Beyond Practical Virtue: A Defense of Liberal Democracy Through Literature (review)

REVIEWS Johnson, Joel A. Beyond Practical Virtue: A Defense ofLiberal Democracy Through Literature. Columbus and London: Univ. of Missouri Press, 2007. 163 pp. Paper: $37.50. Political scientist Joel Johnson uses plots and characters from classic works of American fiction to defend liberal democracy as a political system , specifically the version ofliberal democracy to which the United States at least ostensibly subscribes. Johnson introduces his book with the claim that a vigorous defense of liberal democracy is especially important today because democracy's spread around the world has run into powerful obstacles . Radical Islam, in particular, rejects many of its tenets. Johnson worries that, due to the global "setbacks democracy has experienced of late, Americans and other friends of democracy have tended to lose faith" (ix). He imagines democrats "secretly" asking themselves, "Can democracy really be the best form of government ... if so many of those who reject democracy are willing to die in order to destroy it?" (ix). Readers should probably resist any provocation they may feel to question whether it is indeed a desire "to destroy" democracy, as Johnson here suggests (following President Bush's similar assertion after the September 1 1 attacks), or, instead, resentment against perceived a/2f/-democratic U. S. policies and actions abroad, that has in fact played a more significant role in motivating recent jihadist attacks on U.S. interests. Fortunately, it becomes clear after the first few pages ofJohnson's preface that Johnson does not in fact seek to enlist Cooper's The Pioneers and Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court as combatants in some supposed "clash of civilizations " between Western democracy and the Muslim world. Instead, Johnson aims to use works of American literature to refute a specific set of criticisms and anxieties about democracy articulated from within the Western humanistic tradition itself. Referring primarily to nineteenth- and early twentieth-century writers such as Carlyle, Nietzsche, Arnold, Pound, and T.S. Eliot, Johnson delineates what he calls the "aesthetic critique of democratic liberty" (33). "Aesthetic" critics ofliberal democracy worry that its emphasis on equality and on distributing power to the people destroys social hierarchies and relations ofauthority that are necessary for cultivating the highest forms of civilization. Democratic culture gravitates toward the lowest common denominator . Liberal capitalism in particular, especially as these critics saw it developing in the United States, produces a society of money-grubbers, in which a hollow materialism displaces other "higher" values. Superior individuals , including those with the potential to produce great art and important philosophy, are not supported with the resources or the environment that would allow them to develop to their fullest capacity. Johnson admits 240Reviews that some might be inclined to dismiss these charges as no more than the elitist grumblings of "cranks or snobs" (35). Part of his own motive in confronting the "aesthetic critique," however, is that doing so presents an opportunity to argue the contrary: that liberal democracy is the best political framework for allowing, even encouraging, all individuals in a society to develop to their own fullest potential as human beings. Johnson's defense of liberal democracy on the grounds that it helps individuals develop to their fullest, he explains, differs from the more common arguments that political theorists offer in favor ofit, for instance claims that liberal democracy tends to produce societies that are more just and/or more economically prosperous (3-5). Johnson derives his illustrations of the positive effects that liberal democracy has on individual development from novels by lames Fenimore Cooper, Mark Twain, and William Dean Howells. Natty Bumppo, for instance , demonstrates the importance of individual freedom. In the woods, "Natty is subject neither to a hierarchy nor to the whims ofhis neighbors." As a result, "he is able to live according to his 'gifts,' and can become the sort of person he is best suited to be—in his case a hunter and scout" (69). Huck Finn's journey down the river, during which he gains critical distance from the institutions of his society, including slavery, and comes to regard the escaped slave Jim as a friend, again illustrates that the experience of personal liberty allows people to "rise to their...