Ambiguity in "democracy"-related language and the ease with which we can call disliked stances "undemocratic"

Getting more clear on our use of language helps us have more productive, less polarized conversations — and can even aid our political activism.

This piece contains:

• Thoughts on the different ways we can see “democracy” and what is “undemocratic”

• A talk I had with Elizabeth Doll, of Braver Angels, about what she sees as undemocratic on the Democrat/liberal side

This is a very rough set of ideas that I was thinking through for purposes of writing a more edited, final piece. If you have any thoughts you want to send (in comments or more privately via my contact form), I'd much appreciate hearing from you. There is probably someone who's written about this idea in a better, more intelligent way, so I appreciate hearing about any leads on such writings.

I think there is a lot of ambiguity in how people talk about "democracy" and what is "democratic" and what is "undemocratic." This ambiguity creates a situation where often people are talking about entirely different things when they accuse each other of being "undemocratic."

This is a general dynamic for a lot of polarized, contentious issue debates; language is always imperfect, and I think often people are talking about entirely different things and misunderstanding each other at fundamental levels. For example, in my books I describe attending an online Braver Angels debate about CRT (critical race theory) and its presence in schools, and yet no one at any point ever defined the term and it was clear that the perceptions/definitions of what CRT was were all over the place.

This dynamic is I think common for so many contentious issues. Our hugely divergent narratives lead to huge blind spots as to how the people around us are using language in entirely different ways. This "Tower of Babel" effect then leads to further division; misunderstandings and worst-case interpretations compile and compound. (For some more observations on this, I recommend

Isaac Saul

’s TED Talk on language and polarization; I also recommend subscribing to Isaac’s Tangle News.)

As with most things I write about, I am less interested in "what is true" or "what is right" than in understanding people's perceptions of these areas. For many of the things that lead to contentious debate, what is most obvious to me is that the complexity of these topics is such that it's possible for smart people to form all sorts of views of what is true or right. (For more on this, I recommend

Kevin Dorst

’s work on “rational polarization.”) I think acknowledging this basic truth helps us lower contempt for each other. It helps combat the arrogance and contemptuousness that I see as our core dysfunction; arrogance and contempt lead to more arrogance and contempt. (I recommend

Taylor Dotson

’s book The Divide for insight into our arrogance problem.)

But bad things are happening: Why care about this stuff?

As a politically passionate person, you might wonder, "Why does this matter?" For example, you might think Trump is doing so many bad things, clearly undemocratic things, and think, "It's so clear that the things he's doing are bad and undemocratic, it's not my job to think about how people may be using these terms differently or how my language is perceived; that stuff is weak; we just need to arouse more judgment and anger about these clearly bad things."

Or you are a Republican/Trump-supporter and have similar objections about Democrats/liberals/the-establishment: “Who cares about this weak intellectual crap? The things they are doing are clearly bad and unfair and undemocratic; to hell with people who don’t see these things; we just need to arouse more judgment and anger to beat them.”

But I'd say that: if you want to be able to persuade people of your views (or, more realistically, be able to show others that your views have merit so as to inject a bit more nuance and reduce contempt for your views and, as a result, shift the debate in more productive directions) you should be curious about these language-related and conflict-related ideas. If you want to be an effective activist and advocate for your goals, you must be curious about the ways in which we misunderstand each other and the ways in which we can speak at cross purposes.

If you are not interested in such things, you will, in my view, often by unintentionally creating more pushback and building support for the very leaders/stances that anger you.

On the different ways we can see things as 'undemocratic'

Here are three broad categories I see as to how people define “democracy” and how it relates to what ideas/actions people can call “undemocratic”:

• Related to a system of governance that enacts the will of the people: either 'pure democracy' or 'representative democracy.' In this view, things that block the people's will (e.g., negative views of electoral college; or perceived voter suppression) are 'undemocratic'. Democratic approaches can be both criticized as enabling a "tyranny of the majority" and praised as the "will of the people"; this helps us see how easy it is to either praise or criticize anything we like or don't like that results from a democracy.

• Related to a more conceptual, idealistic and hard-to-define concept of "democratic ideals." This has to do with protecting individual freedom, political rights, societal rights, making sure various individuals/minorities are protected and their voices heard and respected. This framing is often used by liberals/Democrats (e.g., framing assorted conservative-associated stances as 'undemocratic'), but it is also used by Republicans. For example, many people think liberals/Democrats have unfairly maligned Republican-associated views as racist and bigoted; that behavior can be seen as undemocratic, in the sense that it can seem aimed at trying to delegitimize people’s views and remove them from the public sphere. The subjective nature of this category allows people to easily criticize stances they see as unfair or harmful as 'undemocratic'.

• Related to the American constitution (or other founding documents that establish govt operations). Related to the above point: a Republican-associated view is that the U.S. constitution establishes the checks/balances necessary for a real and practically useful large nation built on democratic principles; it is what allows for a representative democracy that tries to protect individual freedoms and tries to set up checks against the 'tyranny of the majority' that results from pure democracy. This is what leads to defenses of the electoral college and the form of the Senate as being intelligent designs that should be protected (e.g., in books like Enlightened Democracy: The Case for the Electoral College) In this view of things, people who say they want to "save democracy" by changing the constitution are misguided, dangerous, and hypocritical because they aren't seeing that the constitution is something that in their view establishes/preserves democratic ideals.

While I’m on this topic, I’d like to hype Robert Talisse’s great book Sustaining Democracy, which is about the fundamental difficulty of democracy (that it allows a citizenry to legitimately enact policies that we may see as harmful and dangerous — and even “undemocratic”) and how that fundamental difficulty relates to toxic polarization.

My question to you is: do you think this rough categorization makes sense? Do you think I'm accurately categorizing the main perceptions and frustrations that people can have in discussions of what is "undemocratic"?

A talk about this

I recently had a talk with Elizabeth Doll about her grievances about liberals/Democrats who she sees as behaving undemocratically. Elizabeth Doll is a Republican and she works with the organization Braver Angels. I wanted to talk with her because I was curious about the different ways we can see “democracy.”

That talk is here: