Your Role in Maintaining a Healthy Democracy

A personal narrative must resist the authoritarians of left and right. It's time to take The Sniff Test.

The Story of Your Life

What is the narrative you tell yourself about your life? Where are you going, why and how. A positive narrative is important for wellbeing, but so is a social system that allows you to achieve it.

In sales, this is called a positioning statement. I write The Sniff Test for open-minded people because the news media is overly partisan. This short statement says how, what, for who and why I publish each week. It’s important for me when deciding what to write and to continue enjoying to do it.

Narratives are part of the personal and national psyche. Simon Sebag Montefiore quotes 14th century historian Ibn Khaldūn saying that states fall to psychology rather than military defeats. Sebag describes the psychology of the West as one of crisis. People have forgotten that their freedom and values were fought for. This is the consequence of a campaign of amnesia, to which we all have given our consent.

The importance of psychology is evident throughout history. Germany believed it was the injured party after World War I, which started it on the path to World War II. Then the national shame over the Holocaust enabled it to be rehabilitated into the West. The understanding that democracy enabled Hitler dominates European psychology.

Russian leadership sees the fall of the Soviet Union as a continuation of its humiliation by the West. This lead to the invasion of Ukraine, to restore respect and a geographic buffer against its enemy.

Britain withstood European authoritarianism in alliance with America. Our psychology does not fear democracy, does it?

A Cradle of Democracy and Drunks

Is Britain the cradle of democracy and a society of tolerance and diversity? Or is it searching for an identity, imagining itself a cultural beacon, while exporting disorderly drunks to tourist hotspots?

Keir Starmer believes Britain stands for the rule of law. This means honouring our commitments even when others do not. Last week, Britain was the only nation to submit a climate strategy that upheld the Paris Agreement. At home, the rule of law is open to interpretation.

For at least 40 years politicians have passed laws leaving room for judges to reinterpret their purpose. Civil servants who believe that ministers are violating the law appeal to the Attorney General. The courts decide who is right.

By tradition, the courts support the national interest in matters of security, and individual rights in matters of conscience. This allows judges to block some laws and repurpose others. The lack of democracy is celebrated because it prevents the demos – the mob in the eyes of Plato and Aristotle - running amok.

Immigration lies between national and individual interests and is where parliament is being blocked. In December, an unnamed Nigerian was granted leave to stay in Britain. She appealed deportation eight times since 2013 and in 2017 joined a group designated as terrorist in Nigeria but not in Britain. The gangster Klevis Disha was convicted in 2017 and ordered to be deported, but eight years later is allowed to stay. The justification is the sensory issues and food sensitivities of his son, including dislike of foreign chicken nuggets.

The Ridiculous Case of the Non Racist Sam Kerr revealed how we could be imprisoned based on a jury’s interpretation of feelings. The Crime and Disorder Act (1998) introduced religiously aggravated offences, including offending people’s feelings. This gives incredible power to the courts to shape society.

The act is interpreted as a blasphemy act preventing criticism of Islam. Hamit Coşkun and Martin Frost have both been charged this month. The bedrock of free speech is the ability to criticise opinions, including religious ones. What is this bedrock made of?

The Human Rights Act (1998) incorporates the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law. It protects freedom of expression but allows it to be overridden on the grounds of national interest, public safety, prevention of disorder, protection of morals, protection of the reputation of others, and maintaining judicial authority.

Despite the mythology of Magna Carta, the Glorious Revolution and the common law, our rights are determined by modern, European thinking. You have no right to free speech if a judge says so.

Magna Carta Mythology

The Magna Carta mythology is stronger in America than the UK. There Trump’s narrative is America First, by which he means peace through the strength of the US to lead the world. Is this a restorative narrative designed to reverse the psychology that the US is a fading power, weighed down by obesity, drug addiction and falling educational standards? Or is it authoritarianism?

John Mauldin says he has Trump Confusion Syndrome. He cannot determine what is a negotiating tactic and what is just bad policy. He contrasts this with Trump Derangement Syndrome, which is outrage about everything the president says or does.

Ben Hunt says Trumpism embraces America as a Great Power and rejects it as a Good Power. He believes this is gangster politics on Hayek’s Road to Serfdom. Step 9 is shown below.

Source: The Road to Serfdom in Cartoons by The Hayek Foundation

My view is that the system is strong enough to deal with this risk. George Friedman argues the last 80 years is about the rise of executive power. The coming storm will reset the relationship between the branches of US government. The system will prevail, because it is designed to accommodate the ebbing and flowing of political power. This is already happening.

