World Youth Movement for Democracy

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Andrei Filip Troie
Romania

Democracy for me - a youth's outlook on "big people's business"

Indeed, what is democracy to a "child of the revolution" such as myself? I was lucky (or unlucky) enough to be born in a country just emerging from a communist regime: I was born in 1990 in Romania, less than a year from the anti-communist revolution. In a way, one could say that mine was the first free-born generation in my country, we inherited Romania and its budding democracy.

When it comes to conceiving democracy, I could say that my generation has an unexpected perspective, as opposed to our elders. The great difference resides within the paradigm: unlike the case our parents (and generally people older than the approximate age of 17, people that have, therefore, had time to consciously experience the totalitarian regime), our political coordinates never changed: we were born within this one paradigm, never having to undergo such a radical shift. Thus, we are somehow forced to look at democracy from within democracy. What I mean to say is that we somehow lack the possibility of making a comparison that people older than us can make almost unconsciously: comparing democracy with the former communist regime. The complete description of the appalling conditions of living under the Soviet boot would and, as a matter of fact, already has occupied hundreds and hundreds of pages. Suffice it to say that it was probably one of the worst periods of Romanian history, a period of horrible injustice and repeated infringing of even the most basic of human rights (for what is probably the best and most complete history of Romanian communism, I would recommend reading "Stalinism for all seasons" written by Romanian author Vladimir Tismaneanu). Keeping this in mind, I would like to explain the previously mentioned difference of paradigm. For our elders, any regime will almost unconsciously be compared to the communist regime.

The problem should, at this point, strike everyone as obvious and quite important. This way of seeing things, while perfectly understandable, might lead to the overlooking of certain flaws in democracy, be they theoretical or procedural, because, indeed, compared to the horrifying years of communism, many regimes might seem better. I cannot stress enough the error of an a priori system of evaluation: if we start the comparative process with communism in mind, then there is no room for real comparison, in fact: democracy will be the certain victor. We might be running towards democracy just because it is an arbitrary regime that, for the moment, we deem better than dictatorship. And the problem this entails is sizeable enough: while the memory of the soviet regime is most valuable, in building democracy we must exorcise the past and not remain fossilized by it. Of course we must be weary that such horrors should never repeat, however more must be done. We need to do more than try to best the communist regime. We need a fresh view on things, a more critical eye, unlike the perhaps lenient eye of our elders.

With all that cleared up, this is where the "new perspective" I was talking about earlier comes into play: free of the Soviet past, the people in my generation, born between two worlds, can witness the building of democracy from within itself. My generation can be perfectly objective about democracy. And this brings us to my first point: what exactly is democracy for me? I was born with it, obviously thrived in it, but what exactly is it ?

Obviously, it is that regime in which everyone should get an equal say in taking decisions. However, this textbook definition does not suit me at all. I shall therefore attempt my own definition. First of all, I am a strong adept of human rights and liberty. Mind you, this is probably one of the few a priori parts of this demonstration. Namely, I strongly believe that all humans have right simply via the fact that they are humans, and not due to other reasons (i.e. rulers' mercy, God's mercy etc). Of course, a priori statements do not make for very good arguments, however, every argument needs a bottom line. And as I shall be demonstrating, we need a bottom line such as this (i.e. humans have rights naturally ) to fundament a democratic regime.

The reason is simple: if we choose to deny people their rights, than the bottom line is that we end up getting casualties, damage, fear and so on (a situation perhaps similar to the state of nature of man as defined by English philosopher Thomas Hobbes in his work, Leviathan - that state which is known as "Bellum omnium contra omnes", that is, the war of each against each other). And I think anyone can agree that such a thing is not to be desired. Therefore, this alternative of denying humans their rights leads to an obvious dead end.

As long as we wish to prevent this dead end from coming to pass, and as long as we want an acceptably smooth status quo, we are compelled to accept that humans have rights naturally. Let this be the founding convention of the theory. What should, therefore, be the purpose of any regime? Well, nothing more but to uphold (uphold, and not fundament: the presence or absence of a certain regime and state do not fundament people's rights - people have rights both within and outside any given regime) people's rights.

The sole role of the state, should be, to my mind, to ensure that people's rights are never infringed and, if they happen to be infringed, to ensure the restoration of the original situation. (because, naturally, one cannot expect the state to prevent all possible felonies. As a matter of fact, that would be quite the wrong way to build a state: it is absurd to expect political power to take direct action so as to prevent certain things before they happen - as some would put it, in more general fashion, "prevention is better than cure". It is commonsensical enough to admit the fact that such an approach can fail, can lead to wrong courses of action and can, consequently, have dire results. Such an example would be the prohibition of alcohol in America at the beginning of the XX th century, which, in theory, was a very righteous action and intended to do nothing more than protect people from the obviously uncomfortable presence of drunken men. Defending the honest citizen's right to be safe. Needless to say that, in retrospect, this was a horribly planned action: all it led to was illegal smuggling of alcohol, without which the American Mafia would never have grown as strong as it has.

This is an important distinction: democracy, as a regime in which everyone is equal, should by no means attempt to make people equal. Making all people equal can lead to inequities before the final state is obtained. And these inequities can be even worse than the would-be 'initial' inequities. An example would be the failure of socialism, which aimed to build a system in which, in theory, everyone is equal. However, to actively work towards this direction means to put a higher (somewhat transcendent, too) purpose above people. And that can lead to great injustice, as was the aforementioned Soviet regime. We have therefore reached an important point in this essay: democracy should not make all people equal, but instead should give everyone equal opportunities (something perhaps similar to the Isaiah Berlin's concept of negative freedom, or better yet, utilitarianism as conceived by John Stuart Mill). Otherwise, we risk harboring the spores of dictatorship in would-be democratic thinking. As the Charter '77 put it, "all regimes tend to rise above those they rule".

