Misinterpretations of the term "democracy"

It is outside the scope of this book to investigate here the history of the popularization of the term democracy for the American Constitution or American ideals. We will merely consider it as a fact that there is not one, but that there are dozens of modern, popular interpretations of this expression. As a matter of fact, the vast majority of the population of the United States uses it to denote anything at random with which they agree in the realm of politics, social life, and economics. We will only quote a few examples:

Mr. Green, the millionaire, shakes hands with workers. He is “democratic.” (He is, as a matter of fact, demophil, but not democratic which latter word is derived from demos, the [common] people, and krátos, power.)

Mr. Gray protests against censorship as undemocratic. (Censorship may be illiberal — against freedom — but not necessarily against the majority.)

Mr. Black is against Negro lynching, denouncing it as undemocratic. (As soon as the majority of a township wants to hang a Negro this action is un-Christian, illegal, but certainly very democratic.)

Mr. Red extols the icebox and the shower as the pillar of our “democratic life.” (This is plain nonsense but of frequent occurrence.)

Finally one and the same thing can be considered to be democratic and undemocratic at the same time: for instance, the New Deal, Tuxedo Club, Presidential acts, prices of fur coats, British accents, China, Russia, England — all according to individual likes and dislikes. Communists call their creed “streamlined democracy” or “Twentieth-Century Americanism.”

We see, then, from the plurality of present-day connotations of democracy that it would be thoroughly unjustified to use the term “democracy” in any other sense than in the classical and universal one.* We may well agree that the mischief started by uneducated popularizers has already reached such proportions that a Hercules is needed to clean this Augian stable of popular misconceptions, false labels, and mispresented ideologies. Even some of the more intelligent writers have become a prey to popular pressure, and as modern intellectuals do not lead the masses any more, but follow them and subordinate their ideas and language to the demands of the market, the confusion has now reached its climax.

Erik Maria Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
The Menace of the Herdo or
Procrustes at Large