The courts are resisting Trump. Judges have US Marshals to impose their rulings and can throw executive officers in jail. Trump may push so far that he causes the reaction that triggers Friedman’s new era of America. Trump is the end of the old cycle, not the start of the new.

The End of the Narrative

The centuries since Magna Carta belonged to Europe. Regional empires rose and fell, but it was Europeans who went global, exporting their religion, trade and political structures. Now the future lies in the Global South, a geographically imprecise term to describe the centres of population and growth. Europe needs to know what it stands for, rather than take offence when the US Vice President says that if it doesn’t defend free speech then America won’t defend it.

“If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you. Nor, for that matter, is there anything that you can do for the American people” – J.D. Vance

The 18th century philosopher, Jean Jacques Rousseau, said that when people ask “What does it matter to me?” about their country’s affairs, then the State is lost. When we care more about allegiance to our tribe than we feel bound to our country, the psychology of national failure is in motion. How does that happen?

Through education. When we teach children to be ashamed of their history, to revel in separate identities and to despise those who are successful, parents included, we undermine unity. Historical podcasts have never been more popular among adults, but this encourages extremists to double down on brainwashing our youth.

Marxism failed when workers fought for their country in World War I. The revolutions that followed were in agrarian, feudal states, rather than the advanced industrial nations that Marx and Engels assumed would rise up. Lesson learned, undermining patriotism became the modern Marxist project.

The narrative of tribal allegiance appeals to our basest instincts. Tim Urban points out that tribal society was the norm for 99% of human history. Survival depended on reinforcing tribal beliefs and bowing to authority. These are the base instincts that social media plays upon.

Urban scrolls through Bluesky and X. On one, the narrative tells of crazies tearing up democratic government, while on the other sensible people are removing crazies from power. Urban’s important point is that tribal values align with both normal and crazy elements. We support, repost and reinforce the message, whether it comes from a liberal or illiberal point of view. Our mistake is to believe that the message is more important than the means of achieving it.

In one of my most popular posts, I asked if environmentalism is compatible with liberalism. I believe human enterprise will solve the storage challenge that holds up adoption of renewables. I don’t believe it will do this to a deadline dictated by politicians.

Six months later I wrote about form and substance. This essay debates whether the medium or the message is more important. Today I am arguing that the message can never be as important as the means of delivering it.

Democracy cannot be sacrificed to the goals of any minority. This applies to illiberal environmentalists and anti-immigration campaigners. The form of government that you support is more important than the substance of your politics.

When we repost tribal messages we play the role of useful idiot. Both left and right claim that Russia, China and North Korea are funding the other side. They are right, because it is the opponents of democracy who benefit from the breakdown in consensus. The way to defeat a country is to attack its strongest point. If this breaks, then so does the psychology of the nation.

The West’s strongest point is freedom of speech. Our enemies dare not unleash this at home because criticism is the path to knowledge. Knowledge overcomes the story that authoritarians tell to sustain themselves in power.

If our enemies defeat free speech then they allow the creation of truths. These are the dogmas that static societies cling to, silencing those who speak out against them. Truths are the tribal rituals that create both coherence in our group and conflict with others. A desire for this conflict is why our enemies fund both sides of the polarising debate.

We Are All Guilty

When did you first give in to censorship? Was it when you stood silent as your child’s teacher was hounded out for an unpopular opinion. Was it by reading a newspaper long after it stopped reporting both sides of the debate. Or was it when you cheered the arguments of an authoritarian because they said something you agreed with?

I’ll believe The Telegraph when it reports the positive aspects of a government policy. I’ll believe The Guardian when it admits that Brexit was not all bad. Nature was once where serious scientists sought to be published. Now it has Trump Derangement Syndrome. Every policy is reported as an effort “to eviscerate the federal budget”. There is no such effort.

A friend joked I was the only right-wing media he read. I tell myself I am liberal, in both social and economic policy. What fascinates me is the similarity between authoritarian governments of left and right. Silencing dissent, rewriting history and crushing creativity are essential for both. In the West, it is the hard left that has penetrated schools and universities, media, and government administration. Therefore it is this that I write against. I am watching for the right attempting the same in the US.

What does a liberal believe? That you cannot satisfy all the people, all the time. Politics is the rebalancing of interests once reasonable people agree that one group or another has suffered too much. What matters is a system that allows this rebalancing to take place. Democracy is such a system, because it allows for the bloodless transition of power.

We will not agree with everything that politicians do in our name. If enough of us disagree we can throw them out. This is freedom. We must not subvert it by prioritising the truths of our tribe. We must not support the people who say things we agree with, when they would deny others the right to speak against them.

Our personal narrative matters for our wellbeing. Part of that narrative must be to uphold the freedoms that allow us to pursue it.