Democracy Matters

by Cornel West

  Meanwhile the market-driven media—fueled by our vast ideological polarization and abetted by profit-hungry monopolies—have severely narrowed our political “dialogue.” The major problem is not the vociferous shouting from one camp to the other; rather it is that many have given up even being heard. We are losing the very value of dialogue—especially respectful communication—in the name of the sheer force of naked power. This is the classic triumph of authoritarianism over the kind of questioning, compassion, and hope requisite for any democratic experiment.

  We have witnessed similar developments in our schools and universities—increasing monitoring of viewpoints, disrespecting of those with whom one disagrees, and foreclosing of the common ground upon which we can listen and learn. The major culprit here is not “political correctness,” a term coined by those who tend to trivialize the scars of others and minimize the suffering of victims while highlighting their own wounds. Rather the challenge is mustering the courage to scrutinize all forms of dogmatic policing of dialogue and to shatter all authoritarian strategies of silencing voices. We must respect the scars and wounds of each one of us—even if we are sometimes wrong (or right!).

  Democracy matters are frightening in our time precisely because the three dominant dogmas of free-market fundamentalism, aggressive militarism, and escalating authoritarianism are snuffing out the democratic impulses that are so vital for the deepening and spread of democracy in the world. In short, we are experiencing the sad American imperial devouring of American democracy. This historic devouring in our time constitutes an unprecedented gangsterization of America—an unbridled grasp at power, wealth, and status. And when the most powerful forces in a society—and an empire—promote a suffocation of democratic energies, the very future of genuine democracy is jeopardized.

  How ironic that 9/11—a vicious attack on innocent civilians by gangsters—becomes the historic occasion for the full-scale gangsterization of America. Do we now live in a postdemocratic age in which the very “democratic” rhetoric of an imperial America hides the waning of a democratic America? Are there enough democratic energies here and abroad to fight for and win back our democracy given the undeniable power of the three dominant dogmas that fuel imperial America? Or will the American empire go the way of the Leviathans of the past—the Roman, Ottoman, Soviet, and British empires? Can any empire resist the temptation to become drunk with the wine of world power or become intoxicated with the hubris and greed of imperial possibilities? Has not every major empire pursued quixotic dreams of global domination—of shaping the world in its image and for its interest—that resulted in internal decay and doom? Can we committed democrats avert this world-historical pattern and possible fate?

  Our fundamental test may lie in our continuing response to 9/11. With the last remnants of the repressive Soviet empire (North Korea and Cuba) proud yet weak, the postimperial European Union in search of an identity and unity, the Asian powers steady but hesitant, and African and Latin American regimes still grappling with postcolonial European and U.S. economic domination, the American empire struts across the globe like a behemoth. We have built up uncontested military might, undeniable cultural power, and transnational corporate and financial hegemony—yet with a huge trade deficit, budget deficit, and intensifying class, racial, religious, and ideological warfare at home. During the cold war, these internal conflicts were often contained by focusing on a common external foe—Communism. Then, for a brief decade, Americans turned on one another in “the culture wars.” The well-financed right wing convinced many fellow citizens that the Left—from progressive professors to neoliberal Clintonites, multicultural artists to mainstream feminists, gay and lesbian activists to ecological preservationists—was leading America over the abyss. After 9/11, unity seemed possible—but only if it fit the mold of a narrow patriotism and a revenge-driven lust for a war on terrorism. And as the old-style imperialism of the new hawks in the Bush administration made manifest—through subtle manipulation and outright mendacity—the newly aggressive American empire would not only police the world in light of its interests but also impose its imperial vision and policy—by hook or by crook—on a sleepwalking U.S. citizenry.