With the idea of rights covered, I would now like to approach the idea of democracy from a different perspective. While democracy is indeed which does no more than make sure that everyone's rights are respected, there is another problem which needs discussing: democracy is nothing in itself. We should not, by any means, ever, bow down to democracy as a sort of divine gift, something transcendent: that is exactly the way that will lead to putting the idea a regime (ideas are something, naturally, devoid of substance) above the people. And that's obviously absurd, because it's exactly the people that made the regime in the first place. And now that we have discussed what the regime should do for the people, let us discuss what the people should do for the regime. Specifically, I am talking about citizens' responsibility. It is my firm belief that rights and freedom cannot exist without responsibility. Otherwise said, once we realize the aforementioned nature of human rights, the next step is to act responsibly in what they are concerned. This is, therefore, another milestone of democracy: responsibility. And responsibility is something dual in direction, as I shall be explaining.

First of all, democracy is something do be accepted contractually and not in apriorical fashion, as I have demonstrated. Therefore, every participant needs to understand and assume responsibility, towards himself and towards others. And here we can notice the birth of the two major spheres dominating all democratic thinking: social and private. Any given citizen should be aware of this duality, that he is responsible to look after both his rights and after the rights of others. A perfect circle is thusly enclosed, at least theoretically, since, everyone will take care and look after everyone else. That, of course, does not imply police-like action, but, if you will, a sort of caution. Simply to take care that, by our actions, we do not infringe the others' rights. On this theoretical base, I would like to present a self-elaborated allegory that would perhaps disambiguate things further. Let us, imagine that everything that means rights of a certain person were concentrated like a sphere around them. These spheres, of course, have the possibility of merging. Otherwise, social interaction would not be possible and we would end up with a collection of individuals and not a society. The whole idea of democracy would be senseless. Now, how could these spheres interact? Logically, we have two possibilities: with their owner's will and without it. 'Without it' means either accidentally or due to evil intentions. While we cannot, of course, eliminate accident from life, (indeed, while I do not wish to discuss the problem here, and since I really do not believe it is possible to arrive to a definitive answer, I do think that a perfect mapping of human life is not possible due to its inherent randomness, not to mention the possibilities that arise for dictatorship) there still remains the problem of evil intentions: people will, unfortunately, attempt to infringe others' spheres. Why other people will take to infringing their peers' rights is a problem which gives birth to a number of answers, which, in my opinion, could be boiled down to carelessness towards others' rights, a problem more than serious. In a better (not ideal society) society, the merging of spheres should always be voluntary, established in contractual fashion between the two or more owners involved. And this would be, perhaps, a good way of perceiving the good (and not ideal) society.

To sum up what I have said so far, my opinion is on democracy is as follows: we could think of it as that regime in which everyone has equal rights and opportunities to exercise them, which entails the need for citizens to act responsibly.

Of course, this is all but beautiful words if not applied to the reality of, in this case, my country. This whole talk of rights and responsibility means quite little to most of the citizens here. Most of the citizens in Romania, mind-numbed and cowed by 50 years of soviet oppression, do not even begin to comprehend democratic ideas. Forced into a scared, reclusive state of selfish fear, most citizens of ex-soviet states have lost all interest in anything that does not concern their direct and everyday survival. Living their ever so grey lives only in selfish manner, they do not care about their peers. The socialist experience has taught people fierce, all-out Machiavellism and has achieved something which to past generations might seem impossible: the almost complete atomization of society, a status quo in which most people think that the only rule for survival is "every man for himself". Fear is a strong emotion and, if cultivated properly, can have repercussions over long, long years. A good illustration is the use of the pronoun "they" whenever referring to anything that concerns politics, or the immediate shunning of those who have a word of protest against some sort of higher authority. After 50 years in which the message streamed to the public (never directly, of course) was "let us think for you" - in fact, "we think for you and there's nothing you can do about it", that is exactly what has happened: with few exceptions, people have retreated to a mental corner, too scared to ever face the world. Now that communism has been formally removed, its ghosts still haunt us: people choose to limit their freedom to the freedom of consuming more (since that is what was most important to most people during the former regime: the fact that they lacked provisions - per se , and not as a violation of their rights) and do not care about participation in the forming of a true civil society, for instance. Only now, after seventeen long years are things slowly starting to move. One could mention, for instance, the fact that, on the 18 th of December 2006, Romanian president Traian Basescu officially condemned communism during a plenary session of the Romanian Parliament. Nevertheless, a lot more needs to be done, if not with the generations that come from under the soviet heel (for most of them, it might be too late to change mentalities - the Romanian communist regime was one of the most brutal of all the soviet block), than with the new ones. Young children in Romania must learn the very important lesson of responsibility especially towards others. Though it takes few words to say it, it is the biggest, most important thing to do: the people must be taught to emerge from their mental cages and start thinking for themselves again, acting as real humans, thinking and choosing, and not as walking digestive systems. Children must be taught to respect and to be responsible, to abandon once and for all their elders' "doctrine of selfishness".

How much will the words of a sixteen-year-old change a state is something that remains to be seen. One thing is certain, though: if people were to actually realize that the power to rule should be theirs, we might witness totally different outcomes.  

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