Ill liberalism.

THE Danish political scientist Georg Sorensen recently noted that "the tradition that became liberal democracy was liberal first (aimed at restricting state power over civil society) and democratic later (aimed at creating structures that would secure a popular mandate)." Today the liberal foundation of democracy is under an assault which, if successful, will transform democracy itself. An alternative world view, "cultural democracy," has emerged, challenging the basic principles of liberal democracy on practically every important issue.

For the greater part of the twentieth century liberal democracy waged an epic ideological struggle against Fascism and Communism in every corner of the world. After more than seven decades, near the end of what Zbigniew Brzezinski has called "mankind's most bloody and hateful century," liberal democracy emerged triumphant. Many Western commentators proclaimed the world-historical significance of this victory. Francis Fukuyama declared that we had reached the "end of history." He predicted that the basic principles of liberal democracy would never again face serious opposition from a rival political philosophy with a universal appeal.

In fact, a cultural war over the very definition of democracy is now being fought in the United States and Canada, in Australia and New Zealand, and in Western Europe. The battlefields in this war are variously called multiculturalism, diversity, multilingualism, Balkanization, political correctness, racism, feminism, ethnicity, immigration, assimilation, the melting pot, the mosaic, the salad bowl, laicite, droit a la difference, sovereignty, globalism, national identity, religious fundamentalism, cultural nationalism. In all these conflicts what is really being contested is whether liberal democracy will survive or whether it will be reconstructed into a new form of governance. This developing war of ideas between liberal democracy and cultural democracy may prove to be the most significant conflict of the twenty-first century.

As Professor Sorensen and others have pointed out, liberal democracy is a combination of two theories: liberalism (individual rights) and democracy (popular sovereignty). Thomas Jefferson declared that "the first principle of republicanism [democracy] is Lex Majoris Partis" --majority rule or popular sovereignty--because without some form of majority rule a people would not be sovereign or self-governing. Today the majoritarian principles of liberal democracy are increasingly under attack in the name of supranational and subnational ideals.

Writing in New Perspectives Quarterly, Harvard political scientist Michael Sandel remarks that 'the moral and political institutional scheme of liberal democracy no longer fits the moral and political aspirations of its citizens." He maintains that the liberal-democratic nation-state as "the primary unit of sovereign self-rule" is becoming increasingly obsolete. Sandel advocates a new type of regime that would increase autonomy to "particular communities, be they ethnic, linguistic, or religious," and at the same time ensure the "universalization of rights" at a "supranational level."

Former Italian Foreign Minister Gianni De Michelis states that "we are witnessing the explosion of the long obsolete model of liberal democracy." Democracy, he suggests, "will either be reinvented or it will perish." In a similar vein, Jacques Attali, a key advisor to French President Francois Mitterrand, declares that Western political leaders must "have the courage to abandon traditional notions of national sovereignty." Strobe Talbott, when he was a senior editor at Time, predicted that by the end of the twenty-first century "nationhood as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single global authority." He described the devolution of national sovereignty "upward toward supranational bodies" and "downward toward" autonomous units that permit distinct societies to preserve their cultural identities' as a "basically positive phenomenon."

One of the most detailed of the obsolescence theorists is American futurist Alvin Toffler, who directly challenges the majority-rule doctrine. Toffler writes that only a short time ago we were celebrating "the ultimate victory of liberal democracy," yet today we are "wondering whether liberal democracy itself can survive into the twenty-first century." He states that "the central fact of our times is the rise of a new postmodern civilization" that is displacing modem liberal democracy and its core values of popular sovereignty and majority rule. Indeed, Toffler says, "majority rule, the key legitimating principle of the modern era, is increasingly obsolete." Moreover, he insists that because minorities are "often ignored or even victimized by a huge middle class," majority rule "does not extend social justice; it may very well restrict it."

Toffler favors a "mosaic democracy" throughout the Western world that would "postmodernize the entire system" and "strengthen the role of diverse minorities." He recommends measures similar to those advocated by Lani Guinier, such as weighted voting on issues of special importance to ethnic minorities.

