Democratism: When Democracy Becomes an Idol
18th September 2024
I employed an exercise with students in high school to compare the French Declaration of the Rights of Man (1787) and the American Declaration of Independence (1776). Side by side, it is easy to see the differences. The American Declaration includes references to a transcendent being as the source of freedoms. The French Declaration repeats the phrase “the will of the people” fifteen times. Even in revolt against tyranny, the origin of authority matters.
The backdrop of “the people’s will” is a fitting entry into Jacob Wolf’s review of The Ideology of Democratism by Emily Finley. Wolf records Finley’s words that democracy is “perhaps the dominant political belief system in modern Western society.” Finley expands the impact of the process of “democracy” into a product, “the ideology of democratism.” Wolf contends, “Democracy has become a secular religion, complete with its own dogmas, practices, clerics, and eschatology.”