Debate between Bryan Reece and Dennis Falcon about American Democracy and Human Rights

REECE: American democracy is an idea that we're going to be focusing on for the whole semester. One question we're going to be looking at today is: Is American democracy a human right? Is it something the entire world is entitled to? My name is Bryan Reece. I'm going to be arguing that it is not. Dennis Falcon, my opponent here, will be spreading lies for the next 15 minutes arguing that it is. So, Dennis, why don't you get started?  FALCON: Bryan, popular consent is the foundation of American-style government, and I believe it is the only legitimate, rightful foundation of government in the world today. Popular consent.  REECE: Popular consent means you get to elect the government, right?  FALCON: I would say popular consent as measured by participation. So as long as people can freely participate -- whether it's voting or lobbying or campaigning or volunteering -- that's popular consent.  REECE: All right. What happens if a country gets together -- all the people, lots of people -- gets together and votes? And they say, "We want a socialist-style government. We want an authoritarian-style government. We want something that's non-democratic. We don't want the American-style government." Why is that illegitimate?  FALCON: Well, first, I don't think that people -- if people, through popular consent and participation, did choose elements of any of the forms of government you are talking about, I would say that they chose unwisely. In fact, we have -- some people would argue -- a semi-socialist system now, in terms of health care and education and other issues.  REECE: Yeah, there are certainly socialist elements. I would agree to that. But, you know, Plato, Aristotle, several other philosophers throughout time have said there are several different types of government you have. Plato was, kind of, saying there are three different types of government: there's kind of more an authoritarian or monarchy; there's an aristocracy; there's a democracy. Essentially, that is his argument. And he was saying that every variation has a good style and a bad style. So certainly, there are examples of bad monarchs.  FALCON: Well, since you brought up the ancients, Aristotle also said -- I believe it was him -- he argued that democracy was the most corrupt form of government because of the participation. I don't think anybody would accept that today, though. So whatever they thought 3000 years ago, we're not there anymore.  REECE: Well, we're still reading Plato. I think a lot of people find him relevant to today's society. Certainly, he did write 3000 years ago. But he was arguing that democracy can have a bad style and a good style, meaning a virtuous style of government and a non-virtuous style of government. So how can we say that that's a human right?  FALCON: If you trust human beings, and if you believe that human beings have the capacity to choose well and to lead themselves and to make good choices, then any form of government that does not allow for the free choosing and the absolute most s*election – choice – basically, goes against the human grain. And since you asked me -- you framed the question, "Is it a human right?" That's why I would say, if anything -- because democracy is on the move today. It’s on the march today. More people today around the world are living under democracies than probably any other form of government in history. I think my argument is pretty clear.  REECE: Well, I think you and I could agree that --  FALCON: It's a debate. We're not supposed to agree.  REECE: We agree on this one point here. That we have a right, or we want to have a right to a good life, right? This is something that I want, that you want, that all our students want. Now, let's break this down for a minute. What is involved in a good life? You have, hopefully, love, faith, family. You have some basics, like security. You have shelter. You have some basic protection from the government, protection from each other. You have freedom. You have liberty. Now, if it's an authoritarian-style government that's bringing this about, or if it's a communist-style government that's bringing this about, isn't that government achieving the human rights that we want to establish?  FALCON: I would want you to give me an example of an authoritarian regime that has actually been able to secure those benefits and those freedoms and those goods for the people that you are talking about.  REECE: I'll give you an example of a society that hasn't been able to achieve all those, and that's American-style democracy. We don't have all those things for everybody in this country. There are still people that are starving. There are still people that worry about police brutality. We have a lot of problems going on in this "perfect society" that you're arguing for. So, how would you defend that?  FALCON: Simple. The number of people who come to this country every single year compared to the number of people who leave this country every single year. Hundreds of thousands if not millions of people try to come to this country every single year, when, at most, we lose 500,000 Americans every year who move overseas. The United States is a magnet, and American-style democracy in society is a magnet for a reason. It's drawing people and pulling people for a reason. And when I see those numbers reversed, and I find out everybody's moving to Canada, then I'll start listening to you. But even then, they're a democracy.  REECE: You're right. There are millions of people coming to the United States every year. There are billions who don't come here. There are billions of people that stay in their government.  FALCON: But my argument is they would if they could.  REECE: Oh, come on. You're living in Sweden, or you're living in a more socialist-style country. You’re not leaving a good country to come to the United States. Sweden is not an American-style democracy. It is a much more socialist-style country, and you're saying they should adopt what we have?  