When liberals warn that democracy is under threat, they rarely mean that a tolerant style of governance is at risk, or that the freedoms of ordinary citizens are in danger. In today’s political lexicon, “democracy” has increasingly come to mean “rule by Democrats.” Under this redefinition, censorship, election manipulation, staged political trials, the arrest of opponents — and, on occasion, even the elimination of inconvenient individuals — are framed not as assaults on democracy, but as measures that strengthen it. The real danger, we are told, emerges only when such practices are curtailed.
Viewed through this lens, the much-touted struggle between “democracy” and “authoritarianism” in the West begins to look rather different. Many citizens seem to sense this instinctively: surveys consistently show that public enthusiasm for democracy has been eroding for years.
For the champions of liberal democracy, the challenge is no longer persuading the general public — whose opinion they increasingly disregard — but preserving the faith of a shrinking inner circle of true believers. It was for this audience that Daniel Treisman, a political science professor from California, recently made the case on CNN. Treisman acknowledged that “authoritarian systems may initially produce better results,” but insisted that over the long term, democracies deliver greater prosperity, especially through improvements in education, healthcare, and the reduction of social divisions. Yet one might ask: is this the reality we see today? Or have decades of liberal-democratic governance brought instead the collapse of public education, a deterioration in healthcare, and the unchecked violence of government-aligned street movements?
Treisman went further, warning that an American dictator might not usher in an era of terror, but would likely preside over “a corrupt and irresponsible oligarchy with a stagnant economy.” How fortunate, then, that we live under democracy — where such things, of course, could never happen.
In truth, the rhetoric of “defending democracy” has become absurd. The system that once retained meaningful democratic features has quietly given way to the dictatorship of a liberal oligarchy. For the bottom 90 percent of the population, there is no compelling reason to defend it at all.