Those Hollering About "Our Democracy" Don't Understand Democracy

 In his article at today's American Thinker entitled Whose Democracy Is This Anyway?, T. R. Clancy suggests that those hollering about "our democracy" may not understand what "democracy" is.

Reno’s commentary addresses a New York Times column by extremism “expert” Cynthia Miller-Idriss, published to mark the anniversary of January 6. She warns readers that the Capitol riot proves “the most urgent threat to Americans’ safety and security” isn’t coming from foreign terrorists, “but from the country’s own citizens.”

Specifically, she’s alarmed by a study showing “a majority of the arrested Jan. 6 attackers were employed, some of them teachers, chief executives, veterans, doctors and lawyers. They had an average age of around 40.” In other words, largely average to above-average Americans more or less representative of the American middle class. This makes the threat “especially pernicious” because “government’s traditional counterterrorism infrastructure [is] built to focus on fringe extremists,” and thus wholly unequipped to counter a danger that comes “not from the fringe but from the mainstream.”

For Reno, these assertions invite bewilderment: “On its face, this notion of ‘mainstream’ threats to democracy perplexes. One presumes that a democratic system reflects mainstream views. Isn’t the first principle of democracy that the majority rules?”

You’d think, but as Reno points out, “Miller-Idriss is not one to ponder paradoxes.” Whatever democracy means for her (she never says) it’s clearly not the rule (kratos) of the people (demos). It becomes clear her idea of democracy is a compliant demos answerable to a well-funded and dynamic kratos.

Gentle readers will find Clancy's article worth reading. And if they have time, R. R. Reno's article at First Things is interesting as well.