90 books in 90 days -- democracy matters

Race Matters (a book about which I'll write in a few days as part of this series) uses the African American experience as a conceptual metaphor of the outcast through which to analyze their plight, and examine our society.  In Democracy Matters:  Winning the Fight against Imperialism, race plays a role, but its role this time is to help us see more clearly the manner in which the twin motors of race and empire sap life from the democratic energies in America.  For example, in Race Matters, West talks about nihilism in the black community resulting from the invasion of the capitalist, free market mentality eroding the black civil society and robbing it of its ability to deflect the negative influences of a white racist world on the black community.  Yet, in Race Matters, the nihilism he talks about is characteristic of a communal sense of despair.  In Democracy Matters, it is an inverted nihilism characteristic of an unprincipled abuse of power.  West argues that the same free market economy that brings about despair in the black community impacts the political life in America sapping the force out of the democratic energies in our country.  Democracy in this regard is seen as an action that is incomplete; it is a verb.  Thus, we are always democratizing our nation.

And in our nation, West points to three dominating antidemocratic dogmas that we must illuminate and resist to combat nihilism:  Free-market fundamentalism, aggressive militarism, and escalating authoritarianism.  West sees these "dogmas" as pillars of an American imperialism, a "gangsterization of America" and the pillars correspond with a gangster mentality; an unbridled grasp for power, wealth and status (page 8).  This is American imperialism, and in Democracy Matters West explains that its free-market fundamentalism is as dangerous to the American political climate as is to the black civil society, a point he makes in Race Matters.

But the political nihilism that he describes in Democracy Matters has three expressions:  Evangelical nihilism, paternal nihilism, and sentimental nihilism.  The evangelical nihilists see their power and aggressive militarism as the tool they can rely on to demonstrate the rightness of their cause; might makes right.  What we do is a force for good regardless if the recipients of our "benevolence" see it that way (page 31).  Evangelical nihilism corresponds with the Republican Party.  Paternal nihilism corresponds with the Democratic Party and is descriptive of leaders who have bought into the corruptions of a power-hungry system, succumbing to the belief that a more radical fight for a better democracy is futile.  They join the game believing that what they do -- dirty as it is -- is in the best interest of the public.  Lastly, sentimental nihilism is the fault of the media.  They have bought into the free-market temptation to sell stories rather than exercise frank and plain speech.  Thus, sentiment and excitement are given priority over truth-telling.  These pillars, West claims, are evidence of an imperialist, market-driven grasp for power in their quest for wealth and power.  It prevails over democratic energies unless we revive what are West's three crucial traditions:  A commitment to Socratic questioning (this would open Americans to the latent democratic potential that is present in country, but untapped primarily because we refuse to engage the contradictions present at the birth of the democratic experiment in America [pages 41-45]), embrace of the Jewish invention of the prophetic commitment to justice for all peoples (this is the manner in which we proceed after finding the courage to question and engage dialogue in the practice of the Socratic method:  Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr. Fannie Lou Hamer, are examples of this), and finally a tragicomic commitment to hope.  West also calls this a dark hope; it is the sort of hope that one hears in a blues song.  It sustained African Americans through oppression as they pressed towards the goal for which they maintained hope in the midst of struggle.  This tri-part antidote for the anti-democratic forces is the weapon that we wield against the forces of Constantinian Christianity.  Imperialism has a Christian face -- the Constantinian blend of religion and political power that seeks to theologically justify its gangster mentality (pages 148-49).  This religious support for political nihilism must be resisted by his tri-part focus of the Socratic, prophetic (much of the presence of prophetic Christianity is attributed to the life and ministry of the black church), and the tragicomic.  West finds support for his democratic efforts in the work of Ralph Emerson, who he argues saw democracy as the empowerment and enlightenment of individuals for the sake of a genuinely democratic community (page 69).  The forces that sap American democratic energies also fight against the potential for the empowerment and enlightenment of large communities of marginalized people in America and in the world. Democracy is a higher calling than imperialism.  It is not our religion; Christ is our leader.  Imperial Christians bastardize Christianity and suck the life out of democratizing efforts.  But "the radical love in Christian freedom and the radical freedom in Christian love that embraces Socratic questioning, prophetic witness, and tragicomic hope" is exemplified in the lives of followers of Christ.