By Joshua Muravchik
Monday, February 26, 2018
‘Democracy is in crisis,” begins the 2018 annual report
from Freedom House. “For the 12th consecutive year, . . . countries that
suffered democratic setbacks outnumbered those that registered gains.” Indeed,
the downward trend may be accelerating. This year for the first time, the
number of countries registering losses of freedom — a whopping 71 in all — is
more than double the number in which freedom grew.
Alarm at this trajectory, together with some other global
events and trends, inspired the issuance of the Prague Appeal for Democratic
Renewal, officially launched at the October 2017 conference, in Prague, of the
Forum 2000 Foundation, an organization founded by former Czech president Václav
Havel and maintained by members of his family and close political associates.
The Prague Appeal is intended as a “moral and intellectual catalyst for the
revitalization of the democratic idea” and as the charter for the Coalition for
Democratic Renewal, consisting of intellectuals and activists, from scores of
countries, who aim to “go on the offensive against the authoritarian opponents
of democracy.”
That such an initiative might draw return fire from its
targets is to be expected. More surprising, however, was the broadside against
it in these pages by National Review
editor-at-large John O’Sullivan, speaking mostly through the voice of Ryszard
Legutko. O’Sullivan merely glossed a polemic that Legutko had contributed to
the Australian magazine Quadrant.
Lengthy quotes from it made up most of O’Sullivan’s piece.
O’Sullivan introduces Legutko as a “distinguished Polish
philosopher,” but one could not tell from the method of his diatribe. In the
compass of a thousand words, Legutko accuses the Prague Appeal of being
“bizarre,” “outrageous,” “intellectual[ly] dishonest,” “an insult to decency,”
“vile,” “shameful,” and “a lie.” He attributes to the signers, many of whom
have published a great deal, views in manifest contradiction to what they have
written. Oddly, he elsewhere recently put his name to an appeal for “linguistic
decency,” noting that “language is a delicate instrument, . . . debased when
used as a bludgeon,” and that “recourse to denunciation is a sign of . . .
decadence.”
What is going on here? The fuse igniting Legutko’s (and,
by proxy, O’Sullivan’s) explosion is the inclusion, in the Prague Appeal, of a
reference to Hungary alongside references to Venezuela, Turkey, and the
Philippines. All are cited as examples of “backsliding democracies” where
“illiberalism is on the rise.” Legutko, who angrily decried this as
“attributing guilt by scurrilous association,” and O’Sullivan, who directs a
think tank in Budapest, are evidently partial to Hungarian prime minister
Viktor Orbán. More broadly, they appear to sympathize with “populist” movements
that have arisen recently in Europe and the U.S.
There are important issues to discuss here. But first we
must get past not only the torrent of abuse rained down by Legutko but also
O’Sullivan’s misleading claims about who the sides are in this argument and
what it is they are arguing about. O’Sullivan portrays a debate in which “most
conservatives and mainstream Republicans” are set “against a coalition of
progressives and liberal Republicans.” The former support “a majoritarian view
of democracy” that, he says, their critics call “populism.” The other side of
the debate, he continues, favors “a form of liberal democracy in which courts,
international treaties, and bureaucratic agencies take decisions once under the
control of Congress”: a position called “post-democracy” by their critics.
Pretending to even-handedness, O’Sullivan proceeds to
refer to each group by the epithet that its “critics” attach to it, but this is
not even at all. “Populism” is not a term used only or even primarily by
“critics” of the political currents represented by Trump, Orbán, Le Pen, et al.
They must be called something, and “populist” is a rather neutral label.
O’Sullivan, who sympathizes with this side, has used the term himself
repeatedly in articles for Hungarian
Review. On the other hand, “post-democracy” is a slur, or at least a gross
distortion, as none of the advocates of liberal democracy in this debate
believe what O’Sullivan attributes to them. In fact, the first paragraph of the
Prague Appeal specifically denounces the efforts of authoritarians “to create a
post-democratic world order.” In other words, “post-democratic” is a term that
the Prague Appeal uses to define what it opposes, not to define itself.
Neither is it true that “most conservatives and
mainstream Republicans” identify as “populists.” Almost none use that label,
and few would embrace it. Nor is the liberal-democracy side of this debate made
up of “progressives and liberal Republicans.” The latter term is generally
recognized as a null set since the demise of Nelson D. Rockefeller, and the
former applies to few if any of the signers of the Prague Appeal.
