Thomas Paine: Narcissist Disposition Of Democracy

2.2.1 UNIVERSALISM DISPOSITION OF DEMOCRACY
Thomas Paine's moral and political thought raises the question, "How can we become a more self-governing society?" According to Paine, self-governing individuals are necessary to have a self-governing society. By self-governing is meant the willingness of individuals to consciously choose and hold to principles or an ideal that apply in diverse situations. The common good and a democratic government are thus posited as broad criteria for making government indirectly self-governing because representative government is "owned" by citizens, and citizens are free to appraise the outcomes of their government (Paine, 2000). In this view, the great enlightenment revolutionary, Thomas Paine, is making a case
Public reason, in this set up, functions as the ultimate source and barometer of legitimacy in any democratic society. For maximalists, the legitimate use of coercion by agents of the democratic state requires a more substantive commitment to the core values of democracy that regard individual citizens as free and equal members of society. Deliberative democracy is premised on the “fact of reasonable pluralism,”20 which speaks to the observable reality of multiple commitments, obligations, and beliefs that condition the behavior and reasoning of individuals in society (Thompson, 2008). As such, whereas in the minimalist conception the ultimate objective is the formation of government through democratic procedures, the maximalist view strives for the observance and practice of democratic values in society as a whole. Moreover, since it is conceivable that a government elected through free and fair democratic procedures may enact unjust laws or even infringe upon the rights of their citizens due to certain beliefs or under special circumstances, there must exist a deliberative framework through which opposing views are represented and the meaning of dominant values challenged regardless of who is in power (Rawls, 2009). The deliberative
Nowhere in either one of these variants are the intermingling of local histories and democratic ideals contemplated in great depth; instead, the kinds of conceptions envisioned are offered as universal in both essence and breadth. But perhaps the most significant flaw in universalist accounts of democratic legitimacy is the failure to distinguish between the “universal content” of democratic ideals, and their “universal justifiability” (Benhabib, 2007). Indeed, most of the universalist accounts of democratic legitimacy – especially of the maximalist variety – do make the mistake of only emphasizing the universal justifiability of democratic ideals without considering the possibility that people of different backgrounds may have reasons to support them, but only in a way that would honor their historical experiences and fit their political circumstances. The minimalist conception of democratic government with its singular emphasis on elections and the institutions they help to sustain completely overlooks the fact that most basic rights and freedoms have not been won at the ballot box but through other democratic means such as public persuasion, grassroots mobilization, or acts of civil disobedience. At the heart of this