  Ironically, this vision and policy is, in some ways, continuous with those of earlier administrations that rarely questioned the dogmas of free-market fundamentalism (look at the disaster of Clinton’s NAFTA on Canada and Mexico), aggressive militarism (abusive police power in poor communities of color at home), and escalating authoritarianism (targeted crime fighting and mandatory sentencing for incarceration). But the coarse and unabashed imperial devouring of democracy of the Bush administration is a low point in America’s rocky history of sustaining its still evolving experiment in democracy. And now instead of Communism as our external foe we have Islamic terrorism. In addition, the prevailing conservative culture has made the Left—progressives and liberals—internal enemies. They are considered out of step with the drumbeat of patriots, who defer to the imperial aims, free-market policies, cultural conservative views, and personal pieties of the Bush administration. To put it bluntly, we have reached a rare fork in the road of American history.

  Democracy matters require that we keep track of the intimate link between domestic issues and foreign policies. Like the empires of old—especially the Roman and British ones—what we do abroad affects what we can do here and what we do here shapes what we can do abroad. Probably the most difficult challenge facing our democracy, in the near term at any rate, is that of the centrality of Middle East politics for the American empire. If we are to stabilize the world and enrich democracy in the world, we must confront the anti-Semitic hostility of oil-rich autocratic Arab regimes to Israel’s very existence, as well as Israelis’ occupation and subjugation of Palestinian lands and people. We must act more decisively to stop both the barbaric Palestinian suicide bombers’ murdering of innocent Israeli civilians and the inhumane Israeli military attacks on unarmed Palestinian refugees. These explosive issues test the capacity of all Americans to engage in a respectful and candid dialogue; indeed, they may be pivotal in determining the destiny of American democracy.

  How does one honestly criticize the close relationship between American imperial elites and Israeli political officials without falling into ugly anti-Semitic traps? How does one sympathize with the always-fragile existence of a hated people, like the Jews, anywhere in the world while also acknowledging that Israel is a military giant in the Middle East, and that American Jews constitute an organized, powerful force in the American empire to buttress this military might? How does one highlight the inexcusable conditions and treatment of Palestinians under Israeli occupation while also acknowledging the aims of some Palestinian groups to push Israel into the sea? Can a Jewish state become a full-fledged secular and democratic state without the annihilation of its Jewish citizens? Will the American empire abandon the Jewish state when its economic interests are in direct conflict with such support? Whom are Jews to trust? Whom are Palestinians to trust? Will myopic leadership on both sides preclude any just peace? Will anti-Semitic hatred and anti-Arab bigotry squelch any democratic alternative?

  Wrestling with these heart-wrenching queries requires all the critical intelligence and genuine compassion we can muster, yet to remain satisfied with the status quo may well lead to disaster. It is impossible to talk about democracy matters on a global scale without engaging these questions. And given the increasing threats of terrorist attacks on America and others abroad, we must grapple with them for our own security and sense of justice.

  This does not mean that we should turn away from the wretched of the earth in Africa facing both the unprecedented AIDS epidemic and the betrayals of authoritarian leaders; or suffering Latin Americans still under the aegis of transnational corporations and deferential elected officials; or struggling Asians trying to find or preserve a niche in the new world order. To focus on the Middle East is not to single out any regime for special treatment or targeted demonization. R
ather it is to acknowledge that Islamic fundamentalist gangsters do pose a threat to the United States and the world and that they gain their potency from U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. An American imperial response to this real threat may pose an even greater threat to the United States and the world. And the American democratic experiment cannot flourish alongside such an American imperial response. This is why the response of the Bush administration to 9/11 wreaks havoc here and abroad—more wealth inequality, less resources for jobs, education, health care, and the arts, and increasing distrust and hatred even from former allies.

  The ugly events of 9/11 should have been an opportunity for national self-scrutiny. In the wake of the shock and horror of those attacks, many asked the question, why do they hate us? But the country failed to engage in a serious, sustained, deeply probing examination of the possible answers to that question. Instead, the leaders of the Bush administration encouraged us to adopt the simplistic and aggressive “with us or against us” stance and we ran roughshod over our allies, turning a deaf ear to any criticisms of the course of action the Bush leadership had determined to take. We have been unwilling—both at this critical juncture and throughout our history—to turn a sufficiently critical eye on our own behavior in the world. We have often behaved in an overbearing, imperial, hypocritical manner as we have attained more and more power as a hegemon.

