(cache)Why Democracy Fails In Europe

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SPEAKER 2

Gentlemen, before even talking about the failure of democracy in Europe, we must really know and be aware of what is really democracy. Democracy is, don't forget that, a political term, it's not a social term. And it answers the question, who should rule?

And the answer it gives is the majority of politically equal citizens, either in person or through their representatives. Whereas liberalism rightly understood, that is, liberalism is understood in the whole wide big world with the exception of the United States, answers the question not who should rule, but how should rule be exercised.

And the answer it gives is, regardless of who rules, government must be exercised in such a way that each individual citizen enjoys the maximum of personal liberty. In other words, equality in majority rule characterizes democracy, Freedom Characterizes Liberalism.

Now, of course, there is such a thing as a liberal democracy, but obviously, liberalism could be combined with other forms of government. And a democracy can be illiberal. You can have a democracy where the 51% really and truly, brutally suppress and tyrannize the 49% or the 99%, 1%.

A man like Louis XIV, for instance, from our modern point of view, the man who allegedly had said, I am the state, was, of course, a very great liberal by modern standards. He couldn't draft anybody in his kingdom.

If he wanted to wage a war, he had to rely on volunteers and they had to be very well paid. He could not have, let us say, an annual general confession about the economic life of a person.

If he wanted, if anybody wanted to make a general confession, you went, of course, to a priest, not to the collector of internal revenue. A man like Louis XIV, for instance, could never decree that his beloved subjects could not drink Chatreuse or Benedictine or Sauternes or Chateau Neuf du Pape or Veuve Clicquot.

If he had done anything like that, in other words, started a prohibition, his beloved subjects would have quartered him alive within 48 hours. But all this can be done today, you see, with the democratic principles because the idea is the people who are elected, they identify themselves with the citizenry and they say, you, that's us.

And us, that's you. And you voted us in this position. And we do not stand on thin ice as the monarchs of old. Now if you look at the back now at the development of democracy in Europe, bear in mind that democracy is a very primitive form of government.

I've Made Studies of the Bambuttis in Rwanda-Urundi, pygmies, who have a completely democratic society. And then, of course, on a sophisticated level, you see in Europe the rise of democracy in Greece, originally called isonomia, equality of law, and the first great victim and the discrediting of that Greek democracy happens through the assassination of Socrates.

Socrates was forced to commit suicide. He was condemned to death, as you know. Why? Because he corrupted the youth. What did it mean? He ridiculed democracy. He quoted Homer, Ukagaton, Polykoirane, and so forth. If you don't believe me, read it up in the Encyclopedia Britannica.

That was the real reason you don't get it in the average school textbook. Now, you see, Looking from the Acropolis and looking down to the Aeropag, you see very clearly the place democracy had the first time morally founded.

And therefore, do not be surprised that not so much later, you find Isocrates, who has nothing to do with the famous Socrates, who implored the fate to send to Greece again a monarch to start the monarchical age.

Now, for many, many, many centuries, democracy, except in very primitive areas in the Alps, in the Tyrol, where I come from, after all, in neighboring Switzerland, in certain city-states, in certain peasant communities, democracy is absent.

And just like a U-boat, like a submarine surfacing, democracy comes back again to our countries with the French Revolution in a forest of guillotines. And you see at that time, of course, enticed by pictures, by the magic picture of the United Kingdom, whose great propagator was Voltaire.

And then, of course, thanks to the influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in other words, the Swiss example. And then finally, the American example in the most tragic fashion, because as you all know, the founding fathers were violently opposed to democracy.

And nevertheless, the idea is, and you have unfortunately a man like Lafayette, so many people thoroughly and basically misunderstanding, not the American Revolution, there was no revolution, the American War of Independence and these ideals and transplanting them finally to France. because the American Republic was an aristocratic republic, inspired the aristocracy of all of Europe.

They were coming en masse to the United States. You just have to go to Washington, D.C.

and see there in front of the White House on Jackson Square, in the center, the Monument of Old Hickory, and in the four corners, the monuments of these four European noblemen who have come to this country to fight for liberty, but not for democracy. Tadeusz Kostiuszko, Baron von Steuben, the Count de Rochambeau, The Marquis de Lafayette.

