Too Much or Too Little Democracy?
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The American political class is perennially obsessed with which party will come to power and what agenda it will implement, but, in some respects, this is a shortsighted view. Ultimately, victories for partisan legislation may pale in significance to constitutional changes. (Here, I use “constitutional” in the sense of the broader political system, the balance of ruling elements in the “regime,” rather than just the text of the Constitution itself.)
The Framers consciously constructed our political institutions to check the worst tendencies of each element. The Senate was supposed to be embody something of an aristocratic quality, the House the democratic element, the Presidency a monarchical component, and the Supreme Court the rule of law beyond day-to-day politics. Since the Founding era, though, we have seen tremendous changes in this balance. The Senate is now elected by popular vote and the nature of the Presidency has been transformed through reform of the Electoral College and the development of the primary system. On top of all that, the federal bureaucracy has taken on a life of its own. So our modern political system is a strange amalgamation of despotic, democratic, oligarchic, and bureaucratic elements overlaying the framework of the Founding. The question I’d like to pose: do we have too much or too little democracy at the present?
In an era of judicial legislating and the “imperial presidency,” it would be tempting to assume more power to the people would be the solution. Speaking from a conservative point of view, democracy sometimes furthers our ends (i.e. the passage of Prop 8 over the designs of California’s legislature and courts), but it’s less clear in other cases. For instance, if we did not have the less-democratic Senate, we would clearly have Obamacare by now. According to Tocqueville, more democracy would lead to more concern for equality and less respect for liberty, especially the right to property. So conservatives who rail against “elites” in the name of democracy are often entirely justified, but they are playing with a dangerous fire indeed, one that could burn them in the end.
Filed under: Congress, Conservatism, Courts, Election, History, Politics, Uncategorized
No. 5 in “Tea Party Activists Have Attitude” :
Tea Party activists know they don’t have to get elected to change the world.
They understand that electing a handful of virtuous lawmakers won’t solve the problem either, because what needs to change are the incentives operating on the entire political establishment. Here’s how Milton Friedman described it:
“I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either, or if they try, they will shortly be out of office.”
More often than not the most important effect of an election is who gets defeated, not who gets elected. When a politician loses for “doing the wrong thing” the incentives change for all of them.
http://www.mackinac.org/archives/2009/TEApartytoolbox.pdf
Instead of “we did not have the less-democratic Senate” it would be cleaner and more comprehensible to say “if we had a more democratic Senate.” An affirmative is more comprehensible than a double negative, although their logical value is the same.
It’s the “guided democracy” of the managerial-therapeutic state (cf. works of Paul Gottfried) -the final decisions are made by the permanent government of civil service, judiciary and universities.
The half-Jewish Pole Takuan Seiyo says some unsayable things:
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2009/08/repulsing-minoritarian-tyranny-of-west.html
(…)
The post-communist ruling elites here have not engaged in the favorite treason of their Western counterparts: population replacement. Even though neighborhood grocery shops in Prague are operated by Vietnamese, and various exotics sell cut-rate, Asian import clothing at outdoor bazaars in Poland, this is a minuscule percentage of the population. The people here, everywhere from Latvia to Slovakia, are still repulsing the minoritarian tyranny imposed by the ruling elites on weak, brainwashed societies farther West.
It’s an indescribable pleasure to walk among a throng of people in a large public venue, and experience none of the blessings of diversity. No burkas. No “youths.” No hateful stares of fifth columnists from “Asia.” No black gangs on the prowl for white victims. No Kevlar vests on schoolchildren. Young lovers walking safely at 03:00. No “undocumented workers” driving death cars with no license and no resistance to alcohol. No pampered immigrant jihadis driving death cars with a license and no alcohol. No gays exchanging body fluids in public. No gay pride parades. No transvestite police persons. No Arabic prayer incantations wafting through the golden light of dusk…
(…)
Mr Chomicki said, “…conservatives who rail against “elites”…”
I haven’t made up my mind whether you are a stealth lib or just someone without common sense or conservative instincts.