  Our hypocritical, bullying behavior in regard to so many of the regions of the world is surely not the only reason for the 9/11 attacks—and it certainly doesn’t justify those horribly callous, violent terrorist acts—but we have failed to even consider deeply as a culture the role our imperialist behavior has played in the contempt we have inspired in so much of the world. The Bush administration’s abuses of power both at home and in unilaterally invading Iraq and waging a campaign of lies have now provoked an intense scrutiny, and this scrutiny needs to dig deeper than throwing angry barbs at the Bush administration’s policies. We’ve got to reconnect with the energies of a deep democratic tradition in America and reignite them.

  If we are to grapple critically with the three antidemocratic dogmas that are raising their ugly heads at this crucial juncture, we will need a more realistic understanding of the crushing ways in which they have operated in the country throughout our history. The first step for any critique of a dogma is to lay bare the history of that dogma—to disclose its contingent origins and ignoble beginnings and to show that the critique of that dogma in history has its own tradition and history. America has a long tradition of excoriating, painful, and powerful critiques of the arrested development of our democracy—critiques of the ravages of our imperial expansionist genocide of the Native Americans; of the crushing of the lives of workers by the callous machinery of capitalist excesses; of the wholesale subjugation of women, gays, and lesbians; and most especially and centrally of the deeply antidemocratic and dehumanizing hypocrisies of white supremacy. This is why the lens of race becomes indispensable in our attempt to understand, preserve, and expand America’s democratic experiment.

  The brutal atrocities of white supremacy in the American past and present speak volumes about the harsh limits of our democracy over against our professed democratic ideals. Race is the crucial intersecting point where democratic energies clash with American imperial realities in the very making of the grand American experiment of democracy. The voices and viewpoints of reviled and disempowered Amerindians, Asians, Mexicans, Africans, and immigrant Europeans reveal and remind us of the profoundly racist roots of the first American empire—the old America of expansionist Manifest Destiny. How ironic that this New World outpost of the British empire, which rested upon Amerindian lands and was greatly aided by predominantly African enslaved laborers, would institute a grand anti-imperial revolution and embark on a rich democratic experiment?

  The contingent origins of American democracy and the ignoble beginnings of imperial America go hand in hand. This dynamic and complex intertwining of racial subjugation and democratic flourishing, of imperial resistance (against the British) and imperial expansion (against Amerindians)—driven primarily by market forces, to satisfy expanding populations and greedy profiteers—sets the stage for the uneven development of the best and worst of American history. We must learn how to keep track of both opposing tendencies if we are to maintain our democratic energy.

  Like any other human endeavor, American democracy and imperial America are shot through with multilayered incongruities, contradictions, and imperfect forms of resistance against ugly structures of domination. Race is not a lens to justify sentimental stories of pure heroes of color and impure white villains or melodramatic tales of innocent victims of color and demonic white victimizers. In fact, by shattering such Manichaean (good versus evil/us versus them) views that Americans often tell about themselves, we refuse to simply flip the script and tell new lies about ourselves.

  The fight for democracy has ever been one against the oppressive and racist corruptions of empire. To focus solely on electoral politics as the site of democratic life is myopic. Such a focus fails to appreciate the crucial role of the underlying moral commitments and visions and fortifications of the soul that empower and inspire a democratic way of living in the world. These fortifications also fuel deep democratic movements both within the American empire and across the world in global democratic efforts.

  The good news in that regard is that there is a deep public reverence for—a love of—democracy in America and a deep democratic tradition. This love of democracy has been most powerfully expressed and pushed forward by our great public intellectuals and artists. Our democratic tradition has built on the profound democratic impulse that stretches all the way back to the Greeks, and this book will, in part, explore the rich insights and expressions of that deep democratic tradition, from the radical iconoclasm of Socrates, to the tragically schizophrenic visions of the American Founding Fathers, to the exuberant and brilliant indictments laid down by hip-hop.