Now, you see, democracy comes into the European scene as a sort of very curious ideal. The idea is that original sin can be unmade. The coercive power of the state is going to vanish. We no longer are being ruled. We rule ourselves. But this, of course, you know very well indeed,

On April the 15th, if you make out the income tax declaration, you are not really ruling to self. This is majority rule in the representatives and we cannot escape. You see the curses of original sin, just as the idea of taking off your clothes and then you become innocent as in paradise.

Nudism in their form is really an analogy to democracy. And then you get finally the American intervention, because unfortunately the United States gets, through amendments, more and more democratized, and you have the great tragedies of 1918, 1919, in other words, a war won for democracy ending in a defeat of liberty.

And again in 1945, a war won for democracy and another defeat of liberty. The result of number one is the rise of Yenin, of Hitler, of Mussolini. The result, of course, of number two finally is the overpowering strength of the Soviet Union and the emergence of Chinese communism. In other words, the enormous American deception.

And Lasky was very right in pointing out, and here we come now to the reason of the difficulties of democracy in Europe, that unless two premises are being met, then that is the two-party system on one side, and on the other side a common framework of reference.

A Public Philosophy Where People Are Mere Ins And Outs Unless You Meet These Two Conditions You Cannot Have A Stable Democratic Government And Europe Of Course Is Ideologically Utterly Divided At The Present Moment Or Until Recently To Be More Precise It Was Not So Evident This New Tremendous European Prosperity Had Hidden The Fact

that these ideological forces are still alive. They are now breaking out again. People got used to that prosperity. People are again starting to think the ideological uniformity of Europe is breaking up and maybe so is yours. This is a momentous development now in our entire Western history. Because don't forget, democracy is only a frame.

It's only a frame. It is not a picture. If now, for instance, let us say, for instance, 51% of any country votes a Nazi ticket or votes a communist ticket, then that country is becoming communist or Nazi democratically. I'm using here the adverb of the form.

Situations which were strange to you in the past and I hope they'll be spared to you in the future. visiting a hard-hitting Catholic newspaper early in March 1948 in Rome. The name of the paper was Branca Leone. In Rome on April 18, 1948, there was an election touch and go because there was a real danger

that a combined communist left socialist ticket might gain a majority. And walking into these editorial offices, I'm asking the young man and said, now do tell me, young man, none of them was above the age of 23 or 24. I said, now do tell me, for whom are you going to vote next month?

And they say, we, next month, of course. De Gasperi, for the Democrazia Cristiana. I said, Democrazia Cristiana? Are you really Democrats? And the usual confusion between the democratic and the liberal principles. They say, yes, yes, we are Democrats. And then I said, listen, boys, if you're Democrats, then you have to respect The Verdict of the Majority.

So if the Communists get 51%, will you say, as good Democrats, yes, amen, the nation has spoken, we bow to its verdict? And they said, well, of course not. And we take our rosaries and our submachine guns, go up to the rooftops and shoot it out. But you see here,

A Dilemma Unknown to You, because never forget here the one thing, the fact which Plato has told us, book nine of his Republic. Not from another form of government. Does Tyranny Arise but Out of Democracy?

Because democracy gives the real frame to the demagogos, to the demagogue, to the people's leader who humbly says, oh, no, I am not a ruler. I'm only leading you along. I'm personifying you. I am not a father. Away with the father image. I'm a man, a fellow like you and me. I'm a square. I'm a brother.

Big Brother. You see, this is precisely the evolution and it's for that reason that Metternich said during the French Revolution, when I, Liberté, Fraternité, Égalité, you know, said Metternich, if I see how the name brother is being used now in France, I'm very much inclined to call my own brother cousin.

But here we come now to an important point and this is the further point, the further image which after all is deeply engraved in Europe and will remain engraved as long as there are families in Europe. As long as the fathers are kings in the families.