Around 85 percent of them are not Americans. Of the 38
signers who are, I know almost all and don’t see any who I think would call
themselves “progressive.” A large part are associated with groups such as
Freedom House and the National Endowment for Democracy. Some are moderate
liberals, others are centrists or conservatives, and some are neoconservatives.
(For the text of the document and the list of signers, see Forum2000.)
The last group is significant in that the
O’Sullivan-Legutko polemic is redolent of earlier attacks by self-described
“paleoconservatives” against neoconservatives. A cornerstone of those attacks
was the charge that neocons made a fetish of democracy in advocating
democracy-promotion as a key element of U.S. foreign policy.
Over the years, progressives have voiced cognate
criticisms, drawing a distinction between the “human-rights community” and the
“democracy community.” They have favored the former because human rights, a
touchstone of Jimmy Carter’s presidency, could be couched in terms of U.N.
treaties and declarations, whereas democracy-promotion, a touchstone of Ronald
Reagan’s presidency, seemed American-centric.
Whatever the invidious intent of this distinction made by
progressives, “the democracy community” is an accurate description of the
American signers of the Prague Appeal. And if there can be said to be an
international “democracy community,” made up of veterans of the victories over
Communism in Eastern and Central Europe as well as of dissidents from Russia,
China, Cuba, Venezuela, Bahrain, Egypt, and other countries under dictatorship
— a community of activists many of whom know one another and offer one another
moral support — then this term would apply to the signatory group as a whole.
This makes it doubly strange that O’Sullivan would
characterize the signers as believers in what he calls “post-democracy” — that
is, rule by unelected elites — while describing those usually called
“populists,” including by O’Sullivan himself, as “majoritarian democrats.” This
nomenclature makes the latter group sound like the firmer or truer
democrats. Why would O’Sullivan resort
to such verbal sleight of hand?
Perhaps because there is no honest way to make populism
out to be a conservative virtue or cause. Most thoughtful democrats, but
especially conservatives, take to heart the wisdom of the American founders,
who understood that representative democracy is preferable to plebiscitary
democracy and that restraints on governmental power by means of divided
authority and protections of minority rights are essential even where public
officeholders are chosen in free elections.
Populism puts little stock in such checks and balances.
It favors direct and immediate expressions of popular will, which all too
readily devolve into tyranny, as Plato observed in antiquity, and as the
Jacobins illustrated at the dawn of the modern era. Populists are generally
demagogues, which is why we have often seen them resort to appeals to bigotry,
both here and abroad.
That is the reason that the “democracy community” is
alarmed at the rise of populism, but populism is not the only issue or even the
main one that the Prague Appeal addresses. First and foremost among them is the
mounting assertiveness of “despotic regimes in Russia, China, and other
countries that are tightening repression internally and expanding their power
globally.” Their audacity is encouraged by the “fading power, influence, and
self-confidence of the long-established democracies.”
A second reason is that other countries, including some
important regional powers, are moving away from democracy. Venezuela, Turkey,
and the Philippines are salient examples. Legutko denies or downplays the
changes in those countries, citing earlier weaknesses, but the facts are these:
Venezuela boasted one of Latin America’s firmer democratic traditions, Turkey
was often cited as the best example of Muslim democracy in the Middle East if
not the world, and the Philippines had functioned since the mid 1980s as one of
a handful of democratic exemplars in East Asia. Now, democracy has been
overturned in Venezuela and Turkey and is hanging by a thread in the
Philippines. Perhaps the reason Legutko strains to obscure those facts is that
in each case the leader responsible for the deplorable turn — Hugo Chávez in
Venezuela, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines —
can well be labeled a populist.
A third source of concern cited in the Prague Appeal is
survey evidence showing a significantly weakening commitment to democracy and
liberal values (in the broad sense of that term, denoting beliefs often held
most dear by conservatives) in Western societies, especially among young
people.
These developments must distress any democrat. That makes
it inexplicable that O’Sullivan and Legutko would, in their zeal to defend
Orbán, trash the Prague Appeal in toto. And it is downright bizarre that they
would do so in the name of democracy, whether “majoritarian” or any other kind.
They might have shared the worries expressed in the
Prague Appeal while taking exception only to its criticism of Orbán’s Hungary.