FALCON: As much as possible. And again, back to popular consent and participation. As long as people have the ability to participate freely -- and that's in terms of choosing political parties, interest groups, all the things that we associate with American-style democracy, with pluralism. I believe that, yes, in all these countries all around the world -- 180-plus countries that, eventually, historically, that's the direction that we are heading, and people aren't going backwards. They are not choosing other forms of governments. To quote somebody else, Winston Churchill, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the rest.” And I think that the world today speaks to that.  REECE: Well, what if you're in another country with another culture? We talk a lot about, in this class -- we talk a lot about respect for other views, respect for other cultures. What if you're in a society that values religion, for example? They say religion -- not like the way the United States values it -- but they say religion is what should be running society. And it's got a broad-based support. They want to establish a religious-style government, not a secular-style government, like American democracy. How can we say to them "You must adopt a system like ours"?  FALCON: Well, as you said, I wouldn't say that we'd tell them that they have to and that they must, but that we would enable them and empower them and provide the resources and opportunities to move in that direction. But I'm not going accept -- this is maybe a whole other argument -- another class, cultural relativism. When it comes to things like freedom and liberty and equality and justice, I don't believe that we should accept that those are relative terms, and that they just happen to be the values that suit us. Because I can't understand how the human being as a person, as a type of creature on this planet, would want something other than that. Conformity -- maybe, to an extent, if you’re looking at mass culture. But some kind of religious, authoritarian, despotic governments that we've seen over and over again historically, especially over the last 150, 200 years, they've all fallen by the wayside. And when people have a choice, they choose something else.  REECE: But, see, every time we talk about authoritarianism, or we talk about a government where power's concentrated at the top, this idea of a despot comes up. We always throw these slurs in there -- this slander that goes along with these types of governments. What about the benevolent king that's been talked about?  FALCON: “Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely,” to quote Lord Acton.  REECE: Well, doesn't democracy sometimes spiral into some kind of anarchy? I mean, what's the difference?  FALCON: American-style democracy provides the checks, the balances, spreads out power enough. It gives people enough opportunities to change that. So we might get people at the top at times. Maybe Richard Nixon could be a good historical example. But we have a system with the free press and with free institutions that basically enable people to fix it themselves.  REECE: Let me go off in a little bit different direction here. When we say "Is American democracy a human right? Is it something that everyone is entitled to?" One of the things that confuses me a lot at times is I'm not exactly sure what we mean by American democracy. For example, the Founding Fathers kind of framed this in two different ways. They said that there's the Jeffersonian-style of democracy, which is more of a direct style of democracy. And then contrasting that with the representative style of democracy. Isn't it really inaccurate to say there is an American-style democracy?  FALCON: Not if American-style democracy is a big tent, or if it's a big term, if we think about it in the larger sense. We happen to live in a state, or in a society, where we have both examples of representative democracy, where we elect people to make choices for us. But we also have examples of direct democracy -- propositions, initiatives, whatever they call them in the various states. And those all fit under the big tent of American-style democracy.  REECE: Well, over the last 200 years, it seems to me that the United States has been moving more and more in a socialist direction, essentially. We started out with a very small federal government. We started out with -- really, the Senate was not popularly elected. The President was not popularly elected. We've been expanding through these progressive movements, the role of the public. We've been expanding the size of government. We've been expanding a number of social services. In a certain extent, you could argue that we're moving away from the Founders' ideas of American democracy and towards more of a socialist model.  FALCON: I wouldn't accept that. I think that we live in a fluid society, with fluid borders, fluid population and culture. The United States represents the globalization that's basically affecting everybody in the world today. It's a train that's left the station, and it's on its way. The United States has shown that a flexible system can accommodate even the most diverse cultures and perspectives and viewpoints and origins, et cetera, whereas other countries in the world are being ripped apart by those very forces. So I believe that the value and the universality of American-style democracy, again, is showing itself to be the model that the rest of the world will eventually embrace.  REECE: Well, there you have it -- two different arguments. Dennis has really spun out the argument that American democracy is a human right. It’s something that everyone should be entitled to. I've laid out the argument that it's an idea among competing good ideas and should be allowed to be part of a set of options or choices. Now, we wonder what do you think. Do you think American democracy is a human right?