DEMOCRACY ON TRIAL

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 173, 19 April 1939, Page 16

DEMOCRACY ON TRIAL

Need For A Reasoned Faith ADDRESS BY PROFESSOR LIPSON Professor L. M. Lipson, who was recently appointed to the chair of political science at. Victoria. I niversity College, addressed the members of the Wellington Hotary Club yesterday on ••The Survival of Democracy.” Democracy was again on its trial liefore a critical world, he said. Possibly some of those present had read Sinclair Lewis’s book ”11 Can’t Happen Here,” in which the author sought to maintain that. Fascism, or anything of the kind, could not happen in Hie United States. He based that claim on the assumption that.all those things for which democracy stood were so deeply engrained in the'natures of the people that, what had happened in certain countries in Middle Europe could not possibly flourish in America, as, whatever happened, a response in the democratic manner would be the natural result.

Professor Lipson mentioned that, politics were not always held in high repute. The Greeks had regarded the political function as one of the highest and noblest of all human activities. Today it was too frequentlv considered as an unsavoury occupation. “Polities” and “politicians” were terms employed in a derogatory sense. That was regrettable because government, was . so important in our lives. It was specially unfortunate that in a democracy, which was government of the people by the people, the State should forfeit the people’s respect. In a democracy the State belonged to the people, but did we have a pride in our own creation? Perhaps the cause of this attitude lay in the fact that the meaning of democracy was not clear. It might mean a set of institutions and procedures; or it could simply signify a spirit or atmosphere pervading a given community, a spirit characterized by the absence of privilege and by the dignity of the individual. 'What countries were democratic in both senses? The operation of democratic institutions was vitiated by the class distinctions of England and the extremes of poverty and wealth in America. Could democratic institutions function successfully in a non-democratie society? The experience of the twentieth century seemed to indicate that democracy could not operate in a community that was fundamentally divided. Democracy, though it presupposed the toleration of differences, did require a certain homogeneity, cultural, economic and educational.

Democracy took shape during the nineteenth century in the hands of men who were essentially optimists. It rested on four assumptions—that all differences could be settled by discussion and compromise; that human beings were basically equal; that all men were rational; and that the majority should have its way. None of these assumptions could be scientifically proved. Men appeared to be as irrational as rational; some differences could not be peaceably settled; men had points of inequality as well as similarities; and a majority had no superior right, even though it had superior numbers. Either these assumptions had to be accepted on faith, or, better still, one could point to the practical results and show that a government operated on these assumptions was preferable to one based on opposite assumptions. Democracy, a government which put a premium on reason, was under the disadvantage that men had not yet sufficiently strengthened their reason by education. Human beings seemed to respond more to emotional appeal, but how could one be emotional about toleration, reason and liberalism? It was the function of political science to study the functions of the State and to obtain an intelligent understanding of what it did and wbat it ought to do. In that way they might restore the political process to a position of respect. Democracy rested on faith, but it must be a reasoned faith.