his life was higher than it was for a yeoman or a serf. Today,rnagain, human lives are not equal: a child in the womb ma bernmurdered with impunity, and a large majority of the black populationrnapparently believes that the murder of white people isrnjustified on the grounds of the general racism in Americanrnsoeiet’. The political establishment—including the Presidentrnof the United States—concurs: the same Bill Clinton whornexpressed outrage at the outcome of the trial of LAPD officersrnaccused of beating Rodney King reacted to the O.J. Simpsonrnverdict by telling Americans they had to accept the outcome ofrna trial-bv-jury.rnIt would be a vulgar mistake to conclude that blacks had becomerna privileged class within the United States. They do, ofrncourse, absorb a disproportionately high amount of welfare disbursements;rnthey do commit over half the violent crimes in therncountry, and while in most of these cases other blacks are thernvictims, it is also true that 90 percent of the victims of interracialrncrime are white. But no one who visits a black neighborhoodrncan possibly imagine that these people constitute an eliternclass. They are serfs, just like the rest of us, whose lives are valuablernonly insofar as they serve the needs and interests of theirrnrulers.rnThe use of foreigners and ethnic minorities as instruments ofrnterror and oppression is hardly a new strateg’. The Turks usedrnAlbanians against Serbs and Kurds against Armenians; the Englishrnsent Hessian soldiers against the American colonists, partlyrnbecause they could rely on the Germans not to feel kinshiprnwith the rebels. Aristotle and Herodotus both testify that it wasrnthe practice of ancient tyrants to champion the rights of thernweak against the strong, because the strong—male propert-rnowners capable of bearing arms—posed a threat to their authority.rnThe inability of the regime to suppress ethnic gangs—rnblack, Chicano, Asian—would be surprising, if we did notrnalready know that gang violence serves the interest of a rulingrnclass that would like to establish a national police force.rnCut off from the realities of existence, Americans are susceptiblernto utterly fantastic theories. It is their addiction to theoriesrnthat has blinded modern Americans to the realities aroundrnthem. Isolated in the Kremlin, Stalin thought you could producernfrost-resistant strains of wheat by exposing them to cold,rnand his credulity might have destroyed Russian agriculture. If arnsimple peasant put his trust in such a theory, he would eitherrnwise up quickly or starve to death. In simpler times, the peasantsrnmay have loved or hated their king, but they did not pretendrnto themselves that they had equal rights with kings andrnbarons. If a liberal aristocrat had tried to convince a peasant ofrnthe ancien regime that he enjoyed political equality with thernrich, the poor man would have been outraged at the imposturernand assumed, probably correctly, that the nobleman was afterrnhis land or his daughter. Today, however, the peasant’s descendantsrnin republican France or democratic America willinglyrnhand over their daughters and their land to the aristocrats whornhave bewildered them with political fantasies. An exaggeration?rnHow many Americans actually own, unmortgaged, anyrnpropertv that can give them economic security? How many ofrnthem are able to protect the chastity of their daughters eitherrnfrom the erotic propaganda of the public schools or from thernyoung male predators who seduce and assault them?rnMost Americans are convinced that they live in a democracv.rnWho can blame them? They have been told nothingrnelse throughout their lies. Until a few }ears ago, there hadrnbeen a remnant of conservatives who insisted that the FoundingrnFathers had established a republic, but the constant jeersrnfrom liberals have apparently forced them to drop this affectation.rnWe are all democrats now, especially the Republicans.rnThe theor’ of democracy makes much of free elections, politicalrnparties, and rights legislation, but alongside of this largelyrnirrelevant theory there is the democratic reality of Americanrnlife or, at least, of some American life. In the days of AndrewrnJackson, the word democracy did not always refer to a theory orrnsystem of government; it sometimes was used to designate therncommon people, the classes who had no particular wealth orrnprivilege. These were no mere serfs or peasants; they were independentrnand substantial members of the community. Thevrnowned land and shops; they provided for their own families;rnthey contributed to the support of their churches and to the reliefrnof the poor; they expected nothing from the rich, includingrnthe state whose representatives were almost alwa s wealthy, andrnin return they were not expected to tip their hat to the squire.rnA man with a good-sized farm could consider himself a gendemanrnand stand for parish elections, but he generally had betterrnthings to do than to meddle in state politics or national elections.rnFor the Jeffersonian, tlie deeper meaning of democracyrnhad little connection with the nice formalities of majority rulernor constitutional federalism, and everything to do with mindingrnhis own business and getting on in the world on his ownrnterms. He might believe in the principle of majority rule, butrnonly in appropriate circumstances: a father did not poll wifernand children for their opinions on what crops to plant or whatrnprice to charge for the shoes he made, and he never dreamedrnthat the entire population of the United States could be polledrnto decide whether a countv might teach religion in its schoolsrnor restrict the franchise to free white male adults. For the Jeffersonians,rndemocracy did not mean the right of a general majorityrnto oppress particular minorities—on this point Calhounrnis the truest of the Jeffersonians—but the right of the littlerncommunities of family and parish and county to govern theirrnown affairs without the intrusion of well-intentioned (at leastrnthey always claim to be well-intentioned) outsiders.rnThe tragedy of American history is that the theory and thernpractice of democracy were at odds with each other, almostrnfrom the very first. The theorv leads to the Jacobinism of TomrnPaine and Wbodrow Wilson, both of whom were quite willingrnto meddle in other people’s business in the name of democracy,rnwhile the practice of everyday democracy is exemplified inrncommunity schools, town meetings, and committees of vigilancern—all of which would be outlawed by theoretically democraticrnlegislation. Just as linguistic and literary theories underminernreal language and real literature, so democratic theory hasrnsubverted the practical democracy of everyday life.rnIn the old denrocracy of America, O.J. Simpson might haernbeen executed for marrying a woman of another race, but—rnsetting the question of race aside—he probably would havernbeen acquitted (if he had ever been brought to trial in the firstrnplace) for killing an adulteress. Everyday democracies do notrnintrude into the household, even in a case of murder, where itrnis an affair of family’ honor. Toda’, on the other hand, men arernput on trial for sexually assaulting their wives, even if the couplernare Christians who must acknowledge and pay what St. Paulrncalled the conjugal debt. On the theory of equality, no one hasrnthe right to mind his own business, so long as a majority inrnCongress, elected by a tinv fraction of the population in gerrymanderedrndistricts, in elections whose rules are rigged by thernlO/CHRONICLESrnrnrn