Democracy Is Coming …

Rory Stewart with constituent, having coffee

I wasn’t able to vote until I was 21. The 26th constitutional amendment which lowered the voting age to 18 wasn’t ratified until July 1, 1971. My generation had pushed for it, of course, insisting that if they were old enough to be drafted, they were old enough to vote!

And so, in the spring of 1968, in the presidential primaries in Ann Arbor, Michigan, I cast my first vote at the age of 22. Of course there were also city and state representatives on the ballot, and I was astonished to find that one of the city council members I had voted for won by one vote! This was quite a lesson in electoral politics.

In the intervening years, though not what anyone would call politically active, I have upheld my participation in our world by faithfully being registered to vote, becoming as informed as possible, and voting. I feel proud to be a citizen of the United States and it is the least I can do. As Leonard Cohen says, in his great song, “it’s here they got the range and the machinery for change, and it’s here they got the spiritual thirst.”

Democracy is a kind of dream, a spiritual thirst. Our hopeful inner selves want to be represented in the workings of the world around us. They want to be a part of things and proud of the groups to which they belong. The U.S. is still seen as a mecca for many around the world, no matter how badly they are treated once they arrive.

Few of us are called to actually serve in government, but those who do find it rewarding. Elizabeth II says in a speech in The Crown, “I’ve learned that a life of service is not a sacrifice, but an honor.” The more cynical among us may believe that in the U.S., as in other places, the rewards are money and power. But those we respect the most do see their work as a service. And, given the slings and arrows that we now lavish on anyone who allows their name to be put forward, it is often a thankless task.

I recently read Rory Stewart’s book on his ten years as a conservative MP and in several ministerial positions. Stewart is one of the most honest and articulate politicians I have run into. He certainly shows that it is hard work, but he also believes that individuals can make a difference. “Democracy is not simply a question of structures. It is a state of mind. It is an activity,” he says here.

Freedom, equality, dignity. We do not want to be treated like children. But the Ted talk referred to above was given in 2012. In it Stewart refers to his work as a provincial governor in Iraq in 2004, when his bunker was besieged by a militant group demanding elections. Much has happened since Stewart’s aspirational definition of democracy. He insists we are better educated and more engaged than ever before. But darker forces have arisen. And perhaps some of us do want to be treated like children.

I am reminded of other ways we participate in our nation: jury duty and taxes. This year I was called to jury duty during Christmas week, a first for me in Los Angeles, though I have been on juries before. Each day, as I logged into “my jury duty portal,” however, I was told my services were not needed, and then that I had completed my jury service. 

Taxes, at this point, I leave to Don, who prepares them valiantly, cutting through swaths of small type I don’t even want to think about. I give Don lists of the “royalties” from my business, Lightly Held Books, and my expenses.

And, not insignificantly, I write here. As of November, 2023, Alphabet, the parent of Google, is the fourth largest company in the world. As a part of my Google mail server, I am allowed to keep a blog spot for free. I am not ungrateful and they can certainly afford to give me a little space. I write as honestly as possible, from my point of view, participating in media to the extent that I am able. It helps to quench my own spiritual thirst!

And thus, I can go so far as to say, that if the Israelis had listened to Hannah Arendt in the first place, they wouldn’t be in this mess. Arendt was in on the original planning for the state of Israel, as a member of the Commission on European Jewish Cultural Reconstruction. She felt the new country must be set up as a multi-ethnic federation, as Palestinians were already living there. One person, one vote. I believe there is still some hope for this, if some of the old Zionist thinking could be cleared away. As for Islam, it must everywhere modernize its views on women before any real progress can be made.

And so, I pontificate from my apartment in one of the world’s largest cities. One person with a small voice among eight billion. There are many obstacles to democracy. The idea came from early Nordic peoples as well as from Greece. In both places, the spoils of war included slaves. But as students of history and human nature, it does seem that to move toward democracy is to move in the right direction.

I give E.O. Wilson the last word. “To provide a more durable foundation for peace, political and cultural ties can be promoted that create a confusion of cross-binding loyalties. … If the tangle is spun still more thickly, it will become discouragingly difficult for future populations to regard each other as completely discrete on the basis of congruent distinctions in race, language, nationhood, religion, ideology, and economic interest. Undoubtedly there exist other techniques by which this aspect of human nature [aggression] can be gently hobbled in the interest of human welfare.” On Human Nature [published 1978]