It is significant that the ideals of popular sovereignty and majority rule are not affirmed in most of the official civic-education documents being published today by state governments in the U.S., traditionally the world's most powerful liberal democracy. An important reason for this omission is that most American educators today (like their colleagues in Canada and Australia) adhere to some form of multicultural educational theory. The public-school curricula of Maine, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, Colorado, and California devote more space to multiculturalism and cultural diversity than to majority rule and popular sovereignty.

Multiculturalists are extremely uncomfortable with any form of majoritarianism and even with the very idea of an American people. The clearest example of the multiculturalist aversion to majoritarianism is the latest (1991) New York state curriculum guide, considered by many educators the cutting-edge document in curriculum reform. According to the guide, the United States consists of "one nation, many peoples." The executive summary refers to "the various peoples who make up our nation" and "our nation and the peoples who person it." There are many references to the "peoples" of American society in the 65-page document, but the words "the American people" never appear. If there is no people (as in "We the people . . ." , but rather many "peoples," the concepts of popular sovereignty and majority rule become meaningless. If leading American educators are unwilling to affirm such core liberal-democratic principles as popular sovereignty and majority rule in a key civic-education document, then the ideological hegemony of liberal democracy in America is open to question.

The challenge to the "liberal" half of liberal democracy--individual rights, equality of individual citizenship, freedom of expression, and a private sphere free from political interference--is more explicit and direct than the challenge to popular sovereignty and majority rule. Not only do important segments of the Western elite in education, government, and law question the traditional principles of liberalism; they essentially advocate an alternative world view: cultural democracy.

The Individual versus the Group

At the heart of the liberal-democratic world view is the concept of the individual citizen. traditionally, the legal and moral authority of political liberalism is based on the rights and responsibilities of individual citizens, who are equal under the law and together form a self-governing free people. More than two decades ago, German sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf wrote that the hallmark of a modern liberal-democratic society is the extent to which individually achieved status replaces the ascribed group status of premodern times in public life. Martin Luther King's dictum that people should be judged not by "the color of their skin but by the content of their character" is a quintessentially liberal idea because it asserts the primacy of the individual over the ascribed group.

Ideally, liberal-democratic citizens will form many voluntary associations to achieve various political and other goals. The liberal civic culture (particularly in the United States and in varying degrees throughout the West) is thus marked by a tradition of voluntary pluralism and citizen participation that has been described by political observers from Tocqueville and Bryce to Almond and Verba.

On the other hand, for the large numbers of Western academics, politicians, and bureaucrats who may be described as cultural democrats, the major actors in the civic culture are no longer individual citizens operating through voluntary associations, but distinct peoples, ethnic groups, and cultural blocs with their own world views, values, histories, heritages, and sometimes languages, which often require different legal rights and separate educational programs. Cultural democrats not only de-emphasize the role of the individual citizen but weaken the concept of citizenship itself by blurring the distinctions between citizens and non-citizens. For example, in many Western countries there is a growing advocacy of voting rights for non-citizens.

Furthermore, cultural democrats reject the view that liberal-democratic values should be, as they put it, "privileged," determining the rules of the civic culture. Instead, they depict civic culture as an arena of "contestation" and "negotiation" among competing values, world views, peoples, and cultural groups. The liberal-democratic world view is simply one "perspective" among many and should not "dominate" other perspectives. Writing in Social Education, the leading American social-studies journal, a California education professor, Sandra J. LeSourd, questions whether "a civic culture founded upon a uniform philosophical heritage has a moral right to judge actions inspired by alternative heritages."

Liberal democrats emphasize freedom of political expression with few restrictions (mainly in wartime or if the liberal regime itself is threatened). As the more than three hundred speech codes on North American campuses indicate, cultural democrats do not accept this traditional liberal ideal of free expression. They are particularly interested in restricting speech that, as they see it, promotes racism and sexism, weakens the power of "traditionally oppressed groups," or creates a "hostile environment" for diversity.

