A work called “The Coming Victory for Democracy” by Thomas Mann was written in 1938. I’ve found it fascinating. Some excerpts that seemed very applicable to our times and our challenges are captured here. Mann’s premise at the time was that for democracy to win over the coming conflict with fascism, it would require democratic peoples to understand, know and properly reflect on the higher values of democratic principles. I believe we need to re-examine our commitment to democracy and remember always that its future survival is not guaranteed.
Thomas Mann… (parenthetical material is my editorial comment)
Democracy is friendly to intellectual thought, to arts, to literature (and free press). Distinguishing itself from dictatorship, which because of its belief in force is thereby obliged to be remote, foreign, and hostile to intellectual pursuits. But this assertion only acquires real value as a definition of democracy if the concept of intellectual life is not understood as one-sided, isolated, abstract, superior to life and remote from it, but is characterized as closely related to life, as directed toward life and action — for only that and specifically that is the democratic spirit. That is the spirit of democracy. “Democracy is not intellectual in an old and outworn sense. Democracy is thought; but it is thought related to life and action.
… In a democracy which does not respect the intellectual life and is not guided by it, demagogy has free play, and the level of national life is depressed to that of the ignorant and uncultivated. But this cannot happen if the principle of education is allowed to dominate and the tendencies prevail to raise the lower classes (here, in our times we’d refer to the social-economic challenged) to an appreciation of culture and to accept the leadership of the better elements.
… They consider fascism a protective bulwark which will save them from the real, the Russian, proletarian bolshevism and from socialism in general (today, we need to avoid thinking of authoritarianism as a false choice against progressive policies)
… Now, as life is constituted, truth depends to some extent on the man who speaks it. From certain sources even the truth becomes a lie. There is no doubt, among the variations and the emotionally intelligible modifications of the idea — truth, freedom, justice– it is what we call justice that is closest to the conscience and the heart of humanity today.
https://ia601601.us.archive.org/4/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.221831/2015.221831.The-Coming.pdf