The earlier post Extremists took issue with the naive and mean-spirited corruption of the idea of democracy advocated by reactionaries upset by consensual rule, especially in the US. Their objective is to incite mobs to use ICT to dominate society and disenfranchise as large a segment of society as possible.

In Downloading Democracy Robert Conquest deals with an aspect of this issue worth highlighting.

Its faults are almost as obvious as its virtues. And examples are many--for instance, the sentencing of Socrates, who lost votes because of his politically incorrect speech in his own defense. Or the Athenian assembly voting for the death of all the adult males and the enslavement of all the women and children of Mytilene, then regretting the decision and sending a second boat to intercept, just in time, the boat carrying the order. Democracy had the even more grievous result of procuring the ruin of Athens, by voting for the disastrous and pointless expedition to Syracuse against the advice of the more sensible, on being bamboozled by the attractive promises of the destructive demagogue Alcibiades.

Even in failure, the thought-fires it set off went on burning. But the views it posed did not really return to Europe and elsewhere until a quarter of a millennium ago. Thus it was not its example but its theory that hit the inexperienced thinkers of the European Enlightenment. Unfortunately, the inheritance was less about the Periclean need for debate than about the need to harness the people (to a succession of rulers). And though the broader forces of real consensual rule began to penetrate, from England and elsewhere (such as the early New England town meetings or those of Swiss rural cantons), they had to compete in the struggle for the vote with inexperienced populations and "philosophical" elites.

The revival of the concept of democracy on the European continent saw this huge stress on the demos, the people. They could not in fact match the direct participation of the Athenian demos, but they could be "represented" by any revolutionary regime claiming to do so--often concerned, above all, to repress "enemies of the people." Also, the people, or those of military age, could be conscripted in bulk--the levé en masse that long defeated more conventional armies. As the 19th century continued, the people could be polled in plebiscites and thus democratically authenticated. Napoleon III, of course, relied on this, and it is clear that he actually had high majority support. In any case, the new orders, democratic or not, had to seek or claim authentication by the people, the masses, the population.

Another aspect of premature "democracy" is the adulation of what used to be and might still be called "the city mob" (noted by Aristotle as ochlocracy). In France, of course, in the 1790s, a spate of ideologues turned to the Paris mob, in riot after riot, until the 18th Brumaire, Napoleon's coup of 1799. The ploy was that, as A. E. Housman put it, a capital city with far fewer inhabitants could decide the fate of the country's millions.

This is the basic objective of those who advocate direct democracy and expanded scope for elections. They seek to use modern analogs of the Paris mob to dominate large populations who would not otherwise consent to their inimical agenda. This is why their focus is on demagoguery, manufactured crises ranging from environmental doom to foreign attack, and their method is to manipulate media to market their ideological wares like every other consumer product. The metaphor is everything. The Periclean need for debate is ignored since the objective isn't informed decision making and consensual rule. The basic requirements for a wise crowd - independence, diversity and decentralization - are actively subverted by political marketers interested in inciting a "city mob".

As Conquest notes there is no structural fix for this problem, no way to achieve the desirable goals of consensual rule by futzing with election regulations. It is the culture of a polity that determines whether self rule or mob rule will result from elections. Keeping the scope of elections small by embracing subsidarity, having a multi-level government that leaves local decisions up to localities, and highly constraining the powers of higher levels by constitutional restriction, blunts the destructive effects of mobs. But in the end it is a matter of culture - a prickly independence of mind and the proclivity to take responsibility for the quality of government rather than delegating everything to remote powers - that determines whether democracy results in oppression or consensual self rule.

What is often forgotten, misunderstood or minimized is that equality has no value except to those who have liberty. This was the blunder of the revival of the concept of democracy on the European continent that Conquest speaks of, and that continues to this day. The failures of revolutionary socialism and communism that happened there and elsewhere result chiefly from this error. There is a tension between equality and liberty that moderates and civilizes both. Taken to extreme both are harmful.

To succeed in promoting democracy for regions such as the middle east that have not yet embraced those Periclean values, and to progress toward a more secure and humanitarian world order, we need to continue to remind and educate those confused continentals about liberty, and oppose the imposition of their degraded form of democracy on ever larger parts of the world. This isn't just an ideological preference for more libertarian systems, it is a practical necessity to achieve egalitarian objectives. Without liberty there is no equality.