Central to the West's ideological war against Communism was the defense of a private sphere free from political interference. Liberalism holds that private life is by nature non-political and that it should be free from ideological pressure. During the Cold War defenders of the West would have considered the proposition that "the personal is political' to be inherently totalitarian. Today, however, cultural democrats insist that private actions and attitudes can reinforce the "ideological hegemony" of dominant institutions and belief systems, and therefore that the "personal" is an arena in the struggle for power among groups and a legitimate political concern.

Both liberal democracy and cultural democracy are buttressed by strong unifying symbols and energizing myths. Liberal democracy has unifying symbols that are universal (self-government, freedom, etc.) and others that are particular (the American Dream, the mission of French civilization). Cultural democrats recognize the importance of the particular (although they favor symbols of various cultural groups, as opposed to symbols of national identity), and also have put forward a set of universally appealing unifying symbols and energizing myths. They stress the struggle against oppression--against racism, sexism, and the patriarchy--and the struggle to transform society, to create a new world and a new "person" free of the social pathologies that reinforce the "status quo."

Significantly, the cultural-democratic world view is more universalist than relativist. Indeed, there are strong grounds for arguing that cultural democracy's relativist rhetoric is often a tactical device employed to delegitimize the normative values of liberal democracy rather than the expression of a firm commitment to relativism per se. When advocating the construction of a new society, cultural democrats of necessity emphasize their own set of normative values. As Jerry Martin, a former official of the National Endowment for the Humanities, puts it, "All the talk of hegemony and domination, inclusion and empowerment, rests on strong normative commitments, a belief in radical egalitarianism and the transformation of people into "better' people." In a parallel argument, Fordham law professor Kenneth Anderson insists that the push for cultural diversity in the United States "is not really about cultural diversity, but rather cover for demanding political conformity--the political conformity of the "diversity" agenda."

Different Ends, Different Means

THE GOAL of liberal democracy is to sustain a free society. As noted above, this purpose envisions a self-governing free people with a political system based on majority rule, individual rights, and limited government, and a cultural system based on a healthy and vibrant civil society. Liberal democracy prefers citizens with at least a modicum of patriotism (a willingness to defend the nation if it is in danger), but it does not promote militant nationalism. It would like citizens to be active and civic-minded and to participate in efforts to improve the polity, but it does not force them to do so. For the most part, individuals in a liberal democracy are free to pursue their own interests, hold their own opinions, and within broad legal limits live their own lives. Liberal democracy does not want to possess the individual's soul or psyche. It is not a holistic system that explains all aspects of life, but its well-being depends upon the religious and moral characteristics of its citizens.

By contrast, the goal of cultural democracy is to create a "diverse society." In practical terms, "diversity" is defined as proportional representation for groups based on race, ethnicity, sex, and, in some countries, language. Day in and day out, particularly in North America, but also in Australia, New Zealand, and parts of Western Europe (including, significantly, the administrative offices of the European Union), government bureaucracies, regulatory organizations, universities, schools, professional associations, trade unions, legal systems businesses, and even churches are under pressure to "solve the problem of under representation" of cultural minorities and women in various positions. Many of these same institutions are also under constant pressure to explain why there are inequalities between white males and minorities and women in pay rates an educational achievement, and, for that matter, in almost every other aspect of life, including access to medical care, rates of incarceration, number of books published, number of computer hours logged, amount of exercise undertaken, and so on.

In contrast to the philosophy of liberal democracy, which promotes equality of opportunity for individuals irrespective of race, ethnicity, and sex, the ideology of cultural democracy defines justice as achieving a particular result: proportional representation of cultural minorities and women in all sectors of society. To be sure, liberal democrats also oppose racism and sexism, but they define these terms differently and consequently propose different solutions to the problems resulting from bigotry. Traditionally liberal democrats reject racial and sexual prejudice that prevents individuals from achieving the same goals that other individuals are entitled to achieve. The U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964 in its original form is a classic example of liberal-democratic thinking, whereas subsequent judicial and bureaucratic interpretations of the bill that established group rights represent cultural-democratic thinking.

