although they wouldn't always get what they wanted from government individually, they were a common group that would benefit by governing themselves as such. They were all of them people of the United States of America.

The Constitution, our branches of government, our elections; these are all expressions of that unity, that democratic consensus and spirit. Our democracy didn't spring from the Constitution. It happened the other way around. How then, do we best export democracy to other peoples? How do we give them this consensus that was so vital to our own nascent Union?

Looking back it all seems so obvious. But how do you get a people to see it in themselves? Can you simply tell them? Can you repeat it until they believe it? Alternatively, could you replace the government they have with one that looks like ours and rely on those mechanisms of our own democracy to work backwards and create the Unity from which they sprang in our own nation?

The former seem too simplistic and naive. But what about the latter? Would it work? We've tried it before. In the last 100 years we've tried it in a handful of South American states, in Haiti, and we're trying it again in the Middle East. The Brits tried it in Arabia during World War I. They gave military assistance to the Arab resistance under Prince Feisal and helped them to defeat the Turks who held them under slavery. They might have formed one Pan-Arab nation under Feisal but for religious and historical differences they could not put aside. In South America, Wilson pursued the goal of making the continent "safe for Freedom and Democracy". We used political pressure, financed oppositions, and even made targeted assassinations to get the governments we wanted down there. And those governments we wanted were not merely democratic; but were also governments that would deal with American businesses favorably. The term Banana Republic resulted from this practice. Our government used whatever influence it could wield to secure profits for the United Fruit Company. Decades later South America is a hodgepodge of pseudo-democratic states, socialist states, and communist regimes. Pity that Wilson's ideal of democracy was so perverted into something so base as greed. It's not likely that it would have worked anyhow. One thing history has shown us over and over is that a people who want and are ready for democracy will create it on their own. These lessons were played out again in Haiti where anarchy prevails despite our stopping a coup attempt and forcing elections.

The answer then, to my question of how to export democracy is that you can't. Democracy is a consensus and that is not the sort of thing that you can gift to a people.

The better idea, it seems to me, would be to do our best to foster consensus here at home and to spend more time examining the commonalities of our own society. We should spend less time tearing each other apart, and more time displaying those traits we're trying to foster in others.