The Federalist Phoenix No. 3
My previous post about democracy ended with the question: Are we really in jeopardy of losing our democracy? Answering this question requires me to search for and establish what single, immutable quality, if any, must be the foundational bedrock of democracy, without which it would be or become something entirely different.
To begin, as in the example of young children mentioned previously, the exclusion of some people within the association from being rulers or taking part in the election of rulers does not necessarily make the association something other than a democracy. Just the opposite. It protects the democracy from capricious decisions borne of immaturity, youth, and inexperience. Beyond that, it must be understood and agreed that exclusions may not be applied arbitrarily or capriciously, for example, due to birthright; or in a manner that renders the basis of exclusion wholly lacking in moral or ethical considerations, for example, due to animus, jealousy, or greed. Inasmuch as birthright is not a choice one makes, to use it as a basis for exclusion suggests an unwillingness to accept another’s humanity. In so doing, one’s own humanity is called into question. To accept that hatred, jealousy or greed are acceptable justifications for exclusion is to admit one’s own dearth of morals and ethics. Conversely, to accept that an association of people is composed of, at its core, living, sentient persons, all born from the same, shared experiences of procreation, therein exists a common quality from which I may proceed. Procreation in this sense is construed to be any process which produces a living, sentient human.
I immediately conclude that equality must be the fundamental, inviolable principle of a democracy. Equality must be seen, recognized, and embraced by the association’s rulers—those who write, enact, interpret, and enforce the laws, under which all people of the association are defined as citizens. From the foregoing it must be understood that: As far as any power of protection or restraint is exerted over the actions of the people in an association by the operation of the laws of that association, those same laws, by necessity, must circumscribe the people upon which they operate as belonging to the association and thus citizens, and therefore equally bound and protected by the laws.
If democracy may only arise and be sustained under equality, when it is not at the center of the association’s principles of governance, how can all the people be bound to the laws other than through the capricious use of force? If an association forms where equality takes primacy, is embraced, and protected by its laws, democracy follows. When an association ceases to make equality under its laws the foundational principle upon which it operates, regardless of what the rulers call it, it is not a democracy.
