Dixie, the Taliban and Democracy
This may not age well, but from a certain perspective, the recent news from Afghanistan has been good. Specifically, the spontaneous and complete collapse of the American-trained Afghan military suggests that the country may not fall into a lengthy civil war. There have been spams of violence, and the civil rights many Afghanis formerly enjoyed are now being suppressed, but, for the moment at least, it looks like outright warfare is not forthcoming.
From a pacifist’s perspective, that’s good news. Not only does the lack of war mean fewer deaths in battle, it means there is a possibility that the people of Afghanistan will be able to start to recover from the wounds and resentments of decades of war. It means fewer years sacrificed to trauma and more years in which Afghanis can attempt to find ways of living alongside one another in peace. Yes, it means that Afghanistan, like Iran, will be ruled by a powerful cabal of warlords with their own take on Sharia law. It certainly means, for the foreseeable future, no democracy or women’s rights. For students of history, though, Afghanistan’s quick dismantling of civil rights and popular sovereignty can’t come as a surprise, given our own country’s history with militarily-imposed democracy and civil rights.
Many Americans would hesitate to admit this, but there are certain similarities between Afghanistan today and the American South after the Civil War. Like Afghanistan during US occupation, democracy and civil rights were imposed on the American South at gunpoint. Like Afghanistan, the deposed ruling class’ idea of self-governance was at odds with the democracy inflicted by its conquerors. The North’s idea of democracy in the American South was one of universal voting rights for formerly-enslaved African Americans. It was a vision of the South that would serve more as a self-governed African American homeland, rather than as the bastion of White conservatism that it has been for so many years. One hundred fifty years later, the legacy of Southern resistance is strong, and different tribes of Americans continue to hold radically different ideas about what democracy actually looks like. Rather than whine about America’s botched nation-building in Afghanistan, we might do better to try to understand our own botched nation building at home.
I have been writing about the Quakers, or my understanding of the Quakers, based on the education I received at my Quaker Grandmother’s knee. The Quakers and their religious ideas feature prominently in the evolution of American democracy, and also in America’s nation-building efforts after the Civil War.
The Quaker vision of democracy, as originally implemented in the Quaker colony of Pennsylvania, is one that many Americans take for granted. This approach to democracy features Quaker innovations like unconditional free speech, universal civil rights, separation of powers, and an independent judiciary. Most Americans believe, or will tell you that they believe, in the importance of these Quaker innovations. However, to fully understand this approach to democracy, it is important to know that for the original Quaker settlers in Pennsylvania, democracy was never an end in and of itself. It was a tool for non-violence. The driving force behind the Quaker’s ‘holy experiment’ in Pennsylvania was to implement the peace and justice of God’s kingdom here on earth. The Quakers postulated that injustice is the ultimate cause of war, and that if democratic governance could help reduce injustice, it could reduce the potential for violent conflict, in keeping with God’s wishes. Elections were never the priority. Justice was. All of the accoutrements of American democracy: the free and fair elections, the checks and balances, and the independent judicial system, were in pursuit of bringing justice on earth incrementally closer to that of God’s kingdom.
Quakers were deeply involved in the North’s efforts at nation-building in the American South, because they had been vocal critics of how democracy had been implemented in the Southern states. Of course, Quakers, as pacifists, didn’t actually fight in the Civil War. In fact, even though they supported the abolition movement and they were energetic political opponents of slavery, Quakers didn’t even support the war, based on their pacifistic principles. However, after the Civil War, temptation arose. The doors were opened for Quakers to spread their beliefs to newly-enfranchised African Americans, and to help the Southern states right their wrongs. Quakers couldn’t resist. Along with many like-minded religious activists from the North, Quakers flocked to the American South to teach newly freed African Americans to read and to help them vote as American citizens. In the space of five years after the Civil War, literacy rates went from nearly zero to 80%, and political participation among African Americans was essentially universal. There was only one problem: the war wasn’t really over.
As we all know, the North’s experiment in nation-building in the American South, just like in Afghanistan, came to a quick, brutal end. Just as in Afghanistan, the democratic process in the American South was overthrown by the people who had lost their war, but never really conceded defeat. The rights that White Northerners had given African Americans amounted to a stick in the eye of their White, Southern adversaries. The formerly-enslaved governing their former masters may have seemed poetic to Northerners, but it was also, to a certain extent, unserious. Quakers and other activists from the North never had much at stake in the South. As soon as they had a chance, White Southerners rallied together to reclaim their former homeland and their former way of life, as if Black voters had never existed. Northern soldiers, citizens and taxpayers wearied of delivering democracy to the South at gunpoint, and retreated. To this day, White Americans in the South take pride in how their ancestors fought back against African American suffrage after the Civil War, ‘redeeming’ the South and reestablishing ‘home rule’. For those who actually understand history, the rapid abandonment of America’s democratic experiment in Afghanistan should not have come as a surprise. Skilled, experienced pacifists understand that defeat in battle does not change hearts and minds.
