In Dr. Cornel West’s new book, Democracy Matters, the Princeton professor of religion and social justice activist analyzes the contemporary crisis in American democracy and why most politicians, whether Democrat or Republican, fail to address it. The background of this crisis is that a free market has come to dominate society so completely that pursuit of profit has paved over all other American values. As a result downsizing, outsourcing, white collar malfeasance, political corruption, and a never-ending ‘Me Decade’ has so demoralized society that most people have nothing to add to public life today but apathy.

In this atmosphere West sees nihilism—the belief that no permanent values exist—as the dominant cultural force. This has led to “widespread cheating in our culture,” “the unprincipled quest to succeed,” and the embrace of escapism, which can take the form of a passionate hope for one’s favorite baseball team while ignoring the seemingly hopeless farce of conventional politics. Shutting out the public arena, “the majority of citizens [are] content to focus on private careers and be distracted with stimulating amusements.” One only has to walk “out of doors” to notice, as West quotes Emerson, “all seems a market.” To his credit West does not see this as unprecedented; rather it is rooted in the tug-of-war between materialism and democracy throughout American history. During the last five years, the social temperature of nihilistic triumph and widespread apathy has increased as events like the 2000 Florida election debacle, the 2003 Iraq war, and the Bush administration’s public embrace of torture all have expanded in a widening gyre beyond the visible control of democratic pressure. We are witnessing a re-emergence of diminished democracy.

Politicians have responded to cultural nihilism with their own nihilistic power strategies. West delineates these into three basic categories. West writes, “When the lack of belief in the power of principles prevails, the void is filled by the will to power . . . the drive to succeed at all costs . . . which I will call political nihilism.” West sees this mirrored on multiple scales, from violent gangs in poor communities to the “elite gangsterism” in corridors of Congress and corporations. Nihilism, a belief in nothing, is the philosophical background to the tall tales politicians use to dress up their actions to further the very thing they do believe in: gaining and maintaining power. Most ‘guys and gals’ on the street understand this. The axiom that elected representatives represent nothing of value but themselves, that they are political nihilists, is taken for granted in our culture. Anecdotally, it is hard to find people enthusiastic about their candidate; most people vote for the proverbial ‘lesser of two evils’; some choose a third party; and a sizable percentage don’t vote.

Political nihilists willing to say anything have an advantage in marketing themselves to a specific demographic, especially today in a free-market political environment so similar to a soda product launch—with test-markets, huge ad budgets, consultants, and pre- and post-performance polling. Of course, most politicians use political nihilism as a tool; it is when leaders embrace only political nihilism that a dangerous situation for the population arises. To explain the relationship between Republicans and Democrats in this environment, West looks toward what he calls “evangelical nihilism” and “paternalistic nihilism.” These two responses offer different justifications for the same effect. This effect is why both parties just quibble over policy. For instance, both 2004 presidential candidates John Kerry and George Bush supported the 2003 Iraq war, but argued over tactics. This fundamental agreement in Congress continues in 2005 and likely will in the foreseeable future. West’s analysis offers a unique philosophical and cultural lens to explain why Democrats and Republicans today argue loudly while walking forward together in lockstep.

Evangelical nihilism for Dr. West arises out of the age-old theory that argues: Because principals do not exist, might equals right. However for today’s neo-conservatives in power, West sees them taking this theory in an evangelical direction. Neocons believe not so much that might equals right in a world without permanent values, but rather might proves its own rightness. “In this tradition of thinking,” notes West, “we wouldn’t be so powerful if we weren’t right, so our might shows that we are right.” As a result, neo-conservatives laugh at their critics while basking in the manifest destiny of ascendant American power. Why argue, they think, our might is right and can’t be disputed. This explains why some neocons can view bombing Iraq as bringing the righteous goodness of America rather than massive destruction. Questioning this logic is unpatriotic, in fact treasonous, because to question—not the specific content of a question but the very act of questioning—is to reject their visible and tangible might, to embody the questioning intellect so antithetical to their evangelical tautology.

We can see this in the experience of anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, who in late September 2005 began a tour of Congressional offices. Both pro-war Democrats and Republicans baffled Sheehan with their respectively thin—or zealous—arguments. Her encounter with Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.) fits the portrait of a political evangelical nihilist.

“I even asked Sen. Dole when she thought the occupation would be able to end and she was incredulous that I would even think of Iraq as an occupation, she sees it as a liberation.”

The other side of the aisle was not much better. Sheehan wrote in her www.Commondreams.org article that she found Democrats’ arguments to be thinly veiled and insincere. Judging by her tone Sheehan left frustrated, for both sides of the political aisle presented to her a bulwark against substantive debate about Iraq, let alone corrective action. In West’s framework, Democrats are offering spurious arguments because they are operating as paternalistic nihilists. While many in Congress may be “supporters of social equality and individual freedoms,” they have abandoned such causes for access to power, and console their consciences by mouthing slogans and sometimes trying to curb society’s worse excesses. West is worth quoting at length on this:

“The canonical articulation of paternalistic nihilism is put forward in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov in the character of the Grand Inquisitor, a terribly disillusioned priest in the city of Seville during the time of the Spanish Inquisition. So cynical has the Grand Inquisitor become that although he knows the abuses of the Inquisition are a horrible perversion of the teachings of Christ, perpetrated by a terribly corrupted church, he nevertheless takes part in those abuses—condemning many supposed infidels to death. He comes to believe that the corrupted church is the best that mankind can hope for because human society is simply not capable of living in the way Christ instructed. We are not capable of achieving the world of equality, humility, and compassionate caring. . . . Better not to rock the boat with pipe dreams of a radical transformation of society.”

For West, this nihilistic paternalism animates the politics of Democratic Party. These are the types who get into politics to do good, become part of the elite, and then end up supporting the status quo. Like this Grand Inquisitor, they decide to “wor[k] within the corrupted system, paternally deceiving the public, shielding them from the terrible burden of the mandates of the truth.” It is this type of imbalanced compromise that helps explain why someone like 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry presented such a twisted and contorted stance on the Iraq war. Kerry argued: It was a mistake, but I would vote it for again; we should withdraw, but raise troop levels to get the job done and only withdraw in the future. Using West’s framework, Kerry is a paternalistic nihilist who could neither support war and its evangelical idea that might is right, nor oppose it publicly with thoughts that, like Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor, he must keep to himself. Kerry’s biography almost fits this portrait too well, for Kerry himself was a Vietnam veteran who became an outspoken anti-war activist and at one point threw a handful of United States military medals of honor into the Potomac. By the time he was a presidential candidate, his days of impolitic gestures and remarks were long gone. Anyway, a paternalistic nihilistic resigns himself: “Better not to rock the boat with pipe dreams of a radical transformation of society.”

To more fully understand the evangelical nihilists in power and their grassroots fundamentalist Christian support, West looks back to the Roman Empire’s incorporation of a rebellious Christian cult as the official religion of its Empire. Before Roman Emperor Constantine adopted Christianity in 313 A.D. as Rome’s religion, early Christianity was a small, persecuted religious sect. In addition, early Christians strove for an existence outside of Rome’s multi-religious, imperial culture. We can see this energy in such New Testament sayings as, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s.” Today’s neo-conservatives are modern Constantinians who have married religion to imperial government. They have done so through the idea that the might they display as right also can be seen as deriving from the mighty righteousness of God. Cornel West himself is a Christian; he proudly says, “I speak as a Christian.” West however draws a clear distinction between his own faith and that of imperial, Christian nihilists. West roots his stance in “prophetic Christianity,” the voices in the Old Testament outraged at injustice and calling for deliverance. For West, this “prophetic witness” tradition is open to all religious as well as non-religious people. It is evident in anyone’s impassionate moral outrage combined with a quest for change. West traces it from the Old Testament to the American democratic tradition of Emerson, Whitman, and Thoreau; sees it in African-American’s resistance and celebrations through blues and jazz; and finds it flaming to life in modern leaders like Gandhi and Martin Luther King. West’s solution to today’s crisis is a broad social movement to raise the moral temperature of American society.

The American Civil Rights Movement is the closest historical precedent. To revive such an atmosphere would require an organized movement for social change on a monumental scale. At one point, West recalls the civil disobedience of Thoreau sitting in jail because Thoreau refused to pay taxes and contribute to the U.S.-Mexican war of 1846-1848. The image of a lonely Thoreau sitting in jail refusing to contribute toward a Mexican-American war most citizens supported at the time is a good metaphor for the difficult task ahead for those interested in change. Getting a majority of Americans to support Thoreau back then would have been difficult; getting people to support major social reforms today will be likewise. Furthermore, is such a moral vision limited to just a few people? Or is it just that history remembers only the largest spirits and names. Either way, without capacious vision reformers will end up fighting for chump change, for extra money for impoverished college students while millions of jobs, under the aegis of globalization, are shipped overseas.

West’s vision of this new movement basically contains three principals, the principals of “Socratic questioning, prophetic witness, and tragicomic hope.” Socratic questioning on a mass scale is necessary in a functioning democracy, for democracy depends on citizens having the ability to challenge government and hold it accountable. Prophetic witness is a passionate outrage at injustice combined with the desire to advocate change. And for West, tragicomic hope is the sensibility so often found in blues and jazz music that provides a smile during the patient years before one prevails. West’s Democracy Matters barely touches on the nuts and bolts of how a movement can come together and win in today’s nihilistic, techno-saturated era. That book remains unwritten. Someone needs to begin it.

For me, Democracy Matters recalls the work of Irish writer W.B. Yeats who in his famous poem “The Second Coming” described a European world morally bankrupt in the wake of WWI, and on the brink of another catastrophe. The poem published in 1921 predicts a chaos arising from a society spinning out of control—and by the 1930s, fascism brought forth a WWII engulfing every populated continent. Yet the poem also is a psychological study of how malicious people amass power amid moral apathy. In such a nihilistic vacuum: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.” We definitely live in an era where the cynical political party in power is well-organized and vociferous for their cause, while its mainstream opponents are ineptly confused or, more likely, nihilistically complicit. Democracy Matters is meant to shore up the “best.” These for West are people engaged in the age-old, American struggle for social justice. They are people in neighborhoods and workplaces and sometimes—like Reps. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and 2004 election-investigator John Conyers (D-MI)—in Congress, who campaign and speak out and maneuver and struggle for social justice in the tradition of Martin Luther King, people who West sees as finger-snapping to the smiling and weary endurance of American blues, singing the chants democratic of Walt Whitman, and leading forward in the footsteps of the biblical Moses, who embodies the “prophetic witness” tradition best when leading the Jewish people out of slavery in Egypt.

Today the anti-war and social justice movement is in a crucial struggle with the Bush administration. This struggle is much more important than being represented in sound-bites machine-gunning from the headlines of newspapers and streaking across televisions. These two sides are fighting for nothing less than for the definition of America. Langston Hughes once wrote: “America never was America to me, / And yet I swear this oath-- / America will be!” The debate today is not over who is in office, or even ‘family values’, or whether or not the U.S. should torture its prisoners; it is about what will America be in the 21st century. Going forward, West writes, “If we lose our precious democratic experiment, let it be said that we went down swinging like Ella Fitzgerald and Muhammad Ali—with style, grace, and a smile that signifies that the seeds of democracy matters will flower and flourish somewhere and somehow and remember our gallant efforts.”