An increasingly frequent comment is that our society is not healthy, but neither the diagnosis nor the prognosis is entirely clear because our life together is multidimensional: spiritual, cultural, social, and political. In respect to the political dimension, the stubborn truth is that democracies have a short shelf life. Two developments may be helpful—and worrisome.
Hyper-Democracy
In 1930, Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset published the book for which he is best known, The Revolt of the Masses. Though he wrote a century ago and his focus was on Europe, it is hard to imagine a book more relevant to life in Western democracies in general and the United States in particular. He warns that democracy has overrun its proper bounds and for that reason, we face a crisis, so much so that we may be in the last stages of modern democratic government.
Although the Constitution begins “We the People,” in a healthy democracy that does not mean everyone should try to govern. In a true democracy, Ortega y Gasset explains, a large majority of the citizenry recognize that self-government is limited, given that most are incapable of taking the reins of government, nor should they try.
Rather, the American founders were careful to construct a republic, the leading feature of which is government by representation. Indeed, in the Constitution, you and I do not elect the Supreme Court, and until the Seventeenth Amendment was passed, neither did we elect our senators. For that matter, we still don’t elect the president—the Electoral College does. That’s why five presidents have been elected with less than a majority of the popular vote.
But when Ortega y Gasset says the masses have revolted, he means that the majority of the country is no longer willing to recognize the men and women of excellence needed for leadership. These masses, he explains, are made of mediocre men and women who “demand nothing special of themselves, but for whom to live is to be every moment what they already are.” The people of the masses are “mere buoys that float on the waves.”
“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”
One of the influences on Ortega y Gasset was the German philosopher Nietzsche, and the Spaniard’s concern reminds one of Nietzsche’s “last man”: men and women with no valor or meaningful purpose in life—people who are more than satisfied with a crass and superficial culture. T. S. Eliot chimed in with his poem “The Hollow Men,” whose heads are stuffed with straw. As C. S. Lewis famously observed,
We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.
Ortega y Gasset calls this dangerous condition “hyper-democracy.” In a hyper-democracy, excellence is scorned; indeed, for middling men and women, excellence is a threat to a distorted idea of equality: “Who are you to say that anyone is better than me?” In a hyper-democracy, not only do the masses consider themselves capable of leadership, they also self-assuredly believe they have the right to impose their will on everyone else. The quality of political discourse degenerates and meaningful discussion is replaced by abuse and violence. Social media makes a bad situation worse by solidifying and confirming these pedestrian opinions, further homogenizing the masses.
Democratic Theory
José Ortega y Gasset is participating in a long history of what we call democratic theory, a subdiscipline that has a lot to do with the weaknesses and problems associated with democracy. In Aristotle’s Politics, the Greek philosopher distinguishes a polity from a democracy. Both have to do with government “by the people.” In a polity, a modest portion of the citizenry participates in governance in a limited way, but for most people their participation is in voting.
Democracy, however, is the flip side of a polity, where everyone demands a right to steer the ship of state, qualified or not. It’s really even worse than it sounds. Ortega y Gasset explains that governing is not just a political act, because our public life is “intellectual, moral, economic, religious; it comprises all our collective habits, including our fashions both of dress and of amusement.” When democracy begins to degenerate, violent protests, chaos, and anarchy are the consequence. Eventually, the country is willing to accept tyranny to put things aright because anything is better than chaos.
The political lesson of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is not a warning about tyrants. It is rather a disquieting portrait of how easily the emotions and attitudes of the populace are manipulated, first one way, and then the next.
Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville, in his early nineteenth-century astute observations on the United States, Democracy in America, writes that Americans, having formed a new country across the Atlantic, think they have escaped tyrannical government—but they have not. Rather, America has traded one form of tyranny for another. This condition, he explains, is the “tyranny of the majority,” and it is far more oppressive than any tyranny in Europe. Tocqueville marvels at how effective the majority is in shaping public opinion and disallowing competing ideas. Freedom of speech and freedom of conscience are at risk. He also notes that the cultural tastes of a democracy may become banal.
The American founders designed a republic because they knew that democracies are never secure. This is explained, among other places, in Federalist Papers #9 and #10. John Adams—never one to mince words—wrote to a friend, “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” The founders feared mob rule: They saw it too often in the history of Greece, Rome, and the Italian city-states.