And if really you actually go now and look at the newspaper kiosk and look at these cheap weekly papers which we have in Europe, which you do not have in America. It's nothing like look and it's nothing like time. It's nothing like life. These Cheap, Very Cheap Papers Written for the Broad Masses, What Does Really Interest Them?

And the answer is nothing but the loves and the divorces or the pending divorces or the menacing divorces and the marital misunderstandings and the pregnancies and the births and the funerals of the members of the defunct European monarchies.

It's Faradiba and it's Elizabeth and it's Prince Philip and on the whole line down to the Near East because of course we already have a scarcity of that material. The father-mother image, the concept of the whole nation as a family is exceedingly strong.

And do you know, some of you have read probably the San Francisco Chronicle on the 22nd, the 26th of this month. And there you find a report at the Bild Post in Germany.

And that quick, two magazines conducted a Gallup poll discussing who should follow President Lübcke, who made himself so ridiculous in Germany and who is now stepping down. And 40% of the readers, by far the largest bloc Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, the grandson of William II, there you are now. We are now 50 years away from 1918.

It doesn't really change because the European is cynical. He knows that he is not really voting the people into power, that he's only really very, very microscopic, whether he stays at home and actually goes to the polls, that as a person it would make no difference.

But on the other side there's also growing another cognition, and one again which is not only purely European, of purely European interest, but of a general interest, and that is the fact of the ever-widening gap between the sceta and the scienda. That means between the things, between the knowledge of the man in the street.

And when I say the man in the street, I don't mean the man who is semi-literate or illiterate. No, the man who really follows the radio, who has a high school education, who has a college education. And nevertheless, what he can really know and what he ought to know

The difference in order to rationally judge these events is so enormous and is getting constantly bigger and bigger even if it were true that general education increases the educational levels in an arithmetic progression. The things which ought to be known go up in a geometric progression. What does the average American know about Vietnam?

What do the protesting students know about Vietnam? Absolutely nothing. They can only make an act of faith in the best Lutheran fashion in either this or in that commentator. What does the average Englishman know, for instance, about Rhodesia? He knows nothing whatsoever.

You see, David Riesman has said sex is the last frontier, and that is true in the emotional domain. But in the intellectual domain, it is religion and politics, politics and religion, where everybody can shout his mouth off. But the feeling is growing. We really know nothing about these affairs.

And of course, that shakes the faith in democracy, which, of course, makes sense in the Tyrolean village where I live or the Canton Glarus of 38,000 people debating whether one should give a license to a chocolate factory or not. This is within the scope of the six, seven thousand sturdy Swiss men in the marketplace in Glarus.

It's a wonderful picture. But the big man in the mass state, what does he know? And does not this more and more invite the rule by experts, the cold-blooded rule by experts? And then the question comes, who is going to control the experts?

What are we going to do if the experts, as it usually happens, contradict each other? These are unsolved questions. These are questions more or less solved in the monarchies of old, but they appear like a golden age way back in the background. Because the man in the street, if you ask him, does he believe in democracy?

Of course, he nods, he does. Does you believe in the Republican system? Most people do. But at the same time, of course, the word democracy is a complete weasel. What we need is a democratic monarchy. Hitler had spoken about Nazism. Eine deutsche Demokratie. Mussolini, una democrazia organizzata. Vienen democrazia po' nuovo. A democracy in a new style.

So it's everywhere, and of course, therefore, nowhere. And now comes a new political, there's a little bit of the old nationalism now coming up. There's coming up the new left. The new left is exceedingly interesting because in the new left, if you really study their books and works, the whole critique, what they call the establishment,

I don't know how many of you gentlemen realize, and how many of these writing students realize, that two-thirds or three-quarters of their critique of the modern democratic liberal state is exactly the same critique as of the old European conservatives from the early 19th century, where they had foretold, they say, if you have a purely commercial civilization,

The whole thing just won't do. It will end all in planning. It ends in rat races. It ends in the dull sort of materialism. It's all the prophecies of the old conservatives, which they are using without realizing that they do. because maybe that even their ideological leaders don't realize that.