  Three crucial traditions fuel deep democratic energies. The first is the Greek creation of the Socratic commitment to questioning—questioning of ourselves, of authority, of dogma, of parochialism, and of fundamentalism. Vital also is the Jewish invention of the prophetic commitment to justice—for all peoples—formulated in the Hebrew scriptures and echoed in the foundational teachings of Christianity and Islam. And indispensable in addition is the mighty shield and inner strength provided by the tragicomic commitment to hope. The tragicomic is the ability to laugh and retain a sense of life’s joy—to preserve hope even while staring in the face of hate and hypocrisy—as against falling into the nihilism of paralyzing despair. This tragicomic hope is expressed in America most profoundly in the wrenchingly honest yet compassionate voices of the black freedom struggle; most poignantly in the painful eloquence of the blues; and most exuberantly in the improvisational virtuosity of jazz.

  In the face of elite manipulations and lies, we must draw on the Socratic. The Socratic commitment to questioning requires a relentless self-examination and critique of institutions of authority, motivated by an endless quest for intellectual integrity and moral consistency. It is manifest in a fearless speech—parrhesia—that unsettles, unnerves, and unhouses people from their uncritical sleepwalking. As Socrates says in Plato’s Apology, “Plain speech [parrhesia] is the cause of my unpopularity” (24a). His courageous opposition to the seductive yet nihilistic sophists of his day—Greek teachers who employed clever but fallacious arguments—exposed the specious reasoning that legitimated their quest for power and might. His historic effort to unleash painful wisdom seeking—his midwifery of ideas and visions—was predicated on the capacity of all people (such as the brilliant slave boy Meno in the famous dialogue of that name) to engage in a critique of and resistance to the corruptions of mind, soul, and society. We desperately need the deep democratic energy of this Socratic questioning in these times of rampant sophistry on the part of our political elites and their media pundits.

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n the face of callous indifference to the suffering wrought by our imperialism, we must draw on the prophetic. The Jewish invention of the prophetic commitment to justice—also central to both Christianity and Islam—is one of the great moral moments in human history. This was the commitment to justice of an oppressed people. It set in motion a prophetic tradition based on the belief that God had imparted this love of justice because God is first and foremost a lover of justice. The Judaic prophetic commitment to justice is therefore predicated on the divine love of justice. Israel—a hated and enslaved people in the most powerful empire of its day (that of Egypt’s pharaohs)—is chosen by God because of God’s love of justice. And the admonition against inhumane injustice is central to the message of the prophetic: “He who oppresses a poor man insults his maker / He who is kind to the needy honors him” (Proverbs 14:31). Prophetic witness consists of human acts of justice and kindness that attend to the unjust sources of human hurt and misery. Prophetic witness calls attention to the causes of unjustified suffering and unnecessary social misery. It highlights personal and institutional evil, including especially the evil of being indifferent to personal and institutional evil.

  Prophetic Judaic figures appeal to us as individuals to join in transforming the world as communities. They shun individual conversion that precludes collective insurgency. They speak to all peoples and nations to be just and righteous. Amos prophesied not only to Israel but also to Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, and Moab—he spoke in the name of a God who decides the destiny of all nations (Amos 9:7). Isaiah’s domain was addressed to “all you inhabitants of the world, you who dwell on the earth” (Isaiah 18:3; see also 33:13, 34:1). Jeremiah’s calling was that of “a prophet to the nations” (Jeremiah 1:5), including Israel, Ammon, Sidon, and the other peoples. Hundreds of years before the universalism of Stoic sages (like Zeno, Cleanthes, and Chrysippus), Judaic prophets raised the banner of internationalism in the name of divine compassion and divine love of justice. There is nothing tribalistic or nationalistic about prophetic witness. Xenophobic prejudices and imperialistic practices are unequivocally condemned. Prophetic witness has no room for such petty and pernicious inflictions.