Evolution is the point of democracy.
That’s because autocracies don’t change, while democracy allows for change.
Those who resist change when democracy calls for it, when their candidate or movement fails, are letting down democracy. I’ve had to swallow Trump. Others will have to swallow Mamdani.
That’s because democracy isn’t about winning. It’s about choosing. It’s not about doing the right thing. It’s about doing the wrong thing and then trying something else.
Democracy is messy. Democracy delivers people to power who don’t even believe in democracy. They force us to choose whether to maintain democracy. So far, we’ve done that.
American history is filled with leaders who ran over checks and balances in the name of what they believed to be right. Great leaders have done it but so have bad leaders. Whether these actions are right or wrong is told by subsequent elections, often acting through the courts.
Efforts to rig elections work only on the margins, unless accompanied by great violence that leaves everyone weaker. The Jim Crow south was a Third World country. Mississippi, Alabama, and other poor states are returning to those good old days, because the past isn’t even the past. The failure to allow for democracy has consequences.
Churchill was right. Democracy is the worst political system except for all the others.
Capitalism and Democracy
Capitalism is like democracy in that it’s messy and can deliver unpleasant side effects, like monopoly, pollution, and extremes in wealth. But it’s also better than any other economic system.
That’s because, as with democracy, capitalism allows for choices. It lets failure happen. It’s ironic that many businessmen resist political change, because capitalism is all about enabling change. It’s progressive in that way.
At the same time, while labor leaders are often associated with leftism, unions are the most conservative institutions in a capitalist system. Their whole point is to get more money and better working conditions for workers, which means resisting changes that might cut employment or lower costs.
If you take this to mean I hate labor unions, you’re wrong. They’re an essential part of both the capitalist economic system and the democratic political system. When labor has no choice, workers are less likely to support corporate ownership. When workers have no political voice, they’re easy prey for anti-capitalist demagoguery. Besides, I like weekends.
We Need Both
Capitalism, democracy, and personal liberty, which you might call the judicial system of freedom, combine to make a system flexible. In a fast-changing technology world, it’s the flexibility of a system that proves its worth. It’s the ability to change course, and to keep moving forward, that distinguishes the great business from the mediocre. It’s the cartilage in the hips and knees and back of any political system.
Through most of American history, capitalism has dominated over democracy and liberty. It has gotten so extreme that many people mistakenly think capitalism is a political system. It’s not. China is an autocratic state, but it’s more capitalist than your hometown.
The most interesting trend in our time is how global this struggle for complexity has become. The decisions of the current Administration have caused revulsion, leading to a renewal of democracy and a rejection of American capitalist artifacts, including the dollar. This damage will remain no matter what happens in our politics. Our days as the global reserve currency are ending.
But it’s the counterbalancing of forces, the shifting alliances of societies focused on improving all three legs on our triad of liberty, that should most interest historians. The last eight years have been a battle, I believe a losing one for America.
But the war for freedom is far from over.
