America or Athens

“Democracy never lasts long,” warned old Johnny Adams long ago.

“It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself,” Mr. Adams added.

Your editor has himself stretched democracy upon his vivisection table… and upon examination discovered a deeply diseased patient.

Its blood stagnates in pools. Its liver reveals excessive alcoholic intake. Its brain manifests an advanced dementia.

Yet is it necessarily in the nature of democracy to waste itself? To exhaust itself?

Indeed… to murder itself?

Perhaps democracy itself is not at fault. Perhaps instead democracies are at fault.

That is, perhaps particular peoples are at fault.

The Virtue of Athenian Democracy

As we have noted before: Golden Age Athens — a democracy — amassed a vast public treasury.

This fantastic hoard remained unmolested outside of wartime. The democratic citizens of Athens were free to vote themselves the treasure.

Yet they did not. They instead glued their hands in their pockets.

Author Freeman Tilden, from his 1935 masterwork A World in Debt:

At one time the Athenians had in their citadel more than 10,000 talents of silver [roughly $206 million in 2024 dollars]; and what is more significant, they did not tap the resources until forced by the necessity of war.

Here Mr. Tilden cites 18th-century British philosopher David Hume:

What an ambitious and high-spirited people was this, to collect and keep in their treasury a sum which it was every day in the power of the citizens, by a single vote, to distribute among themselves!

Nor did Athens — to its everlasting praise — take to swindle when it was in a bad way.

It did not clip coins, for example. It did not corrode its currency.

Tilden:

The most brilliant democrats that ever lived, the Athenians… never, as free men, indulged in the final madness of debasing their currency: They never became swindlers… Athens rose in trade by means of establishing good credit and by safeguarding the honor of her coin. In the most terrible years of her history, when the treasury was empty… she was indeed obliged to strike emergency coins of gold and bronze, but never consented to debase her coinage.

The American Example

Has the United States safeguarded the honor of its coin?

To ask the question is to answer the question.

How much value has the United States dollar hemorrhaged since the Federal Reserve came on station in 1913?

95% perhaps?

Yet we maintain high respect for the nation’s monetary authority and the dignity of its office.

We shall not — therefore — accuse it of dereliction, active or benign.

Yet the question arises:

Were the ancients stamped from nobler metal? Had they greater virtue than moderns?

Imagine the United States Treasury. Next imagine it loaded to the gunwales with gold.

Now imagine its doors thrown open to the American public — its golden contents are theirs for the asking.

Finally, imagine the American people saying no and walking away.

Can you imagine it? Your editor cannot imagine it.

Nor can he guarantee he would say no and walk away.

“Lord, deliver me from temptation,” says he, parading past the Treasury — “just not yet.”

Not All Democracies Are Equal

The capital fact nonetheless remains: Athenians amassed a $206 million surplus.

Americans, meantime, have amassed a $34.2 trillion debt.

No — a $34.3 trillion debt.

Both the United States and Athens share democracy in common.

Yet the one saved. The other consumes.

Can we then claim that democracy — by nature — wastes itself, exhausts itself and murders itself?

We begin to harbor doubt.

We incline instead toward the belief that modern democracy wastes itself, exhausts itself and murders itself.

Henry Louis Mencken once claimed that “every election is an advanced auction on stolen goods.”

We believe there is vast justice here. Not in the Athenian context perhaps. But in the American context.

We the People Should Look in the Mirror

It is easy to indict the politician. It is easy to say this rascal has sunk the nation $34.3 trillion in debt.

Yet as we have argued before: If we haul the politician into the dock… We the People must go with him.

That is because the politicians are simply We the People’s mirror.

Could politicians humbug us into a $34.3 trillion debt absent our knowledge — or consent?

Only under a very, very strange species of democracy.

We demand a glistening military machine with every whistle and bell… heaping doses of Social Security… Medicare… a Rolls-Royce education… a million gaudy baubles.

Yet we do not wish to pay for them in full.

Hand it over, we bark from one corner of our mouths. But don’t dare raise my taxes, we bellow from the other.

Gimme!

We claim we are heart and soul for limited government. Yet are we simply heart and soul for ourselves?

Give me that tax break, says the one. No, give it to me, says the other.

You can both go scratching, says the third. I deserve it more.

A fourth files a claim of his own.

Meantime, the hard-luck farmer wants his back scratched. The hard-pressed businessman wants his belly rubbed. The hard-worked teacher wants her apple.

Millions more are hard at the business.

It is the triumph of “special interests” when the other fellow’s parsnips are buttered.

Yet it is “democracy in action” when our own parsnips are buttered.

Once again, your editor does not claim a moral pristinity. He has parsnips himself. And he enjoys a good buttering.

And as a scientist of American democracy, he does not judge. He merely observes… and studies.

The American Circus

Yes, American democracy — at times — resembles a circus. But do not forget: Circuses are vastly entertaining.

Who does not laugh at a circus? Then why not laugh at American democracy?

Let it roll out daily in a dozen preposterous rings!

We concede it at once: American democracy lacks the virtue of Athenian democracy.

Yet it must also be said that Athenian democracy lacked the humor of American democracy.

And what is life without humor?

Imagine, for example, the humorless existence under dictatorship.

The trains may well run to the minute, to the second. All strife is absent, all oars pull in unison and the fantastic combats of democracy are unknown.

Yet how dull! Imagine day after day after day of gray and drizzle. There you have life under dictatorship.

No Greater Show on Earth

We have previously conceded that “democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention,” as wrote constitutional father Mr. James Madison.

We have further conceded Mr. Madison’s claim that democracies:

Have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.

Today we have cited the Athenian exception — or at least the partial exception. Yet we concede Mr. Madison the broader claim, the altogether claim.

We concede even that American democracy may be nearer its end than its beginning.

This may all be true, alas. But this you cannot deny:

While the show runs… there is none grander on Earth.