Anyone who understands America’s experiences in the decades after the Civil War cannot be surprised that Afghanistan has fallen to a group of people who disagree with us about what ‘home rule’ looks like. Quakers, to their shame, were complicit in entertaining the possibility that justice could come from the barrel of a gun. Democracy could never cure the problem of civil rights in the South. Only African Americans’ own long, slow march for justice could begin to do that.
This is a really tough lesson. It is one that the Quakers themselves had a hard time accepting, even though they should have known better. If we are guided only by a vision of righteousness, the Quaker vision of African American majorities ruling the American South was only just and right. African Americans had built the South, and they were now its citizens. Who could oppose their rights as citizens to engage in self-government? Lincoln had famously promised every newly-freed man forty acres and a mule. With civil rights and the vote, African Americans had the power to make it so. Taxation, land reform, penal codes — they were all on the table. To anyone who wasn’t living in the South, the idea that the American South could become a Black homeland was a delicious theory, but it amounted to an effort to cram a century’s worth of reconciliation and justice into a war and an occupation. African Americans eventually started to win back their rights, but they have had to fight for them themselves.
It is hard to imagine, in the case of the American South after the Civil War or in Afghanistan today, a path forward that would have had better outcomes, but it is the job of serious pacifists to attempt to do so. All Americans should know that any form of democracy that doesn’t directly engage and address injustices, real and perceived, is going to have trouble. It is true in Afghanistan and it is true at home.
We are still paying the price for our ignorance today. To this day, American politics is organized around the aftermath of the Civil War, with the Quaker vision of democracy butting up against a very different vision of democracy that became entrenched in the South. Democracy in the South became as much a war against the electorate as a means of ensuring peace and justice. The Quaker version of democracy means that everybody gets to vote, no matter what. In the South, democracy came to mean that the people in power get to decide who votes. It is a fundamentally different worldview. Rather than the public holding elected officials accountable, the elected officials hold the public accountable. The Southern view of democracy assumes that there is a class of voter that simply cannot be trusted. This view started with the disenfranchisement of newly-registered African American voters after the Civil war, but it lives on today. It is the politics of believing that 47% of Americans are just freeloaders, and it is the politics of redistricting the opposing party out of existence. It is, and always was, the politics of Jim Crow. It is a crazy, mixed up sort of politics in which ‘Freedom and Democracy’ translates roughly to restricting voting rights just enough to let the good guys win.
This ‘Southern’ attitude toward democracy has been hanging around for a long time, and, if anything, it seems to be going national. The mindset that there is a morally righteous group of voters who deserve to vote, and a lot of rabble who don’t, has started to get adherents on the left, as well. It is the politics of constantly being smarter, better and more sophisticated than the opponent. It is the politics of mocking evangelicals who ‘cling to bibles’, dismissing ‘irredeemables’ and embracing bareknuckled tactics of partisan brinksmanship. While this form of democracy may be superficially attractive to those with the upper hand, it is a huge vote of no confidence in the potential benefits of democracy itself. The Quaker version of democracy, by design, is a search for justice, not power. It is dependent on electing leaders who are willing to smooth over differences among constituencies as part of their search for justice. The Southern version of democracy, if it isn’t racist, is just elitist. It is designed not for justice, but rather to demoralize the disenfranchised, and to keep them at bay.
The failure of America’s gun-barrel democracy in Afghanistan should instantly remind us of our own failures. Embedded in the lofty vision of democracy that Americans imposed on Afghanistan were religious aspirations that many Americans aren’t even aware of. Religion isn’t just for primitive people in foreign lands. It lives among us, whether we acknowledge it or not. Too many people ignore or are unaware of the religious undertones of politics in America today, and they would be well-served to learn more about how Quaker religious thinking shaped the contours of American democracy. American civil rights are based on profound and deep assumptions about God, human nature, and how society should work. These religious assumptions are inherently part of America’s political culture and if we ignore them, we will ultimately find that democracy no longer does what we expect it to. If democracy in America simply becomes a matter of tribal supremacy, it isn’t clear what difference there is between our elected politicians and a bunch of mullahs who want to dictate morality to their minions. It seems like that’s exactly what a lot of Americans want, but we should at least be aware.
