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NO one in
the UN picked a quarrel with President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo
when she told that great assembly that the Philippines is
the most democratic nation in Asia. It would have been
pointless; the UN is not the forum for a debate on
political theory and practice, but over here, there were
some voices which greeted the President’s boast with not
much enthusiasm. After all, in the liveliest democracy
that is ours, everyone is entitled to his own opinion,
despite the admonition that not everyone is entitled to
his own facts. My own reaction to the President’s
statement is slightly different. I saw myself again as a
high-school student discussing and arguing democracy with
my classmates.
It was a
time when the Voice of Democracy sponsored oratorical
contests on the subject of democracy. The war had ended a
year before, and it was felt by the authorities that
students should get involved in the democratic idea,
mainly because the cold war between the US and the USSR
was on and the Hukbalahap movement was getting stronger.
Our history teacher in the Arellano (Manila North) Public
High School, the unforgettable Ms. Librada Santos,
mentioned Pericles’ funeral oration, “the single, most
eloquent celebration of Athenian democracy,” the school of
civic virtue, a model for the world. She summed up the
nature of Athenian democracy as well and justly
administered, the many and not the few were favored,
capacity as the sole criterion for public office; personal
relations were easy, lawlessness was uncommon; valor in
the service of the state was rewarded…. We were young but
we tended to agree that we were heirs of Pericles despite
the fact that some teachers tried to influence student
elections. Anyway, aberrations would be done away with in
time, for progress toward democracy was inevitable.
Years
later, there was damned martial law, but happily democracy
was restored. In the off chance, however, that democracy
might flounder once again, the new government announced an
educational program on democracy, at least among our
school population. As far as I know, nothing came of it,
probably because democracy was no longer under any threat
with the repeal of some martial-law decrees, institutions
and infrastructure (some of which, however, were merely
renamed), and the sequestration of businesses, though with
scant attention to the claims of human-rights victims.
Seven coups failed. Democracy was saved, even if the
rationale of the putsches was to save it.
Since at
this time, a prominent civic organization is contemplating
an essay contest on democracy, it’s probably useful to
review the history of the democratic idea. Ancient as it
is, derived as it were from the Greek demokratia,
democracy has a long history in political thought, except
that modern democracy is only a little more than two
centuries old in its wide acceptance.
The
classic celebration
It was the
historian Thucydides who dramatized the oration of
Pericles, brilliant and charismatic politician and general
who perished in the great plague that decimated
Athens a year later. After paying homage to ancestors and the dead,
Pericles spoke about “the great principles of action by
which
Athens
rose to power” and “under what institutions and through
what manner of life our empire became great.”
I have
tired of rereading the Periclean oration whenever I hear
talk about democracy. It wouldn’t cause too much damage to
our brains if we read the relevant passages now:
Our
constitution does not copy the laws of neighboring states;
we are rather a pattern to others than imitators
ourselves. Its administration favors the many instead of
the few; this is why it is called a democracy. It we look
to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their
private differences; if no social standing, advancement in
public life falls to reputation for capacity, class
considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit;
nor again does poverty bar the way, if a man is able to
serve the state, he is not hindered by the obscurity of
his condition. The freedom with which we enjoy in our
government extends also to our ordinary life. There, far
from exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we
do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbor for
doing what he likes, or even to indulge in those injurious
looks which cannot fail to be offensive, although they
inflict no positive penalty. But all this ease in our
private relations does not make us lawless as citizens,
Against this fear is our chief safeguard, teaching us to
obey the magistrates and the laws, particularly such as
regard the protection of the injured, whether they are
actually on the statute book, or belong to that code
which, although overwritten, yet cannot be broken without
acknowledged disgrace.
Further,
we provide plenty of means for the mind to refresh itself
from business. We celebrate games and sacrifices all year
round, and the elegance of our private establishments
forms a daily source of pleasure and helps to banish the
spleen; while the magnitude of our city draws the produce
of the world into our harbor, so that to the Athenian the
fruits of other countries are as familiar a luxury as
those of his own.
If we turn
to our military policy, there also we differ from our
antagonists. We throw open our city to the world, and
never by alien acts exclude foreigners from any
opportunity of learning or observing, although the eyes of
an enemy may occasionally profit by our liberality;
trusting less in system and policy than to the native
spirit of our citizens; while in education, where our
rivals from their very different cradles by a painful
discipline seek after manliness, at Athens we live exactly
as we please, and yet just as ready to encounter every
legitimate danger. In proof of this it may be noticed that
the Lacedaemonians do not invade our country alone, but
bring with them all their confederates; while we Athenians
advance unsupported into the territory of the neighbor,
and fighting upon a foreign soil usually vanquish with
ease men who are defending their homes. Our united force
was never yet encountered by any enemy, because we have at
once to attend to our marine and to dispatch our citizens
by land upon a hundred different services; so that,
whenever they engage with some such fraction of our
strength, a success against a detachment is magnified into
a victory over the nation, and a defeat into a reverse
suffered at the hands of an entire people. And yet in
habits not of labor but of ease, and courage not of art
but of nature, we have the double advantage of escaping
the experience of hardships in anticipation and of facing
them in the hour of need as fearlessly as those who are
never free from them.
