From across the spectrum of opinion, politicians at every level of office and their staff members, pundits, academics, think tank staffers and neighbors who turn their yards into forests of campaign signs all agree on one thing—democracy is in imminent danger.

Yet democracy in the literal sense—government by “the many”—is hardly endangered, not even by most of the blatant and egregious efforts to thwart the will of the people. Bureaucratic managerialism and collusion between government agencies, political parties, and the media attempt to manipulate democratic participation rather than eliminate it. Excluding nationalist parties like the Freedom Party of Austria, Alternative for Germany, and France’s National Rally (formerly the National Front) from power relies on the fact that these parties have not gained absolute
majorities in multi-party systems.

The annulment of Romania’s 2024 presidential election, won by NATO critic Călin Georgescu, is a more serious case. The country’s high court canceled the results based on the claim that there was Russian interference. Yet repeat elections are scheduled and the Trump administration is putting pressure on Romanian authorities to allow Georgescu to continue his campaign. Romania’s current president, Klaus Iohannis, whose term was temporarily extended, has resigned to avoid being impeached by the country’s right-wing politicians. It is possible that the annulment in Romania will become a precedent for regular practice. Former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton threatened that an electoral win of Alternative for Germany could be similarly annulled. “We did it in Romania, and if necessary, we will have to do it in Germany as well,” he said in a January interview. However, what happened in Romania it is more likely to be a one-off reminiscent of Richard Nixon’s forced resignation.

It is possible that the annulment in Romania will become a precedent for regular practice. Former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton threatened that an electoral win of Alternative for Germany could be similarly annulled. “We did it in Romania, and if necessary, we will have to do it in Germany as well,” he said. 

None of the above is substantially different from the methods that have commonly been used to attain desired ends in politically advanced societies—democratically governed or not—throughout human history. Such methods rely on a herd mentality that is just as common and easily manipulated. What is new is the commitment to national and cultural self-destruction. 

Rule by the many is secure enough that if real majorities prioritized reversing self-destructive policies, they would succeed. The problem is that one substantial part of the Western world’s population is committed to these policies, another trusts the professions of “mainstream parties,” claiming that they will reverse them, and a third prioritizes keeping nationalists out of power over policy changes.

At the same time, all of those wringing their hands over “threats” to “democracy” are entirely correct about one thing—there is a very real chance that whatever they consider “undemocratic” will be implemented. No matter what happens, “democracy” will inevitably lose and will just as inevitably win. Any party’s electoral victory, any law passed, any policy implemented will be both “democratic” and “undemocratic.”

This is because there is no such substantive thing as “democracy.” Aside from denoting rule by the many, “democracy” is what Richard Weaver classified it as more than seven decades ago—a “god term” that is so vague as to be almost meaningless but is believed to indicate something positive by most people in a particular society. Contemporary political discourse typically begins unthinkingly with an implied syllogism: “Democracy is good and A is good, therefore A is democratic.” From there it follows that whatever negates A must be undemocratic.

We see the results every time politics is discussed. Pro-life politicians claim to protect the “democratic rights” of unborn children, pro-abortion politicians to protect the “democratic rights” of women. Actual democratic majorities do not matter. If a majority of people favor one side, its spokesmen will additionally claim the mantel of “the democratic majority” as justification. But spokesmen for the other will just as predictably insist that protecting the “democratic rights” of this, that, or the next group is the only “truly democratic” policy, and therefore trumps a majority that is allegedly opposed to “democratic values.”

Once it is assumed that “democratic values” require particular policies, it follows that rule by the many is not just insufficient to secure “democracy”—it can also be an impediment to it. Hence, leftists justify centralizing power in the European Union and limiting the power of the popular vote on the grounds that this “protects democracy.” If neo-Nazis ever establish a Fourth Reich, “German democracy” would no doubt be the name for their political system. Communist totalitarians insist they are the most democratic of all.

Even otherwise admirable, highly educated, erudite and clear-thinking writers and scholars who are otherwise willing to challenge contemporary consensuses can unthinkingly accept that whatever is good must be “democratic.” Based on that presupposition, some monarchists argue that monarchy is the best means of securing “democratic values.”

Ideas like these point to the fact that “democracy” is not just a god term but a sort of supreme god term, a Zeus term to which other god terms are subject, a whole of which other god terms are a part. God terms like “equality,” “freedom,” “individual rights,” and “majority rule” are just as vague, and their goodness is accepted as equally unquestionable. But they are ultimately considered parts of “democracy”—though parts so essential that securing them at the expense of rule by the many is considered “democratic.”

Here there is a key difference between “democracy” and the lesser god terms in term of their component parts. Vague as they may be, these other god terms conform to the literal meaning of words and are internally consistent.

“Freedom” has a literal meaning that we all understand and which its use as a god term presupposes. Using it as a god term merely obfuscates the question of freedom from or for what or who. Libertarians insist on freedom from government control. Communists insist workers should be free from capitalist employers. We can cite all the evidence we want that workers in capitalist countries have much greater overall freedom than workers in communist ones. But the fact remains that workers in communist countries are free from control by capitalist employers, while in capitalist countries workers are not free from that form of control.

Mutually incompatible as libertarian and communist notions of freedom are, their incompatibility is grounded in the fact that freedom from one thing (control by the state) is often incompatible with freedom from another (control by business owners). Neither use is at odds with the literal meaning of the word. Neither contradicts itself.

For most of history, anyone who argued that the power of the popular will needed to be limited in order to secure “freedom” or “individual rights” would have defined “democracy” in a way consistent with the word’s literal meaning—rule by the people—and argued that democracy itself needed to be limited. It is only in the 19th century that some have started taking the position that limiting popular rule is necessary to secure “democracy.” Why has this changed?