From popular non-fiction authors to mainstream academics, cultural democrats call for the "transformation" or "emancipation" of the human personality. As Gloria Steinem argues in her best-selling The Revolution from Within, the idea is that human beings are "infinitely redeemable' and can be transformed into non-sexist, non-competitive persons through new and non-hierarchical forms of social organization. This "transformationist" perspective (in which the self is "socially constructed" is echoed throughout Western elites. Professor Steven Rockefeller of Middlebury College, for example, says that "the moral meaning of democracy is found in reconstructing all institutions so that they become instruments of human growth and liberation." The cultural democrats echo the age-old argument that individuals are infinitely malleable, that there is no such thing as a fixed "human nature."

This position strikes at the philosophical foundations of liberal-democratic thought and the concept of limited government. During the long ideological struggle against totalitarianism in this century, liberal democrats explicitly attacked the concept of the "new man," whether it was the USSR's "new Soviet man," the Nazis' Aryan superman, or Che Guevara's "new socialist man." They argued that developing a "new man" was neither possible (because human beings are not infinitely malleable, although they are capable of improvement), nor desirable (because such attempts at social engineering inevitably weaken liberty). Indeed, at the heart of American liberal-democratic thought as expressed in The Federalist Papers is the idea that human nature is neither perfect nor perfectible and, hence, checks and balances are needed for both the governors and the governed. As James Madison puts it in Federalist 51, "It may be a reflection on human nature that such devices [checks and balances] should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither internal nor external controls on government would be necessary."

Thomas Sowell suggests that modern political conflict is based on two competing visions of human nature that were articulated during the Enlightenment. The first, a "constrained vision," posits that man is not perfectible, and so society should consider the various moral and mental limitations of human beings while at the same time developing institutions that help improve the human condition. This view is expressed in the philosophies of Adam Smith, John Locke, William Blackstone, and the authors of The Federalist Papers.

The rival position, the "unconstrained vision," insists that human beings are very malleable, that their potential for moral change is essentially unlimited, and that society will be transformed by naturally virtuous human beings once they are freed from old ideas and institutions. This view is expressed in the writings of William Godwin and philosophes such as d'Holbach and, particularly, Condorcet. If the philosophical forebears of contemporary liberal democracy are thinkers like Madison who would have rejected the concept of a "new man," then the philosophical forebears of present-day cultural democracy are thinkers like Condorcet who would have agreed that "the self is socially constructed."

Just as liberal democracy and cultural democracy envision different ends for society, they require different means to achieve those ends. Clearly, cultural democrats will not be able to create a "diverse society" by simply expanding the practices of liberal democracy that have historically sustained a free society, such as majority rule within the structure of limited government, a healthy civil society with voluntary pluralism, and the centrality of individual rather than collective rights. On the contrary, those traditional liberal-democratic practices must be jettisoned (or "reinvented") if the major goals of the diversity movement are to realized. Indeed, these goals--group proportionality in institutions and attitudinal changes in the individual psyche (the elimination of racism and sexism in word and thought in public and private life)--require the active intervention of a large administrative-bureaucratic-judicial apparatus. Since majority opinion in Western countries is generally opposed to the aims of the diversity movement (for example, public-opinion polls in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand always register strong opposition to preferential hiring practices to increase the representation of minorities and women), cultural democrats usually act through the courts or bureaucracies rather than legislatures. When diversity legislation is achieved, as in the case of the American Civil Rights Act of 1991 or the Canadian Multicultural Act of 1987, it is often vaguely worded and therefore subject to judicial and bureaucratic interpretation.

Under external and internal pressures from various bureaucracies (government affirmative-action offices, regional accrediting agencies of higher education, etc. , major institutions of civil society throughout North America, including most large corporations and universities, have accepted two major premises of cultural-democratic ideology: first, that racism and sexism are "systemic" in business and the academy because people of color and women are "underrepresented" in positions of authority; second, that essential differences of race, ethnicity, and sex require that minorities and women be judged by different cultural values from the ones applied to white males. Heather Mac Donald reports in The New Republic that 40 per cent of American companies have instituted "diversity training" that not only attempts to change attitudes and behavior about race, ethnicity, and gender but in effect establishes "different standards for different groups." During the past decade most universities in North America have also moved from cultural-democratic thought to cultural-democratic action by creating new bureaucracies to carry out an array of diversity programs.

