I am writing this from Athens, the birthplace of democracy, where 2,500 years ago Athenians had the nous (intellect) to understand that such a form of government could only work if they limited voting rights to intelligent men capable of distinguishing truth from falsehood.

They were very wise, those Athenians. They even elected their leaders by drawing lots. They knew that a politician who accepts power reluctantly and uses it sparingly is only to be found in myths.

Athenian democracy failed when the city-state lost a 10-year war against Sparta, a military oligarchy that had proudly and joyfully sacrificed her king and best warriors to save all of Greece from the invading Persian hordes. Although I’m an Athenian, had I been around then I would have fought with the Spartans, as my mother’s family derives from that sacred part of Greece.

Humans are not predisposed to democratic living. We are assertive in imposing our wills on one another. The better of us do it with smiles and decorum, but in our pursuit of power we resemble our cousins in the animal kingdom. World history is the story of assertive individuals seeking power. There is only one exception: that of our Lord Jesus.

Smooth-talking power-seekers are the problem. Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler, and Mussolini all seduced crowds to collective ecstasy. The ancients knew about the trickery of sophists. Old Socrates warned time and again against demagoguery. When one of those smooth-talkers became too big for his chiton (tunic, for those unfamiliar with ancient Greek), Athenians would vote him out of the city. They knew how fragile democracy was and tried desperately never to put it to the test. The rest of undemocratic Greece met its demise after the collapse of the Athenian experiment.

Unlike Christianity, democracy didn’t travel well, except when strongmen have used it as an excuse to unseat rivals. Only after World War I were the militarily defeated Romanovs, Hohenzollerns, and Habsburgs forced to abdicate or resign, and Russia, Germany, and Austria became democratic republics with parliamentary governments. Those smiling wallet-lifters, the Brits, claimed a parliamentary democratic system since chopping off the head of Charles I, but it was nothing of the kind. It was a game played between upper-class gents who differed at times on various matters but were completely united on where power lay: with them, and their sons and grandsons.

Then, suddenly, some cheeky Brit exiles called Americans made some demands, and we know the rest. The American Revolution made democracy the preferred government for the modern age. The only trouble with American democracy is the constant redefinition of the word in Patrick Henry’s famous phrase, “Give me liberty or give me death.”

By “liberty,” he did not mean anarchy nor license for unbound personal freedom. Nor did he mean equity or equality of outcomes. Yet today there are ignoramuses with Ivy League college degrees writing for subversive New York weeklies who complain the American democratic system is rigged against minorities. They think Americans who honor their ancestors and traditions are as deranged as Nazis worshipping Hitler. To these people, Voter ID is fascist and securing the border is racist.

They write that drivel to mislead those unfamiliar with the wisdom of the Founding Fathers. By focusing only on the bad of the past and never on the good, academics and the media fray the emotional connection that binds the country together. We’re left with a society oriented only toward consumption and without a thought for anything spiritual. 

A Brit friend, Nigel Farage, recently told me something very wise about the riots in Leeds: “If you import third-world culture, you get third-world behavior.” Today, immigrants to the West do not assimilate but impose their laws, language, and culture on the countries they inhabit. In the past, Americans welcomed the Irish, Poles, Scandinavians, Germans, Italians, Greeks, and Jews, who all pledged allegiance to the flag and the United States of America.

No longer. Only 75 years ago, 90 percent of Americans were Christian and traced their roots to Europe. The floodgates opened in 1965, thanks to Teddy Kennedy’s immigration legislation. Before you could sing a bar of “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” the number of immigrants quadrupled to 72 million. In many places America now looks exactly like a third-world country. Meanwhile, African and Middle East refugees have overrun Europe.

The cosmopolitan elite, the Times, Hollywood, the networks, and the universities call fighting for a national identity racism. Biden and Kamala allowed 10 million refugees to these shores and call those of us who protest fascists. They don’t know the meaning of the words they use, least of all “democracy.” ◆