Democracy is on the ropes across the globe, and there’s no shortage of finger-pointing about it. But maybe what we really need is a mirror?
Tom Nichols, a contributing writer at The Atlantic and author of Our Own Worst Enemy, says the culprit for the rise of illiberalism is... well, it’s us. All of us.
“We have basically become an incredibly narcissistic society,” Nichols tells host Molly Jong-Fast in this bonus episode of The New Abnormal.
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To Nichols’ mind, all people do is complain instead of, you know, participating and voting—even though they’re actually better off than earlier generations.
“The real illiberal push in most countries, isn’t coming from the poor. It’s coming from the relatively well-off working and middle class that just doesn’t think that life is worthy of their immense talents and dreams. And so they start having these kind of ‘tear it all down’ daydreams,” he says.
Molly doesn’t quite buy it, pointing out that there are plenty of Americans who are disenfranchised. And Nichols agrees that there are some people who have to stand in line for hours and hours to vote—but adds, “There’s always an excuse.”
The real issue, he thinks, is that the Founding Fathers’ concept of virtue has collapsed.
“I’m not talking about how often you go to confession,” he says. “I’m talking about the notion that you vote out of a sense of civic duty that you think about your neighbors, fellow citizens, that you believe in the constitutional values of tolerance and secular government and reasoned discourse and knowledge.”
“[Without virtue] we’re not a democracy anymore,” he adds. “We’re just warring tribes on the battlefield.” The result? “Democracy simply became this kind of grubby game of musical chairs where everybody’s trying to steal their part of the pie and blaming everybody else for troubles.”
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