The Foundation of Democracy

People keep talking about the foundations of democracy, things like the press, freedom of speech, freedom, tolerance, etc. Yes, all of these things are important. However, I think what is more important than all of them is the existence of a community. Community is something that binds the people together despite disagreements and difficulties. Community is not voluntary; that is a change in the meaning of the term that has come about primarily in the age of technology. (Thinkers like Neil Postman and Zygmunt Bauma have made this point quite well.) The older idea of community means being stuck among people that you may disagree with but working it out because there is something else that binds you. It is more like family, like blood, than like free association. Community, requires compromise and identity. Compromise that allows the community to stay together through disagreements, and identity allows them to feel part of that community in their everyday life and personal experience.

All of the freedoms people usually talk about as being the foundation of democracy only tear the community apart unless the community is stronger than the individual's desire to exercise those freedoms and unless the responsibility (and it is really a responsibility to the community as a whole-- not necessarily to ideals or values) that comes with them is taken as seriously as the freedom itself. Tolerance taken to an extreme is damaging to the community as well because it can dilute identity to the point of making it meaningless. Intolerance damages the community by excluding members of the community instead of compromising with them and including them. Being over tolerant can lead to an identity that is connected only to abstract ideals that have no connection to a person's sense of self or their everyday life. That kind of identity is empty and useless.

The binding principle used to be that of a nation; that is why the rise of the nation-state and the rise of democracy coincide in modern history. But as the idea of the nation weakens, what will replace it as a binding principle?

In the US it was based mostly on belief in the political system. (I usually say that you can see what binds a people based on who and what they put on their currency.) That is why political division that erodes faith in the institutions is so troubling. In any case, that binding principle-- I like to think of it as a sense of community, or maybe family-- is the deeper foundation for democracy, deeper than all the rights, freedoms and values that people prattle on about. If that is lost, all these other things are unsustainable and maybe even dangerous.

Though people love to talk about freedom of the press (especially the press) and access to information (especially those providing us with information and technology) and their importance to democracy, neither of those is more important than a sense of community when it comes to sustaining a democracy. In fact, both of them can be quite dangerous to democracy when they erode or directly threaten community.