unz | “Elections to be meaningful presuppose a certain level of political
organization. … The primary problem is … the creation of a legitimate
public order. Authority has to exist before it can be limited, and it is
authority that is in scarce supply in the modernizing countries,”
warned Samuel Huntington in “Political Order In Changing Societies.”
Little did Huntington consider that, with enough tinkering by its ruling
elites; a modern and mighty country like the U.S. could devolve into an
atavistic and dangerous place.
Not nearly as hopeful as Horowitz was that “noted student of
nationalism” Elie Kedourie. “If majority and minority are perpetual,
then government ceases to have a mediatory or remedial function, and
becomes an instrument of perpetual oppression of the minority by the
majority,” concluded Kedourie. It was after a visit to South Africa that
he wrote the following, in the November 1987 issue of the South Africa International:
The worst effects of the tyranny of the majority are seen when parliamentary government on the unalloyed Westminster model is introduced into countries divided by religion or language or race. Such for example was the case of Iraq … where an extremely heterogeneous society came to be endowed with constitutions which made no provision for diversity, and where the result was tyranny of one groups over the other groups in the society.
A prerequisite for a classical liberal democracy is that majority and
minority status be interchangeable and fluid in politics; that a ruling
majority party be as likely to become a minority party as the obverse.
By contrast, in South Africa, the majority and the minorities are
politically permanent, not temporary.
America’s Founding Fathers had attempted to forestall raw democracy
by devising a republic. Every democratic theorist worth his salt—Robert
Dahl and Elaine Spitz come to mind—has urged that the raw, ripe rule of
the mob and its dominant, anointed party be severely curtailed under
certain circumstances fast approaching in the United States of America.
These are “whenever people of different languages, races, religions, or
national origins, with no firm habits of political co-operation and
mutual trust, are to unite in a single polity.”
In other words, multicultural America.