The Pseudo-Majority
There is another bastardization of democracy that has appeared in our day, the “pseudo-majority.” It may look like a genuine majority, but it is not. It operates in at least two different ways, and in both, the mainstream media is complicit. In The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy and company reach the Emerald City, they are confronted by a terrifying, all-powerful, fire-breathing, smoke-belching, supersized, mechanical Wizard of Oz. But then little Toto pulls back the curtain to reveal that “The Great and Powerful Oz” is just an ordinary man, and a rather shy one at that. The mass media, promoting the opinions of “the elite,” operates in a similar fashion. They choose what we will hear and how we will hear it, claiming they represent “public opinion,” regularly trotting out polls that tell us how to think. We dare not disagree for fear of ridicule or worse. Opponents are shouted down and inundated in a cesspool of cancel culture. They are a noisy new Wizard of Oz when, in fact, they represent far fewer than they would have us think.
When democracy begins to degenerate, violent protests, chaos, and anarchy are the consequence.
Let’s see how this works: Although college teams include male cheerleaders in the pageantry, and NFL teams have had male stuntmen from time to time, teams like the Minnesota Vikings are now hiring male cheerleaders. But Victor Davis Hanson rightly asks, “Who is the constituency for whom this controversial decision has been made?” In other words, who wants male cheerleaders? The average man who watches professional football doesn’t; he is more than satisfied with female cheerleaders. Besides, as Hanson notes, a disproportionate number of these individuals seem to be chosen because of their effeminate appearance, which means that the average man will be annoyed, and the average woman will be uninterested. Will the average player be inspired when these new boosters cheer them on? Hardly.
So . . . where is the constituency?
It is in the same place where the fateful decision was made to use “trans-influencer” Dylan Mulvaney as the new spokesperson for Bud Light beer. These so-called elites know more than the rest of us and are committed to changing our antediluvian attitudes. Fortunately, they are finding it more difficult than they thought, but this is no time to relax. Theirs is a religious commitment.
Flannery O’Connor was once asked, “Why do Southern writers like to write about freaks?” She answered, “It is because we can still recognize one.” Here in the South, we are not loath to say, “Bless his heart, but that person is not normal.”
The second instrument of the pseudo-majority needs no introduction: social media, which does double time, both inciting the digital mob and disseminating the radicalism of the elite glitterati. A forty-year-old living in his parents’ basement is often driven by the grossest of motivations: meanness. Easily ignored in times past, now someone who spends eighteen hours a day tweeting can do a lot of damage. Social media activists can create a substantial mob in a surprisingly short time.
The media again plays the role of a sorcerer’s apprentice, supercharging the impact of social media.
The Future of Democracy
The important question is, “In what political arrangement does Christianity best flourish?” Scripture doesn’t specify, but the apostle Paul does provide guidelines:
I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2:1–4).
Does that mean a democracy? There seem to be two paradoxical objections to religious faith in today’s democratic regimes. One is that life has been so comfortable for Christians that too many are complacent. As Ralph Wood observes, the Church is no longer “visible.”
Secondly, Western society is increasingly hostile to Christian principles. Designing websites and baking cakes have become dangerous professions. The recent Supreme Court case Mahmoud v. Taylor (2025), competently reviewed on this site by Dr. Kody Cooper, revealed the lengths to which radicalized educators will go to pry students loose from their unenlightened religious beliefs—just don’t go home and tell your parents.
No one wants to live under communist oppression. Roman Catholicism, however, thrived in Poland during the Cold War. In a nation of around thirty million, approximately eleven million came out to see Pope John Paul II when he visited the country in June 1979. That is a third of the country, a staggering number.
The reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union are manifold and complex; Poland was the first Soviet domino to fall, followed by Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania. Today, in the US and Europe, Bishop Robert Barron notes that for every one person who joins the Church, six or seven abandon the faith; about half of the young people who are raised Catholic are leaving the Church.
Today, the Catholic Church in democratic Poland is in decline.
Despite the darker sides of democracy, we in the US still have more freedom than those in most other countries to live “a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence.” Why? So that “all people can be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” As Jesus soberly exhorts his disciples: “We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work” (John 9:4).