[Anser konservatismen att] Diktatur är bättre än demokrati [Rubr ändr/Mod]

Democratic despotism: in this phrase, which the hesitating Tocqueville adopted only for lack of a
better, he described the conundrum of modern society. The analysis of democratic despotism is his
supreme achievement as a political theorist, a sociologist, a liberal, and a conservative. "I am not
opposed to democracies," he wrote to M. Freslon, in 1857. "They may be great, they may be in
accordance with the will of God, if they be free. What saddens me is, not that our society is
democratic, but that the vices which we have inherited and acquired make it so difficult for us to
obtain or to keep well-regulated liberty. And I know nothing so miserable as a democracy without
liberty. "29 Harold Laski remarks that Tocqueville, essentially an aristocrat, was "unable to accept
without pain the collectivist discipline" toward which centralized democratic polities remorselessly
tend. Legislative power, once it is wholly in the hands of the mass of men, is applied to purposes of
economic and cultural levelling.30 Quite so; the collectivist discipline was more repugnant to
Tocqueville-and to any liberal or conservative, of whatever origins-than the worst stupidities of the
old regime. Like Aristotle (and some reputable writers have declared that Tocqueville was the
greatest political thinker since Aristotle, although Tocqueville himself found little in Aristotle's
Politics which he thought applicable to. modern problems), Tocqueville was always searching for
ends. A political system which forgets ends and worships averages, a "collectivist discipline," for
Tocqueville was bondage worse than slavery of the old sort. Society ought to be designed to
encourage the highest moral and intellectual qualities in man; the worst threat of the new democratic
system is that mediocrity will not only be encouraged, but may be enforced. Tocqueville dreads the
reduc tion of human society to an insect-like arrangement, the real gravitation toward which
condition has been described by Wyndham Lewis in his stories of Rotting Hill and by C. E. M. Joad
in Deca- dence.31 Variety, individuality, progress: these Tocqueville struggles to conserve.

Whenever social conditions are equal, public opinion presses with enormous weight upon the mind
of each individual; it surrounds, directs, and oppresses him; and this arises from the very
constitution of society much more than from its political laws. As men grow more alike, each man
feels himself weaker in regard to all the rest; as he discerns nothing by which he is considerably
raised above them or distinguished from them, he mistrusts himself as soon as they assail him. Not
only does he mistrust his strength, but he even doubts of his right, and he is very near acknowledging
that he is in the wrong, when the great number of his countrymen assert that he is so. The majority do
not need to force him; they convince him. In whatever way the powers of a democratic community
may be organized and balanced, then, it will always be extremely difficult to believe what the bulk
of the people reject or to profess what they condemn.32

The insidious vice of democracy, Tocqueville discerned, is that democracy preys upon itself, and
presently exists only corrupt and hideous-still, perhaps, preserving its essential characteristic of
equality, but devoid of all those aspirations toward liberty and progress which inspired its early
triumph. Most critics of democracy had declared that political egalitarianism must end in anarchyor,
barring that, tyranny. Alexis de Tocqueville was not in bondage to the past, although he had a
strong respect for historical knowledge: the future need not always be like what went before, he
wrote, and neither of these hoary alternatives is the probable consummation of modern
egalitarianism. What menaces democratic society in this age is not a simple collapse of order, nor
yet usurpation by a single powerful individual, but a tyranny of mediocrity, a standardization of
mind and spirit and condition enforced by the central government, precisely what Laski calls "the
collectivist discipline." He foresaw the coming of the "social welfare state," which agrees to
provide all for its subjects, and in turn exacts rigid conformity. The name democracy remains; but
government is exerted from the top downward, as in the Old Regime, not from the masses. This is a
planners' society, dominated by a bureaucratic elite; but the governors do not form an aristocracy,
for all the old liberties and privileges and individuality which aristocracy cherishes have been
eradicated to make way for a monotonous equality that the managers of society share.

The cant phrase that "the cure of democracy is more democracy" lies; the real cure must be not
more, but better democracy. Improvement never can come from the mass itself; it must be the work
of natural aristocracy, which "does not demand the restoration of inherited privilege or a relapse
into the crude dominion of money; it is not synonymous with oligarchy or plutocracy. It calls rather
for some machinery or some social consciousness which shall ensure both the selection from among
the community at large of the `best' and the bestowal on them of `power'; it is the true consummation
of democracy." Our first step toward the creation or resuscitation of natural aristocracy ought to be a
reform of our institutions of higher learning.
Like a great old tree, our society has been dying at the top. The educated classes are in danger of
turning traitors to the civilization which sustains them-deluded by humanitarianism, perhaps ignorant
of their own proper duties. "At other times the apprehension has been lest the combined forces of
order might not be strong enough to withstand the ever-threatening inroads of those who envy
barbarously or desire recklessly; whereas today the doubt is whether the natural champions of order
themselves shall be found loyal to their trust, for they seem no longer to remember clearly the word
of command that should unite them in leadership."