And of course, in other words, this thing, this feeling what they call in Germany, for instance, das Unbehagen in der Demokratie, this feeling of uneasiness, of emptiness, of dullness. It has no warmth. It's a fight for numbers. Now, mind you, this does not mean that I foretell you a return to monarchy now.

or in the foreseeable future, all this tiredness with politicians. Oh, I would say a hundred years ago, if you said ein Politiker, a politician, oh, that was a fine thing. That was a sort of an intellectual and so on. But today it gets slowly the same flavor as in the United States.

And the people distinguish very carefully between politicians and statesmen. And they said, you know, Adenauer, that was not a politician. He was also not really popular at all, but nevertheless grudging admission.

People who have been very long on their jobs, who now really know the ropes, who have really an age-old experience, who know the people around the country,

and, of course, really are going at least to some places, even in spite of failures, even in spite of the failure of De Gaulle's East European policy, even in spite, of course, of the inevitable failure of the French financial policy after the enormous damages done early here in this summer. But you do see here a real crisis.

You do see the crisis of authority, which again you see is not a purely European problem. Because you see, authority is something else than power. The Russian government has an enormous amount of power.

But authority really means that when you get an appeal or when you get a command, that there is in you already a certain willingness to concede it, to accede to it, to collaborate, you see, to cooperate. All this, this is authority, the parental authority.

In authority there must be a certain amount of love and affection mixed in, and the respect, the curious mixture of all sorts of sentiments. And this authority is collapsing in Europe. And of course, when authority collapses, then finally you see then in a tremendous amount of nakedness, then finally the harsh alternatives.

If it isn't authority, it is going to be sheer power. Sheer power doing what? Sheer power really based on what?

You see, here comes the uneasiness, because after all, the European armies, with the possible exception of the French army, because never forget that the French army in 1958, in May 1958, was absolutely ready to strike and to snuff out the Fourth Republic. And only because people went on their knees before the Gaul, and the Gaul sourly

and unwillingly and arrogantly finally said his yes to the receivership of the bankrupt Fourth French Republic, the military dictatorship of Massoud didn't follow. And this was a situation which had now been repeated in the same months, almost in about the same days, not in 58, but in 68, where de Gaulle had made every conceivable preparation

that if there would be a further deterioration of the French internal situation, really to take over. And the situation is very complex. You see, the communists, for instance, who are all lying men in the whole game of the political forms and the political experience, they are terrified by the New West.

They want to use it, but they see it's a very dangerous thing to use. We had in Italy, you had an Italian communist poet who has written an ode to the Italian police battling the students. And you see, roughly this ode begins, I'm trying now to give it to you freely as I remember it.

I never took down the name, unfortunately, of the poet. He says, I'm greeting you, humble sons of workers in dingy factories. I'm greeting you, the policemen, humble sons of workers, of peasants in sun-drenched fields. spat upon and vilified by the long-haired, fat sons of the bourgeoisie.

In other words, you see, the new left, the youth movement, which rebels for reasons I can very well see, because after all, I'm an old-line conservative and I look at it, you see, from the other angle. But they do not think dialectically, they do not think what counter-forces they bring finally on the plan.

And there you see sometimes between this country here, I should say in all candor, and in Germany in 1932, I see certain analogies.

And then, of course, Brüning, who was the counterplay of Hitler, whom I've met in this country here because I spent these years in your country, has said, told me how he tried to restore the monarchy to forestall the rise of a man like Hitler.

And, of course, Hindenburg said, no, I've given the oath to the Constitution, I'm a monarchist, I despise the Republic, but I can't do it. I'm bound.

And then, of course, Schleicher, General Schleicher, who wanted to get the aid of the German trade unions to have a military dictatorship supported by the trade unions in order to forestall the rise of the Nazis. In other words, taking his cue from Miguel Primo de Rivera, the Spanish dictator, and the trade unions did not cooperate.

What will we get? Will We Get Military Dictatorships?

