Egypt’s Missing Precondition. By Iain Murray. The American Spectator, July 12, 2013.
Murray:
It is
commonplace today to regard liberty and democracy as inextricably correlated —
if you have one, you must have the other. Yet as Egypt and other failed
democracies are showing, that is not the case. Indeed, we are rediscovering
some fundamental truths that the American Founders knew — that liberty is an
essential precondition for sustainable democracy and that there is more to
democracy than majority rule.
We
often forget that the Arab Spring was brought about not by an unquenchable
thirst for democracy, but by restraints on trade. The self-immolation of street
vendor Mohamed Bouazizi in front of the Tunisian parliament that set off the
Arab Spring was caused not by a desire for a vote in who should rule that
country, but because of the repeated confiscation of his wares by local police,
culminating in the confiscation of his scales. His last words were, “How is a
man to make a living?”
As Tom
Palmer of the Atlas Network notes, this basic plea for human dignity
reverberated around the Arab world. The Egyptian wing of the protests blew up
particularly over police brutality.
A
little over two years on, the autocratic Hosni Mubarak has been overthrown, but
the solution of “democracy” appears to have solved none of Egypt’s problems.
Farida Makar of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies told Deutsche
Welle in February, “[T]orture still happens in police stations… excessive
violence is still used against demonstrators and… everything is decided
according to a security mentality.”
Now
many are asking, “What went wrong?” A more apt query is, “What hasn’t gone on?” In the case of Egypt,
plenty.
Magna
Carta, the foundation of English rights, tackled these problems long before
democracy was established in England. In 1215, King John promised that if a man
were to be fined, the tools of his trade would not be taken away. He also
promised not to imprison anyone save by the judgment of 12 of his peers. These
two provisions laid the foundation for the law’s respect of the dignity of England’s
common man — what we now call the “institutions of liberty.”
Other
institutions of liberty of liberty followed, some springing from Magna Carta,
others won by a distinctly undemocratic Parliament. These included the rule of
law, an independent judiciary, enforceable contracts, free markets, property
rights, and many others.
The
recognition of these institutions was essential in the growth of England’s
economy. A similar phenomenon occurred in Holland, and these two countries led
the way in the creation of a modern economy based around what economic
historian Deirdre McCluskey calls “bourgeois dignity.”
These
are the institutions that the American Founders inherited. Indeed, the American
Revolution was fought not to remake society, but to preserve these rights from a King who seemed determined to abrogate
them. One of the complaints articulated in the Declaration of Independence was
a condemnation of arbitrary bureaucracy: “He has erected a Multitude of new
Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out
their Substance.” In other words, “How is a man to make a living?”
The
Founders, however, were wary of democracy. In Federalist Number 10, Alexander
Hamilton warned against it:
A pure
democracy can admit no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or
interest will be felt by a majority, and there is nothing to check the
inducements to sacrifice the weaker party. Hence it is, 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.
This
phenomenon, which the great classical liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill
called “the tyranny of the majority,” is what has been at issue in Egypt. A
new, democratically elected government without a foundation in the institutions
of liberty showed no inclination to obtain or rule according to them.
Democracy
as we know it took centuries to establish not only in Britain, but also in the
relatively young United States, where such illiberal institutions as slavery
and the denial of the vote to the unpropertied and women took a long time to
overcome. However, it was the institutions of liberty that provided the
foundation on which democracy and equal rights for all could be built.
Egypt
has underlined this lesson. It has shown us one undeniable truth: The
institutions of liberty are more important than the trappings of democracy.