Part of the problem is that “democracy” always has an implicit qualifier—“liberal democracy,” “social democracy” and so on. Aside from the fact that the qualifying terms can be defined in myriad contradictory ways, this means that “democracy” combines within itself two distinct things—a political philosophy (liberalism, socialism, etc.) and a form of government (rule by the many).

Now it should be obvious that “liberal democracy” or “social democracy” can only exist when there is both a democratic form of government and a population committed to a particular philosophy. It should be just as obvious that when a population is no longer committed to particular philosophy, a choice must be made between governing based on that philosophy, or on the changing popular will.

But contemporary political discourse is not based on acceptance of the obvious. It is based on the assumption that if “democracy” is left to itself it will inevitably “work”—in other words, that unimpeded government by the many will necessarily result in whatever policies are deemed “good.” Alternative policies, in this view, can only be implemented if “democracy” has somehow “failed”—either because politicians have acted against the will of the people or because the people themselves have been deluded by “misinformation.”

The sole exception allowed in contemporary political discourse is the case of a population opposed to “democracy.” Thwarting a populace’s desire for a non-democratic form of government is considered “democratic” because democratic political structures are held to be of greater importance than carrying out the will of the people.

For example, British constitutional experts hold that the monarch can withhold royal assent to bills passed by Parliament only if those bills eliminate democratic political structures—some even insist the law requires the monarch to reject such bills. Similarly, Germany’s constitution declares it legally impossible to amend the constitution in way which would eliminate democracy and prohibits political parties supporting any such amendments.

If whatever is ‘good’ is ‘democratic’ and if legal abortion and open borders are good, it then follows that legal protection of the unborn and secure borders are ‘undemocratic’—with the result that any populace supporting these ‘undemocratic’ policies is placed in the category of ‘threats to our democracy.’

Contemporary leftist attempts to limit the power of conservatives and nationalists takes such thinking (perhaps often unwittingly) to its inevitable conclusion. If whatever is “good” is “democratic,” and if legal abortion and open borders are good, it then follows that legal protection of the unborn and secure borders are “undemocratic”—with the result that any populace supporting these “undemocratic” policies is placed in the category of “threats to our democracy.”

Nationalists and conservatives can, of course, play this game in reverse by arguing that the right to life and border control are essential elements of “democracy”—or, at least, compatible with it. Pragmatically speaking, this will be the only way for nationalists and conservatives to gain and maintain power for the indefinite future. But while the deck is not irreversibly stacked against us, doing this means playing on a field that favors the other side.

“Democracy” did not enter modern political discourse to indicate rule by the many. It did so as a euphemism for egalitarianism (a point assessed at some length by Erik von Kuehneldt-Leddin). By the early 20th century, the meaning of “democracy” was extended to include globalist policies that favored international corporations.

Conservatives and nationalists, whose thinking is not dominated by the consensuses of recent decades, generally realized that at the time of the world wars leftists successfully pulled off a bait and switch. They presented democratic political structures as the sole alternative to dictatorship, or tarred undemocratic structures as inherently dictatorial. Popular participation in government rather than limitation of governmental control of peoples’ lives became the accepted standard of “freedom.”

What the same conservatives often do not know is that the bait and switch went further. Leftists successfully propagated the idea that only egalitarian forms of popular political participation are truly “democratic.” Beginning in 1848, members of the Prussian House of Representatives were chosen through an electoral system based on three classes. Each corresponded to an economic class determined based on levels of taxation, so as to prevent each from being dominated by the others.

Combined with elimination of hereditary political office at the end of World War I, that system would have been democratic in the literal sense. But leftists successfully propagated the idea that such nonegalitarian forms of democratic participation are “undemocratic.”

A final success of World War-era leftist propaganda was the association of “democracy” with tendencies towards globalism—first in the form of the League of Nations and then in that of the United Nations. Multiple factors grounded this association, including the historical leftist belief that worldwide working-class unity should take priority over national unity between social classes. Belief that international organizations are the best means of assuring “democracy” throughout the world.

In order to understand how “democracy” and related god terms have gained such status since the world wars, we need to realize that the current usage of these terms originated in leftist ideology and was intended to inculcate a leftist mindset. Even when conservatives and nationalists define these terms is positive ways, elements of leftist presuppositions linger.

The most obvious example is when conservatives treat as unquestionable the idea that democracy is the best form of government for all nations everywhere, rather than assessing the merits of democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy in specific historical contexts. Few American conservatives stress that the Founding Fathers set out to counter the dangers of each by excluding hereditary office while using mechanisms like the Electoral College to avoid pure democracy. Fewer still even know that John Adams and John Quincy Adams considered Britain’s traditional division of power between king, lords, and commons not merely a good system of government but second only to America’s—while considering pure democracy a road to tyranny.

Given the vagueness of the modern use of “democracy” and related god terms, it is easy for conservatives and nationalists to use them in political discourse and assume their definitions are understood. But it must be recognized that making arguments on such a basis inevitably descends into shouting matches between rivals, who ever more emphatically insist their own position is the truly “democratic” one. A clear example of this happened in Munich recently, when Vice President J. D. Vance criticized European governments and the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for abandoning democractic values by suppressing the free speech of their peoples. The chairman of the Munich conference, German diplomat Christoph Heusgen, lamented that it was America that had abandoned the values of “democracy” that he said Zelensky had been fighting for.

While we have come to expect shifting definitions of words from leftists, those claiming to conserve the Western tradition should recognize that the word “democracy” has been so hopelessly distorted that both sides of almost any argument can now claim that there’s is the truly “democratic” position.