On Democracy

A speech given at the Hamilton Society on July 5, 2025 in San Francisco, on whether democracy has failed.

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The question before us today is absurd. It’s asked during the 249th anniversary of the most powerful and prosperous nation in history, which is built on self-governance. Yes, democracy stumbles. And even if America has endured a dark sixty years. But isn’t Trump’s election in 2016, and again in 2024, evidence of the peaceful correction of the democratic process? Are we not merely a few reforms, a burst of growth, some technological progress, and mass deportations away from restoring democracy back on track?

So why, then, this sudden doubt even among liberal democracies’ most firm believers? Because that wasn’t why the question is absurd, it’s absurd because we all know that life under mass democracy is not worth living. We sense the moral decay of every living soul under its tyranny. The life of the Anglo-Saxon people, previously marked by nobility, sacrifice, divine law, and tradition, has vanished under the rule of the many.

The promise of democratic regimes, and what is called by liberal democracies’ believers as progress, is a vision of a world without rulers or ruled. An order dedicated solely to comfort, production, and consumption. Under the necessity of equality in democracies, the world turns unfit for the great souls. But for the few who still possess the instincts of the noble, the memory of the sacred, and the love of the good, the democratic world is horrifying.

We can see the crisis if we even look at the passions in the West today. Whether it is the enthusiastic yet unarticulated young conservatives who long for the way of life of their ancestors, or the neo-paganism of the left, both are expressions of the same natural longing for what disappears under democracy’s pursuit of equality and comfort. Both are a longing for the moral life.

We’re told today, almost as fact, that underdeveloped nations are unfit for democracy. That democracy requires certain preconditions to thrive. Similar to that of the founding. But if we accept that, then we should also ask the same question for the United States. A country now filled with tens of millions of foreigners, and a youth who scarcely share the beliefs of their ancestors. Isn’t it as ridiculous to believe that the United States can thrive in its current mass Democractic mode itself in its current condition as much as it is to believe that Iraq does? Isn’t every branch of the government now filled with people who are from these very same underdeveloped preconditions?

Some argue that Christianity, with its radical affirmation of the equality of all men, is to blame. But this does not hold up under any scrutiny. The Church founded by our Lord was, unmistakably, a monarchic aristocracy. Christianity never claimed that the many had the capacity for reasoned judgment or inquiry, but very clearly affirmed the opposite.

Leo Strauss, in an attempt to guide us out of the modern cave, showed that the project begins with Machiavelli. Unlike the ancients, who sought the good life and the ideal regime, Machiavelli replaced justice with utility and virtue with a modern technical version. This rejection of virtue was fundamental to the rejection of the possibility of a just aristocracy, and the foundation for regimes depended on the passions of the many.

Regimes in his opening of The Prince were not judged by justice, but by effectiveness: principalities, republics. His aim was not the salvation of man, but the conquering of nature. Machiavelli made the trade for the effectual, that the ancients, both of Athens and Jerusalem refused to make. Under this foundation, later on, the question of the good became abstracted altogether from the state. And the city is no longer state and culture.

Democracy is born out of this rejection of nature. It requires the enlightenment of every citizen. In other words, it tries to do the impossible: it tries to democratize philosophy. It trades virtue for economic equality, because without the condition of equality, violence arises out of envy.

The pursuit of equality suppresses the conditions needed for nobility, virtue, and the concern for the salvation of souls. Morality and values become mere stages toward an ever shifting ideal. Where oaths are dismissed, sacred traditions are suspended, and natural laws become mere opinions and votes.

Self-governance to the Founders based on equal rights, originally meant the rule by the noble few, with Christianity providing moral checks and accountability before God to the many. But, as we conclude during our current circumstances, the two are incompatible if the state not being involved in the private sphere. In other words, when the State and the Church are separate.

Today, what animates the love for democracy or more generally modernity is two concerns: peace and safety, in short, it could be described as the mission of the Antichrist. This is the premise of democratic and modern regimes, suppressing the sacred in favor of peace and safety.

Modernity’s katechon now restrains not evil or violence, but the good. It prevents not the apocalypse, but revelation. It is not holding back the Antichrist; it is the Antichrist. The Antichrist is no longer an emperor or tyrant. He is a system. A hyper-rational, utilitarian order that offers peace at the price of transcendence. He is the low, but solid ground of Machiavelli.

The revival of the serious moral life will not come through mere policy reforms. If it comes at all, it will come through a rediscovery of the noble in the political life, a reawakening of the philosophical and theological quest for the Good, done by the few.

Because the truth is that most of what you admire, most of what you will hear praised today, is not the fruit of democracy, but of the aristocracy that lived within it. The American regime is not in crisis because it is democratic, it’s, because it took its democratic form, when it destroyed its aristocracy and believed in the wisdom of the crowds.

Nonetheless, Americans must reject the temptations of revolutionary passions in this dark moment. The uniqueness of the American regime has always been its ability to move between different modes and orders without revolutionary measures. For we know that men ruled by passion, rather than guided by a longing for the Good in imprudent manner, rarely create lasting regimes or modes.

It is here, that the prudence taught by Christ must guide us: “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s”. Christ did not conquer the Roman Empire by a revolution, although his aim was to conquer all nations. Nor should we seek to restore the ancient, pre-democratic and pre-liberal form of the American regime by imprudent means. The task is one of restoration of the preconditions, and can only be done slowly. Mainly done with acts of faith like the early belivers in Christ.

The restoration of the ancient regime, requires a reintroduction of classical education. A restoration of Christianity into the public life. Which means it can only be done slowly, in the manner worthy of the rediscovery of the Good.

The task of restoration may feel impossible, but let us remember that miracles do exist. That acts with faith were and are never ignored by our Lord. We must recall Constantine’s Vision Before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, the Siege of Constantinople, and the rise of Donald Trump. God's providence, unlike what Machiavelli deceived us into believing, is always working.