Properly understood, the attempt to draw a hard line between “democracy”
and “economics” is not only a fool’s game but a game that socialists do
not in fact play themselves. Ugo Okere, a self-described “democratic socialist”
who ran for the Chicago City Council earlier this year, was recently praised
in Jacobin magazine for explaining that “democratic socialism, to me, is about
democratic control of every single facet of our life.” That’s one way of
putting it, certainly. Another is “tyranny.” Or, if you prefer, democratic
tyranny. Alexis de Tocqueville observed that “the health of a democratic
society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private
citizens.” Lose those functions in America, and you lose democracy in
America, too.
--Charles CW Cooke
