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Democracy's downside: Einstein would have gotten 7 votes


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By Lev Navrozov
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

Lev Navrozov emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1972 He settled in New York City where he quickly learned that there was no market for his eloquent and powerful English language attacks on the Soviet Union. To this day, he writes without fear or favor or the conventions of polite society. He chaired the "Alternative to the New York Times Committee" in 1980, challenged the editors of the New York Times to a debate (which they declined) and became a columnist for the New York City Tribune. His columns are today read in both English and Russian.
Lev Navrozov

January 9, 2005

Winston Churchill said in Parliament that “democracy is the worst form of government except all others.”

What Churchill meant is that just as every sociopolitical phenomenon that has developed historically and exists in reality, and not on paper like “The State” (“The Republic”) of Plato or Communism of Marx, democracy has its reverse side, but even with its reverse side, no matter how bad, it is better than dictatorship, no matter how perfect it looks in its propaganda.

Unfortunately, in the United States many of those who call themselves patriots believe and proclaim that democracy is the best form of government above all criticisms, and if they had been told what Churchill said without mentioning his name, they would have been sure that he who has said such an outrageous put-down or a humiliating squelch is the worst enemy of democracy — most likely an Islamic suicidal terrorist or Osama bin Laden, fleeing and hiding, but threatening to kill “all Jews and Crusaders [Christians].”

But in order to survive, democracy must have minds at least at the mental level of Churchill.

And here we face the reverse side of democracy, making it the worst form of government except all others and possibly unfit for survival.

Hitler made two mistakes in 1939. Instead of concentrating all resources on the “peaceful” (that is, secret) development of nuclear weapons since 1938 when their possibility was discovered by a German scientist, he seized that part of Czechoslovakia which had been independent under the Munich agreement and invaded Poland in order to invade Russia and convert its enormous resources into aircraft, warships, and tanks able to defeat the United States.

Hitler showed the democratic West that he was not what King Edward VIII of England, Prime Minister Chamberlain, or Lloyd George had thought him to be. Before 1939 Churchill had been laughed at for his “ravings” about Germany. If Hitler had not made his two mistakes in 1939, the “vast majority of the British people” continued to laugh at Churchill, and nobody would have remembered his name today, while Hitler would have reached his world domination, preserved Edward VIII as the King of England, and made Lloyd George its German governor (Leiter) under the name of Prime Minister.

If in the United States there are no statesmen at the mental level of Churchill, it is ridiculous to ask whether there are in the United States nationally and internationally known thinkers as was John Dewey or William James. The only nationally and internationally known “thinkers” are the speechwriters whose “thoughts” have been voiced by presidents and other statesmen, none of whom would have warned the country and the democratic West about the danger of Hitler's Germany or Tojo's Japan, as none of them today warns the country and the democratic West about the danger of China.

Whatever has happened? Let us glance at the origin and development in the past millennium of what began to be called “democracy” in the 20th century.

In 1215 the barons of England forced the King to sign Magna Carta, limiting or restricting his absolutism. Later his top executive was not to be appointed by him either to bid his will, but elected. By whom? By the best and the brightest of the land. But who are the best and the brightest?

When John Stuart Mill (a great thinker when great thinkers were still nationally and internationally audible in the democratic West) published his “On Liberty” in 1859, women in England had no right to vote. Mill declared that his wife was more intelligent than he. Why should she be deprived of the right to vote? Education? But surely the most educated person, with a string of academic degrees, may be a damn fool!

Thus came “universal suffrage” — all adults except the clinically insane had the right to vote. But it certainly has its reverse side.

In science and technology it is still believed that the more valuable a thought is, the fewer people can think it up or even understand it. Take, for example, Einstein. He could not get any “academic position,” and not to starve, he became a clerk (in a patent office). But no one has been surprised that he had said before he received a Nobel Prize that he (a clerk) was understood by only 7 individuals in the world. As for his theory of relativity, there is a scientific consensus that he was unique. Edison, who did not study at any university or college or technological institute, provides, with his more than 1000 patents, a similar example — in technology. But outside science and technology (and the performance of classical music and opera), the human pyramid of cultural achievement has been put in the democratic West upside down. Supporters of Gore or Kerry argue that he ought to have been U.S. president because he received, apart from dozens of millions of votes, those dozens of thousands of votes which were allegedly not counted. That proves for the champions of Gore or Kerry that his mental level is unique, while actually it is not higher than that of an average voter, or dozens of millions of voters would not have voted for him.

Only 7 individuals would have voted for Einstein, a former clerk at a patent office, and no one would have voted for Edison, a young man without any degrees, posts, or titles, before his inventions had proved their tremendous unique value that no one could deny.

The belief in human quantity rather than human quality, rooted in the principle of elections based on universal suffrage, permeates the democratic West and leads more and more to what John Stuart Mill observed already in 1859: societal mental (cultural) regression. More sales of more books and periodicals, no matter how worthless! Bigger audiences for more movies or “musicals,” no matter how trashy! More pictures and sculptures, no matter how sterile! More architecture, no matter how preposterous! More mainstream television viewers and radio listeners!

Mass or pop barbarity has been ousting culture, and the inane or insane Philistine twaddle of mainstream television “hosts” and “guests” drowns out the last remnants of thought, sanity, and common sense.

In the 19th century, all this would be of no importance for the survival of the West. The mental level of the statesmen of England was not higher than that of Tony Blair today. But England routed China in the two Opium Wars (to impose the sales of opium on China!). As Kipling said: “For we have got / The Maxim gun / And they have not.” On the other hand, Tony Blair has bogged down, along with the stupendous Coalition, in Iraq, a small country (population: 22 million), virtually defenseless except for guerrilla war.

We are living in a geostrategically new era, which requires for the survival of the democratic West culture, not “pop culture,” thinkers and thinking, not speechwriters and mainstream television “hosts” and “guests.”

* * * * *

For more information about Drexler's Foresight Institute and its lobbying in Congress, see www.foresight.org

To learn more about the Chris Phoenix report, suggesting a “nano Manhattan Project,” go to crnano.org.

For information about the Center for the Survival of Western Democracies, Inc., including how you can help, please e-mail me at navlev@cloud9.net.

The link to my book online is www.levnavrozov.com. You can also request our webmaster@levnavrozov.com to send you by e-mail my outline of my book.

It is my pleasant duty to express gratitude to the Rev. Alan Freed, a Lutheran pastor by occupation before his retirement and a thinker by vocation, for his help in the writing of this column.

Lev Navrozov's (navlev@cloud9.net] new book is available on-line at www.levnavrozov.com. To request an outline of the book, send an e-mail to webmaster@levnavrozov.com.

January 9, 2005

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