Why issue such a fierce across-the-board attack on the whole endeavor instead?
Perhaps because they could not come up with a compelling defense of Orbán.
Ever since his Fidesz party came to power in 2010,
winning 50-odd percent of the popular vote and thereby securing more than
two-thirds of the seats in parliament, it has undertaken a dramatic overhaul of
Hungarian institutions. This has provoked protests from the Council of Europe, the
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the United States,
and all manner of human-rights groups. Early complaints, having to do with
electoral laws and gerrymandering, were apparently borne out in the next
election, in 2014, when the popular vote for Fidesz fell below 50 percent but
the party retained its two-thirds-plus control of parliament.
Other changes that Fidesz pushed through seem designed to
assure that its measures would be hard to undo even if its electoral fortunes
waned. It created, among a raft of constitutional changes, a category of
“cardinal laws” that could not be overturned by less than a two-thirds majority
in parliament, meaning that they will be immune to change by any future
government that commands only a simple majority. A necessary feature of liberal
democracy is the requirement of supermajorities, for the purpose of
guaranteeing rights. But Hungary’s constitution now includes such matters as
family and tax policy within the ambit of “cardinal laws.” Also, the terms of
the public prosecutor and of the head of the judicial office (which appoints
various judges) were lengthened, as were those of the head of the media board
and the audit office, with a proviso that, even when their terms expire, their
successors must receive the support of a two-thirds majority in parliament. If
they fail to attain that, the tenure of the present officeholders would, it
appears, extend indefinitely.
Members of the constitutional court used to be nominated
by a committee on which all parties were represented. Now they are nominated
solely by representatives of Fidesz, which has filled the court with its own
partisans. Something similar has been done with government offices that have
power over media. State media now are widely accused of slanting in favor of
the government, and large swaths of private media have been bought by investors
who are reportedly close to Orbán.
The largest opposition daily, Népszabadság, closed abruptly in late 2016 after running exposés of
government corruption. Its parent company soon sold it to another company,
linked to the former mayor of Orbán’s hometown, a man regarded as a crony of
his. The second company announced that it would not restart the paper.
For these and other derelictions, Freedom House’s
assessment of Hungary has progressively worsened since Orbán took office. For
the previous five years, Hungary had recorded a pristine 1.0 on the Freedom
House’s scale of 1 to 7. It promptly fell to 1.5, then to 2.0. It now stands at
2.5, at the outer edge of qualifying as a “free country.” A small slide in the
same direction would tip it into the category “partly free.”
While O’Sullivan describes Freedom House as lying in the
“left-leaning Center,” even though most of its recent executives have been
Republicans, many of Orbán’s other critics are indisputably left of center. But
plenty of observers on the right have expressed similar worries. The Heritage
Foundation in its annual index of economic freedom notes that “judicial
independence remains under threat” and that “cronyism and corruption are
serious concerns, as illustrated by the difficulties experienced by business owners
who have fallen out of favor with the government.” And last year the European
Parliament, whose majority comes from right-of-center parties, adopted a
resolution decrying “a serious deterioration of the rule of law, democracy and
fundamental rights” in Hungary.
What I and, I am sure, other signers of the Prague Appeal
find most alarming, however, is Orbán’s own rhetoric. In a famous speech in
2014, he made clear that his aim was to “reorganiz[e] the Hungarian state” and
society to create a “work-based society that . . . undertakes the odium of
stating that it is not liberal in character.” That meant “breaking with the
dogmas and ideologies [of] the West.” He added, “What we are constructing in
Hungary is an illiberal state.” The goal, he explained, was to make the society
“internationally competitive,” adding that “the stars . . . today are
Singapore, China, India, Russia, and Turkey.”
Orbán’s admiration for Erdogan’s Turkey makes it
especially ironic that Legutko waxed most furious over the association of
Hungary with Turkey in the Prague Appeal. It is a shame that O’Sullivan and
Legutko resorted to a tirade against the Appeal instead of venturing a
justification of Orbán’s words and actions.
For it seems undeniable that democracy is in crisis for
the reasons the Appeal enumerates: authoritarians emboldened, the West in
retreat, many countries growing less free, the younger generation indifferent
to democratic values and innocent of the horrific though heroic struggles that
secured them. One would have hoped that the likes of O’Sullivan and Legutko,
men who once participated in those struggles, would join in defending their
fruits.
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