Plato said that democracies inevitably lead to moral decay because as they
indulge more in fake freedom, people’s values deteriorate and become more
childish and self-centered, resulting in the citizenry turning on the democratic
system itself. Once childish values take over, people no longer want to
negotiate for power, they don’t want to bargain with other groups and other
religions, they don’t want to endure pain for the sake of greater freedom or
prosperity. What they want instead is a strong leader to come make everything
right at a moment’s notice. They want a tyrant.^29
There’s a common saying in the United States that “freedom is not free.”
The saying is usually used in reference to the military and wars fought and
won to protect the values of the country. It’s a way of reminding people that,
hey, this shit didn’t just magically happen—thousands of people were killed
and/or died for us to sit here and sip overpriced mocha Frappuccinos and say
whatever the fuck we want. It’s a reminder that the basic human rights we
enjoy (free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press) were earned
through a sacrifice against some external force.
But people forget that these rights are also earned through sacrifice
against some internal force. Democracy can exist only when you are willing
to tolerate views that oppose your own, when you’re willing to give up some
things you might want for the sake of a safe and healthy community, when
you’re willing to compromise and accept that sometimes things don’t go your
way.
Put another way: democracy requires a citizenry of strong maturity and
character.
Over the last couple of decades, people seem to have confused their basic
human rights with not experiencing any discomfort. People want freedom to
express themselves, but they don’t want to have to deal with views that may
upset or offend them in some way. They want freedom of enterprise, but they
don’t want to pay taxes to support the legal machinery that makes that
freedom possible. They want equality, but they don’t want to accept that
equality requires that everybody experience the same pain, not that everybody
experience the same pleasure.
Freedom itself demands discomfort. It demands dissatisfaction. Because
the freer a society becomes, the more each person will be forced to reckon
and compromise with views and lifestyles and ideas that conflict with their
own. The lower our tolerance for pain, the more we indulge in fake freedoms,
the less we will be able to uphold the virtues necessary to allow a free,
democratic society to function.
And that’s scary. Because without democracy, we’re really fucked. No,