Because you see what Europe is now a country and always has been a continent in the last 50 years a continent of the provisional and let me go only one moment back to France how provisional Europe is how the order really doesn't stick is very well symbolized by a poster of the Soudet paint manufacturing company

which you could see in the French subways in the early 1950s. It showed four Mariannes. Marianne, as you know, is the symbol of the French Republic. A nice, healthy young woman with the Phrygian cap. And a fifth little Marianne looking around the corner. And the text said, The Republics come and go, but the Soudé paints stay forever.

And that, I think, highlights the European scene far, far better than some very big and fat books. The things are all rootless. The things are all hanging in question. There's a question mark around practically everything in Europe, but it needs a certain perspicacity and a certain, let us say, fingertip feeling to discover really just that.

But you see here military dictatorship, return of monarchies, of course there's the Russian dividing line which makes everything provisional, doubly provisional in one sense and irreplaceable on the other because you don't want to change really horses in midstream and Europe is permanently, so to say, in midstream. What will happen is very difficult to know.

You only see the hypocritical traits on the faces of European democracy. And for a last thought, let us go back again to the Acropolis. Well, the Acropolis is in a way the cradle of our entire Western civilization. And there you see the Areopag, and I mentioned to you Socrates, a condemnation of Socrates.

And then you see the Syntagma Place. And behind the Syntagma Place, you see the Royal Palace, where democracy was born. There was a king only until, well, until a few months really ago. And then there you have a military dictatorship. And you see what Polybius called the anacuclosis, the going around in great circles.

They do not have to repeat themselves with photographic accuracy, but they do. And therefore, in the case of Europe, as in the case of the rest of the world,

One must be deeply and profoundly conscious of these ever-going changes and ever-going challenges and never think that if you have achieved a certain form of government that then history really comes to an end and the pendulum ceases to swing. It goes on and on swinging. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER 1

Dr. Ledeen, will you return with me to the rostrum, please? We have a number of questions, some of which I'm sure you have touched upon, but I'm going to ask them and give you a chance to enlarge on it, if I may.

First question, why should we expect the democracy of our founding fathers to fit the modern world atomic age?

SPEAKER 2

Well, there ain't no such animal. There was no democracy of the founding fathers. Their picture was radically different and I think in many ways more modern than the concepts here today. Because I do not think, as I try to express to you, that by counting noses you really can come to rational conclusions.

that in other words, more democracy is more amateurism. And this is something we cannot afford. But on the other hand, in the same breath, I must always add that I'm terrified also by the prospect of experts in an administrative state ruling and administrating us in very cold blood.

So in other words, there is really a Scylla and Charybdis, but the founding fathers, curiously enough, were not as old fashioned as we sometimes too readily assume.

SPEAKER 1

What is happening to humankind? This questioner asks. The free seemingly want to enslave themselves. The enslaved are struggling for freedom.

SPEAKER 2

Yeah, you see, man is a dialectic creature. And if you speak about the leftist movements west of the Iron Curtain, it's quite true. You see, east of the Iron Curtain, the desperate desire for freedom.

As a matter of fact, in all likelihood, I think many more people are reading voluntarily with interest Karl Marx west of the Iron Curtain than east. In my whole summer in 1963, which I spent in the Soviet Union, I encountered and I spoke with innumerable people. I have only encountered three truly convinced male communists.

And I'm quite sure that if I would visit now, let us say, the campus of the University of Frankfurt, I don't want to go too near to your home, then of course,

And don't forget, these students of the University of Frankfurt who demonstrated were physically attacked by workers' wives who hit them with their umbrellas and said, you swine, you go home and study because you studied at our expense anyhow.

You see here the dialectical nature of man and the need to think here really dialectically, also not in a Marxian-Hegelian sense.

SPEAKER 1

I think you touched upon this question too, Doctor, but it reads, has any country in the world ever really been a democracy?

SPEAKER 2

A direct democracy you really had in a number of Swiss cantons. Of course, they have no female suffrage. You see, that is because a woman doesn't bear arms in Switzerland, and you are only fully a citizen in the Swiss mind if you bear arms.

Don't forget, this is the country where you serve your country every year until you're 42 years old. You can volunteer until 55, and where in every public office is the picture of the commanding general, never ever of a president. In other words, Switzerland, which is the model democracy, is a military democracy.

