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1 Future of Democracy in the United States 1935

handle is hein.beal/frdyiudst0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Preprinted from The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Philadelphia, July, 1935. The Future of Democracy in the United States By IRA JEWELL WILLAMs . . . on the purpose of the institution of free government, and the ends to be served by it. These are: first, to protect the people against their rulers; secondly, to protect them against the transient impressions into which they themselves may be led. -James Madison T HE previous speakers have an- nounced findings that the Cauca- sian is a failure and civilization's played out, have asserted that de- mocracy is dead, and have entered a final decree of dissolution. The speaker who so ably depicted the glories of fascism, deplores possible bloodshed in fighting for the lost cause of democracy.' But some of us cannot conceive that democracy is a lost cause, or even a forlorn hope. We believe that de- mocracy is the best hope of mankind, and that liberty is beyond price. And we shall never leave off fighting for them. To the realist and the conservative, who would think and plan within the limits of the possible, the fascist's Utopia and the socialist's Utopia are at best barren hells built upon the delu- sion that people can never learn to think and act for themselves, but prefer to be ruled by politicians. Fascism and socialism alike enthrone the state and the politician, and by the ignis fatuus of promised material security would lead mankind into the morasses of despotism. He who would ex- change liberty for security is worthy of neither liberty nor security. We democrats hold that neither fascism nor socialism can ever truly succeed; that they must maintain 1Lawrence Dennis, Fascism in America, in this volume. 1 themselves with the aid of a myth of supermen; and that both of them breed not supermen but super-politicians. We believe that American constitu- tional representative government is a working ideal. It attempts to avoid the very evil advocated by fascism and socialism-an excess of government. It tries to clip the wings of politicians by a division of the powers of government and by setting rigid limitations upon governmental aggressions upon the rights of the individual. Many think that, like Christianity, American constitutional government has not had a fair trial. But to the extent to which the Constitution has been obeyed and sustained and the hand of the politician and the dema- gogue stayed, we have come closer to the Madisonian objectives of the safety, liberty and happiness of the community than all the Stalins, Hitlers, or Mussolinis can ever bring us. And under that Constitution we have been, and yet may be, the freest people on the face of the earth. THE PROBLEM The future of democracy in Amer- ica implies a past and imposes an obligation to foretell the future. This in turn requires some estimate of just what it is that the human animal tends to desire. Nearly every one will agree that: 1. Life means exercising one's facul- ties. It means being born, growing up, wdrking, loving, playing, getting old, and dying. 2. No society whose actual working out is such that the exercise of human functions is denied to large groups can long retain its hold on its members.

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