Nor are
these the only points in which our city is worthy of
admiration. We cultivate refinement without extravagance
and knowledge without effeminacy; wealth we employ more
for use than for show, and place the real disgrace of
poverty not in owning to the fact but in declining the
struggle against it. Our public men have, besides
politics, their private affairs to attend to, and our
ordinary citizens, though occupied with the pursuits of
industry, are still fair judges of public matters; for,
unlike any other nation, regarding him who takes no part
in these duties not as unambitious but useless, we
Athenians are able to judge at all events if we cannot
originate and, instead of looking at discussion as a
stumbling block in the way of action, we think an
indispensable preliminary to any wise action at all.
Again, in our enterprises we present the singular
spectacle of daring and deliberation, each carried to its
highest point, and both united in the same persons;
although usually decision is the fruit of ignorance,
hesitation of reflection. But the palm of courage will
surely be adjudged most justly to those who best know the
difference between hardship and pleasure and yet not
tempted to shrink from danger. Yet, of course, the doer of
the favor is the former friend of the two, in order by
continued kindness to keep the recipient in his debt,
while the debtor feels less keenly from the very
consciousness that the return he makes will be a payment,
nor a free gift. And it is only the Athenians, who,
fearless of consequences, confer their benefits not from
calculations of expediency, but in the confidence of
liberality.
In short,
I say that as a city we are the school of Hellas; while I
doubt if the world can produce a man who, where he has
only himself to depend on, is equal to so many
emergencies, and graced by so happy a versatility, as the
Athenian.
After
Pericles, demagoguery
Thucydides
nostalgically called Pericles’ rule as the “golden age” of
Greek democracy, for after him, Athenian democracy was
never the same again, through wars and the weariness of
the Athenians who were unable to rise above their personal
ambitions and private interest. The successors of the
“First Citizen” kowtowed to the multitude, and created
conditions that encouraged demagoguery, precisely what
Plato and Aristotle considered the dangers of democracy.
Thucydides
cited among examples Cleon, whose words inspired the
populace, but whose use of the masses for his own purposes
and contempt of gifted men, showed democracy’s
vulnerability in time of war. In peace and prosperity, the
historian observed, tolerance comes naturally, but in time
of war, “imperious necessity” takes over: prudence,
caution and justice are the daily casualties. Civilized
behavior is rare, debate enjoys little respect and becomes
uncommon law finds itself impotent before the incessant
calls for action, and superiority of any kind is
suspended.
The fall
of Athenian democracy was equally the work of citizens who
lost their virtue and the exploitation of their weaknesses
by demagogues who won their support by stratagems rather
than merit.
Plato and
Aristotle, the idealist and the pragmatist, based their
reflections on democracy on Thucydides’ history. (Recall,
too, that it was the citizens of Athens which convicted
Socrates, stressing Plato’s distrust of the multitudes.)
While Plato called democracy the best of the nonlaw-abiding
forms of government, the monarchy as the best of
law-abiding, Aristotle favored a mixture of monarchy,
aristocracy and democracy. But the aim of their
philosophical thought is the governance that any polis
deserves.
Plato’s
Republic, a “totalitarian democracy” that he himself did
not think realizable, was, like Pericles’ celebration,
“the rule of the best, and the wisest,” “a slogan so often
cited by democratic politicians, but hardly pursued.
Athenian
democracy may have been the “secret” of the city state’s
greatness, but Pericles gave equal credit to the Athenian
citizen himself. It was a happy marriage of the citizen
and the state through the “sacrament” of education.
All the
democracies after antiquity and the middle ages have
struggled between the virtues of democratic rule and of
leaders and citizens. The sovereign people is much more
difficult to educate, especially when there’s no effort to
do so. Popular rule is often mistaken for popularity,
accounting for the primacy of demagogues.
Athenian
democracy had, however, two things going for it: a small
polis and the labor of slaves, freeing the free citizen to
muse on high matters. Modern democracies need a middle
class who can devote itself to matters higher than
self-interest.
Plato and
Aristotle also believed that a good society, let alone a
democratic state, would be hard to achieve where “there
were many who were rich and many who were poor.” The thorn
on the side of democratic theory since ancient times is
the problem of economic and social equality.
At this
time, democracy as extolled by Pericles has become a
dream; but for all that, it’s still a worthy pursuit, if
only it hasn’t become a façade in the pursuit of profit
and power. |