But it is, if you forget now the lack of it, it is a very, very genuine democracy. That's really the case. And so have been other smaller countries, but as soon as the country is really very large, there are too many sieves. And of course, the Founding Fathers never envisaged a democracy.

The word democracy neither appears in the Declaration of Independence nor in the Constitution. The word republic appears neither in the Declaration of Independence nor in the Constitution of the United States. Only as an adjective, member states must have a republican constitution. United States is not called a republic.

Even a man like Jefferson still thought about the possibility, and this is a language strange to the man in the street, that a free people, a free people can be ruled by a monarch.

And the phrase, I hope you read the fine print in the declaration and not only the preamble, George III, a prince not fit to be the ruler of a free people. Because we always are going to be ruled. We never can really rule ourselves. That's a paradise dream.

And all our effort should be to be as free as possible and feel the heavy hand of government as little as possible.

SPEAKER 1

There were several questions submitted that followed this same type of wording, Doctor. Is Democracy Going to Fail in the United States? And if so, why?

SPEAKER 2

I'm giving to you, to this, a philosophic answer. An unnamed Viennese philosopher once said, everything, in the Viennese dialect it sounds nicer, everything has an end, only the sausage has two. And there has never been a form of government which in history lasted forever.

But the only burning question is, and think about Germany in 1932, will there be something better to follow or something worse? And therefore, you see, this needs thinking or rethinking. What would happen to this country if in the next eight years, four or eight years, law and order will not be restored?

What are then the aspects or prospects? You know, everything is, sometimes the evolutions are very slow. Think about the Medicis, drugstore people from Florence. 350 years it took them to become Grand Dukes of Tuscany. They had the patience. You see, everything changes. Everything changes. A Christian verb says, the world whirls around and only the cross stands.

Never attach yourselves to values which one day will perish or must be adapted or must be radically changed. Will it be a military dictatorship? A military dictatorship of all forms of dictatorship is still the mildest form. Look at the liberalization of present-day Spain.

But we must, you see, all these things must be viewed and thought with a certain amount of secular impiety. You see? Secular impiety. But think about the basic ideals. And the basic ideal is not the majority ideal. It's of course not the equality ideal. The basic ideal is personal freedom.

And the question is, if it comes to the worst, what form of government Under what form of government is there a good chance that freedom, personal human freedom, free enterprise, the idea of liberty, will really be preserved?

And very often, as the Italian case I told you about the Italian elections, it may be not the idea that you just count votes.

SPEAKER 1

Dr. Ledeen, I know that in your talk you referred to the question of authority versus power. I also know from what you told me that you have lectured at San Francisco State. Do you think that the problem that we're facing there today and the militancy shown by those students involves the question of authority versus power?

SPEAKER 2

Yeah, I don't know exactly how you refer to, but inner chaos. If chaos is anywhere, and if authority fails, power inevitably will come into play.

This may be either the power of the many, the power of the mobs, because also that is power, don't forget that, or the power of those whose legal and constitutional task it is to restore law and order. Then, of course, the appeal to authority.

If authority has been destroyed, and authority has been destroyed in many parts of the world, power is the only answer. But of course, for heaven's sakes, I would say power, which is intelligently and generously, very important word, and generously used.

SPEAKER 1

This questionnaire asks, Some representatives to the European Economic Community express that there is a need for political integration as well as economic integration. Will you please comment, both pro and con?

SPEAKER 2

I would say certainly that we have to integrate economically, that we also have to integrate politically, But of course, we should be careful in the letter because the genius of Europe, every continent or every country has its own genius, is diversity.

In other words, that this integration of Europe, I think the de Gaulle's formula doesn't necessarily mean de Gaulle's ideas. Une Europe des patries, that means a Europe of fatherlands. But coordinated, that should be very, very definitely our ideal.

And of course, obviously, in close cooperation with the other free countries of the world, and that means primarily, of course, the United States. Because the Atlantic Ocean really is a binding piece of water.

SPEAKER 1

Is the university student unrest in Florence and Paris communistic inspired in your opinion?

