The title of my blog posting today is identical to the title of an opinion column by Joe Mathews, published in the hard copy version of the San Francisco Chronicle that I picked up from my front lawn on January 5, 2025. Online, the headline on Mathews' column is longer, and goes even further than the title I am displaying above. Mathews' online title claims that, "Elections don't always guarantee democracy; in fact they actually hurt."
Some people might have a hard time with Mathews' assertion. Many people think that "electing" our political and governmental leaders is what "democracy" is all about. That appears, however, to be something of a misunderstanding. The Encyclopedia Britannica's discussion of "democracy" doesn't call out either "elections," or "voting," as the key to "democracy":
Democracy, literally, [means] rule by the people. The term is derived from the Greek dēmokratia, which was coined from dēmos (“people”) and kratos (“rule”) in the middle of the 5th century BCE to denote the political systems then existing in some Greek city-states, notably Athens (emphasis added).
Britannica expands on this definitional statement as follows:
Democracy is a system of government in which laws, policies, leadership, and major undertakings of a state or other polity are directly or indirectly decided by the “people,” a group historically constituted by only a minority of the population (e.g., all free adult males in ancient Athens or all sufficiently propertied adult males in 19th-century Britain) but generally understood since the mid-20th century to include all (or nearly all) adult citizens (emphasis added).
If Britannica is right about the definition of "democracy" - and I think it is - the key to "democracy" is actual "rule by the people." In other words, a "democracy" will exist only when "major undertakings ... are directly or indirectly decided by the people." Voting and elections can play a key role, of course, but they are not what determine whether or not a "democracy" exists. Because this is true, I like to use the term "self-government," as opposed to "democracy," because "real" democracy is nothing other than "self-government," rule bythe people.
When I was on the Board of Supervisors of Santa Cruz County - and was, thus, an elected official myself - I consistently denounced the kind of government characterized by "electing the people, who hire the people, who run our lives for us." I used that language in an early posting to this blog, as well, way back in 2011. Let me also remind you of how Abraham Lincoln defined the kind of government for which he thought it was worth fighting a Civil War. It was not by using the word "democracy." Lincoln, in perhaps the greatest political speech ever presented in the course of American history, urged us all to remember that Americans killed each other, and fought and died, so that a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people" would not perish from this earth.
Whenever I quote this statement from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, I almost always add that the most important of the three elements that Lincoln names is that our government be "by" the people. "By the people," literally, means that "we, the people" are directly involved in "all important governmental undertakings."
If there is a "populist" uprising against our government in the United States today (and lots of people think that there is, and that this populist uprising is what accounts for the election of Donald J. Trump as president last year) then that "populist" rejection of the Democratic Party candidates in the 2024 election reflects some significant dissatisfaction with a government that is not fully satisfying the demand that we have "self-government," and that our government be "by" the people. Complaints about a supposed "Deep State" are another evidence that many do not think that "we, the people," are actually in charge.
If, when you think about it, you come to the conclusion that we, the people, are not, in fact, "ruling," then that conclusion means that "democracy" is imperiled. Self-government is imperiled. The key to changing our situation is to become directly involved in the actual operation of government ourselves. "Voting," and "elections," may be tools to help us to that end, but what counts is our personal involvement in the actual "undertakings" carried forward by our government.
A term that we should be thinking of, as we ponder whether retrieving self-government is possible, is what I call "time reallocation." If you and I, as "the people," are supposed to be effectively involved in "ruling" ourselves, that is going to take a lot of time and effort. How much time are we allocating to the task today? If all we do is vote, that's not enough.
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