Agony of Hercules or a Farewell to Democracy (Notes of a Stranger)

Democracy: From Triumph to Suicide

What type of society most corresponds to the ideals of justice and rule of law? The answer seemed obvious: democracy. Today it seems a paradox, but ancient thought, humanism, as well as rational thinking with undisguised skepticism are related to democracy. They knew how easy and quickly it transformed into ochlocracy.

However, founding fathers of Liberal Democracy, like de Tocqueville, thought that rationalism, combined with a compulsory educational system, improvement of living standards, and an advanced legal system, would become a guarantee of democratic development. Unfortunately, these supporting columns are fatally destroyed today.

The idea of equal opportunities was changed by unrestrained craving for consumption and hedonism. We see people completely disconnected from their culture, their own country, or the world. The Principle of "the art of goodness and fairness" by Celsus the Younger, the Principle of "pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety" of The Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776, and the Principle of Utility by Bentham and Mill have been perverted and emasculated to the extent that they have just stopped working.

The growing "Red-Green-Brown Alliance" threatens not only Democracy, but states of the West.

But the most sinister metamorphosis has occurred to the concept of "human rights." Human rights organizations have become the "new church," following own ideological orientation and financial interests. It canonizes "human rights," but despises the "human" as a creature that is creative, intelligent, and responsible for its own destiny. It has a distinct racist odor and shows contempt toward minorities-religious and sexual.

Astonishingly, having lost its internal stability, democracy seeks for an unrestrained expansion. We observe the silliness worthy of new Moliere's pen: "democratic elections" between tribes practicing a ritual cannibalism, as in Papua New Guinea; between tribal clans like in Pakistan; between religious zealots, as this happened in Egypt.

Wasn't it a cruel mockery of History that the EU that was on the verge of collapse virtually awarded itself the Nobel Peace Prize, as it was done by senile Soviet leaders; that the President of USA got the same prize just for empty slogans, like Leonid Brezhnev?

As it often happens in History, the most pure and noble idea degenerates into its opposite, turning into a parody of itself.

He is stranger in this country and doomed to be stranger till the end of his life. He is traveler from the past, from Terra incognito, which lay on the other side of the Iron Curtain from Democracy.

It was an odious, twilight world isolated and immersed in itself-a world of gray cities, gray streets, gray squares, glum men, and exhausted women; a world of censorship and uniformity, where most natural things were banned and those that were not were subject to strict limitations.

He got lucky. He left the Evil Empire forever, and his meeting with the new world dazed and besotted him.

But he can't conceal a strange forgotten feeling. What strange reminiscences. Is it chimera, delusion, self-hypnosis, an echo of the past? Maybe. He watched the system collapsing, its foundation eroding, its fastenings cracking, its rods bursting at the joints; he watched the monumental decorative structures fall, burying millions of lives under a cloud of dust. It is not from the history books that he learned how flame leaps up from smoldering conflicts, and ugly, dark hatred erupts, and how long-festering wounds begin to bleed. But how can he explain this instinctive feeling of a deadly threat here, in the realm of freedom, universal contentment, and emancipation?

Are there answers to these questions? Any civilization-the Roman Empire, Christianity, communism, or liberal democracy-can be assessed and understood only in its original coordinate system, retrospectively, and through the prism of the initial idea. Alexander suggests joining his exciting and at same time frightening study that he made.