SPEAKER 2

I don't think so in its really in its origins. Of course wherever there is disorder and anarchy the communists will try to utilize this to their own ends.

But it is equally true that the French Communist Party was really desperate, and from that ode to the policeman by a communist writer you can see very well indeed how the Communist Party is unhappy about it. Because actually, you know, the student riots and the student ferment is one of an anarchic character, not of a communistic character.

And the anarchists, you must leave it to the anarchists, were that group in the old Soviet Union who fought on against communism long after all the other parties had given up. Because there's the curious thing. You see, the anarchist stands for total liberty and the communist for total control.

And finally, in 1924, immediately after the death of Lenin, all anarchists in all Russian prisons were all rubbed out. So you see, the anarchists are a very uneasy partner for communism.

SPEAKER 1

Do the political coalitions in Western Europe tend to provide more democratic rule than America's two-party system?

SPEAKER 2

I don't think so, and primarily for the reason because if you have three parties, for instance, and the third party is very small and sits in the center, I'm thinking especially of the old German center party.

Then you can get a minority tyranny because that party is going to align itself in one vote taking with the right and the other vote taking with the left and can play out one party against another. That's the reason, Lasky said, the two-party system gives you the optimum. But the two-party system is not something you can decree.

the two-party system is something which comes naturally. And it came in America in the past very naturally because you had an enormous political uniformity in this country. So that, let us say, a liberal Republican and a liberal Democrat had more in common than a conservative Democrat and a conservative Republican. In other words, it cut across state lines.

If you took, for instance, the subway in New York And you took out, let us say, 6 p.m., all the 10,000 human sardines. Every one of them, if asked, would believe in the Republic as the best and most modern form of government.

And 999 out of 1,000, except the one who read The Founding Fathers, would have believed that democracy is the most ideal procedure. You do the same thing today in Spain. You stop the Madrid or the Barcelona subways. They are broad gauge. They have many more human sardines than the New York subway.

And of course, the one would be a liberal democrat, the next one is a Trotskyite communist, the third one an anarchist, the fourth one a liberal monarchist, the fifth one a traditionalist monarchist, the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth. I can give you all the 28 different groups.

And when I once talked to a Spanish lawyer and said, my dear friend, you had 28 different parties at the last free election, the man pounded the table and said, this is a dirty lie because we have 28 million different parties. As many parties as there are Spaniards.

But this is not conducive, and do not forget that brilliant passage in George Washington's farewell address, which was ghostwritten by Alexander Hamilton, when he said, the party spirit, the factional spirit, they can afford it in the monarchies of Europe, but we can't afford it here.

But you are in a situation now where such possibilities, the first time in your history, are really very concretely on the horizon.

SPEAKER 1

Dr. Eric von Knelt-Ledeen. I want to thank you for being our speaker today, and I'm sure the members present at this meeting share my feeling. On behalf of the Commonwealth Club of California and those other members who will have the opportunity to hear you on radio, I thank you.

I might tell you, gentlemen, that this Mr. Ledeen, we invited him one year ago to appear today. I think maybe we better sign him up again right now for a year from today. Meeting is adjourned.

Why Democracy Fails In Europe

by Erik Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

Zoran Zoltanous

Jan 07, 2024

This recording features a lecture by Erik Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, presented by the Commonwealth Club of California on the 29th of November, 1968. In his talk, Kuehnelt-Leddihn posits that the United States, originally an Aristocratic Republic, has been transitioning to a Democracy since 1820.

Erik Maria Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, an Austrian-American noble and intellectual, had a vast range of scholarly interests encompassing philosophy, history, political science, economics, linguistics, art, and theology. A staunch critic of the French Revolution, Communism, and National Socialism, he notably challenged the Wilsonian perspective of American foreign policy.

A proclaimed monarchist and adversary to all forms of totalitarianism, Kuehnelt-Leddihn nonetheless voiced support for certain "non-democratic republics" such as Switzerland and the early version of the United States. His democratic skepticism was informed by thinkers like the U.S. Founding Fathers, Tocqueville, Burckhardt, and Montalembert.

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