Not surprisingly, with the erosion of traditional sovereignty, supranational bureaucracies increasingly impose cultural-democratic norms on liberal-democratic states. As Cornell law professor Jeremy Rabkin pointed out recently in Commentary, a European Community directive on "comparable worth" was implemented by Britain under Margaret Thatcher even though such a controversial measure could never have passed the elected House of Commons, long the guardian of Britain's sovereignty and the heart of her liberal democracy.

Seizing the High Ground

`TO SEIZE, retain, and exploit the initiative" is a major principle of war, according to official U.S. Army doctrine. In the ideological conflict that we are discussing the initiative is in the hands of the cultural-democratic challengers to the hegemony of liberal democracy. Put another way, the cultural democrats have seized the "moral high ground" and defined the terms of the debate. The cultural-democratic offensive has three prongs: 1) the delegitimization of the liberal-democratic regime, 2) the redefinition of democratic values, and 3) demographic determinism, that is, the insistence that demographic change in Western nations is inevitable and requires the acceptance of cultural-democratic principles.

Rhetoric impugning the legitimacy of liberal democracy is now commonplace in the West. When university leaders, foundation officials, and mainline clerics routinely speak about "the patriarchy," "oppressive structures," or "institutional" racism and sexism, and declare that minorities and women constitute "the oppressed" or "the marginalized," they are stripping the liberal-democratic regime of its legitimacy. If Britain's parliamentary democracy and America's constitutional republic are "patriarchies" that "oppress people," they are by definition illegitimate. People are, of course, sometimes unfairly discriminated against in liberal democracies, but this does not constitute systemic oppression. "Discrimination" implies that there are remedies available under the rule of law; a "patriarchy" that "oppresses" people suggests that the system itself is illegitimate. The former is the rhetoric of reform; the later is language that justifies the deconstruction of the old liberal order and the creation of a new regime.

In academic writing throughout the West, cultural democrats endorse "democratic values" that are essentially incompatible with the liberal-democratic norms of majority rule, limited- government, and individual rights. "Democratic principles" are redefined as anti-majoritarian. Thus, multicultural educators in the U.S., Canada, and Australia insist that it is "undemocratic" for the majority (Western) culture to impose its values and norms on people from other cultures, including non-western minorities and new immigrants. Instead, "democratic values" require that all cultures be given more or less equal status in the general civic culture. As America's leading multiculturalist educator, James Banks, says, "To create an authentic democratic unum with moral authority and perceived legitimacy, the pluribus (diverse peoples) must negotiate and share power." In mainstream education documents, cultural democrats emphasize again and again the "gap" between social reality and democratic ideals; then they proceed to define those "democratic ideals" in loosely worded utopian terms that suggest equality of material condition and group proportionality in all sectors of society.

"Demography is destiny" has become the trumpet call of cultural democrats in the U.S., Canada, and Australia. Because of unstoppable, large-scale immigration, the argument goes, the populations of North America and Australia will become increasingly non-Western. The traditional Western value system will be inadequate for new demographic patterns; a more multicultural ethos is required.

Ten years ago Sidney Hook forcefully restated the liberal-democratic concept of civic assimilation, declaring that "precisely because" American liberal democracy is a "pluralistic, multiethnic, and uncoordinated society" all citizens need a "prolonged schooling in the history of our free society, its martyrology, and its national tradition." Today, the traditional idea of assimilating immigrants into a national identity is officially rejected by the governments of Canada and Australia, and is under constant attack by elites in the United States. The leading organization of American civic educators declares that national assimilation is often "neither democratic nor humane." Suggestions that liberal-democratic regimes should limit immigration to levels consistent with steady civic assimilation are fiercely denounced as both impossible and immoral. Put bluntly, cultural democrats are saying that traditional liberal democracies do not have the moral right to reproduce themselves, either by fostering civic assimilation, by limiting immigration, or by some combination of the two.

The Banners of Progress

AS WE have seen, the cultural democrats occupy the "commanding heights" of the ideological war. They appear to support "inclusion" and to favor the underdog; more importantly, they seem to be winning and thus represent "progress" and "the future." This appearance of impending victory is perhaps their greatest strength. They are also able to intimidate their liberal-democratic opponents by branding them "racists" and "sexists," in the same way that unscrupulous Western demagogues once unfairly condemned political opponents as "Reds" or ambitious medieval inquisitors denounced rivals as "heretics."

Cultural democracy is a dynamic movement with an infrastructure of activists that is coming to dominate government agencies and mainstream educational, cultural, commercial, religious, legal, intellectual, and philanthropic organizations. Of course, the majority (perhaps the overwhelming majority) of the professionals in key positions in civil society and government are not cultural democrats. However, like most people, they are concerned with their own lives and unlikely to become involved in seemingly abstract fights over principles. While they are often resentful of the push for diversity, they nonetheless understand power. They know that resisting the diversity movement can have unpleasant consequences for one's career. It is easier to go along with "the times." Indeed, an alert professional's previously intuitive understanding of the realities of the workplace has been institutionalized in recent years in the U.S. and Canada, with career advancement in both public and private sectors increasingly tied to how well an executive "manages diversity."

Centrist and conservative political forces in North America and Australia have not seriously challenged the cultural-democratic premises of the necessity for racial and sexual preferences and group proportionality. In 1982, under the Progressive Conservatives, preferential policies were enshrined in Canada's new constitution. From 1975 to 1983 Australia's Liberal (i.e., conservative) Party continued the multicultural and ethnic-preference programs begun by the Labor Party. Under President Bush, American Republicans supported the central premises of group proportionality in the Labor Department's "Glass Ceiling" report and the Civil Rights Act of 1991. Even the Reagan Administration, after internal bickering, did not rescind the Executive Order on Affirmative Action. When Reagan Administration officials were criticized for the "underrepresentation" of women and minorities in appointed positions, they meekly retorted, "We're improving," or "We have a good record." What they did not do was answer their critics by forthrightly challenging the antiliberal concept of "underrepresentation" itself.

If present trends continue, it is likely that liberal democracy will steadily evolve during the next century into cultural democracy. This transformation is already well under way, and is likely to proceed gradually, almost imperceptibly, sector by sector, in much the same way as the evolution from the old aristocratic order to bourgeois liberalism in Europe. Some elements of the old liberal regime will persist, just as elements of the aristocracy persisted under the new bourgeois regime during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Future historians will not be able to identify the precise point at which the West became "post-liberal-democratic" any more than present-day historians are able to tell us when Europe became "post-Christian." Indeed, people may still call the system "liberal democracy" even though its basic principles will have been hollowed out and "reinvented," much as we sometimes refer to Western Europe as "Christian," even though most Europeans today are not believing (let alone practicing) Christians in any real sense.

The current "culture wars" are not, as Fukuyama and many others suggest, merely arguments over how best to implement liberal democracy. They are fundamental disagreements about the meaning of democracy itself. Cultural democracy is a movement to alter radically the liberal-democratic way of life. The goal of multicultural education, according to James Banks, is "to transform the United States from what it is to what it could and should be." Addressing a conference in the Netherlands in 1992, Joseph Raz, a prominent professor of the philosophy of law at Balliol College, Oxford, declared, "This doctrine [multiculturalism] has far-reaching implications. It calls on us to reconceive society." It means the "emergence of a new common culture" and "require[s] a widespread change in attitude."

Make no mistake: we are in the midst of a great ideological conflict between two incompatible world views. Liberal democracy was severely challenged during the twentieth century by Fascism and Communism. But as we enter the twenty-first century, the internal challenge from cultural democracy may prove to be liberal democracy's greatest test.

Mr. Fonte is co-editor of Education for America's Role in World Affairs (University Press, 1994). He is a visiting scholar and executive director of the Committee to Review National Standards at the American Enterprise Institute.