If someone assigns themselves the job of “teaching me”, then it is justified for me to examine their credentials, or to be leery and watchful until credibility is established.
Most of the Libs who frequent TAC are easily recognized, because they want to put rules upon people they think are inferior to themselves. When you try to put a rule (or a label) upon me, there are two natural questions:
– Does the rule bind you equally, or do you see yourself as superior or an exception to the group you intend that will be bound by that rule, or in the way that you would bind me?
– Under what agreement, do you suppose that you have the right to make such rules? Our US social contract, under which you and I are supposed equals? We each have an equal vote? Or under some “higher calling” where you see yourself and me as belonging to different classes, each with different obligations to the rules you espouse? For example, do you suppose that your superior “understanding of things” somehow gives you the right to heap SNARK on the things I hold sacred, while expecting that I shouldn’t treat your MOMMA in the same fashion?
Are you an “Al Gore” that rides in luxury jets, while urging me to smaller and smaller cars? While claiming that the core of the earth is “millions and millions of degrees”, yet charging entire nations Billions and Trillions of dollars on the possibility that the surface of the earth may rise 1 degree within 100 years? (The core temperature of the earth is estimated at about 5,700 degrees K)
It is obvious to us what you wish to tear down. What we are watching for, is what do you want to build up? All backhanded criticism for things conservative, and backhanded approval of things liberal, over time will increase our suspicion that you are not as dumb as you sound, and you came to divide us.
I am at a loss as to what are the liberal things I’m accused of liking or the conservative things I’m trying to destroy. I was putting forward a pretty innocuous question, namely, do we have a deficit or surplus of democracy in this country? I think the argument can be made both ways from a conservative point of view.
The point about elites obviously needs clarification since it was undeveloped. There are elites in academia, the media, and our political class in the United States that advance harmful agendas. The problem comes — as others such as Rod Dreher and Daniel Larison have discussed much more competently than I have — when criticism of elites becomes a catch-all rationalization of conservative failures and an excuse not to reexamine poor decisions (i.e. the Iraq war).
I will agree that there is a tendency amidst conservatives who are critical of the larger movement to direct their fire at fellow conservatives rather than at those on the left who actually hold the reins of power. I am definitely guilty of this from time to time. At the same time, this is a political era when vigorous debate within the right can really help breathe new life into it. It’s not a question of “dividing” but of finding out how and why the right got to where it is.
A good answer. I will have to try harder to get into some of your stuff.
You might read what I have written a couple times more. I suspect there may be a nuance that you have yet to grasp about the relationship between “all those who were created equal”, and those who would espose “rule of the masses” by a class of those who might be superior in intellect, social or political power, or some superior sense of morality.
You might start, also, by examining the concept of “intellectual center of gravity”. That is, if a teacher is standing in the front of the room, and there are 40 teen or adult students, where is the intellectual center of gravity? At the front of the room? Or in the center of the room?
Our government is a series of checks and balances. One such check that has evolved over time, is the concept that the interests of the majority must be compromised, so that the rights and interests of the minority are taken into account.
The Democrat Party has gained advantage by lowering the common denominator of the electorate. It is a proven fact that the majority of dead people who actually vote, will vote almost exclusively Democratic. As our society loses it’s morality and work ethic, and loses it’s ability to avoid addictions, we have allowed crooked politicians to take over both national parties.
First the crooked politicians learned to vote themselves a check, then they began to be able to buy the public by enticing the public to vote itself a check (to be paid for by future generations).
Our enemies, then, are those who would attack our moral foundations. This is not a defense of one religion; let us temporarily define “morality” as that agent which when practiced gives us the strength to avoid dishonesty, addictions, dependency, and intrusions upon the sovereign rights and properties of others.
So while we must guard against the tyranny of majority rule, and against the “dumb masses” who would vote themselves a check, so too must we guard against the rotten undercurrent that would co-opt the political process in an attempt to gain such power as to create a “ruling class”.
Then the concept, that “senators” were to be a sort of “monarchy” class, is patiently false. Senators think “statewide” and have equal power in the senate, regardless of state size.
Congresspeople “think locally”, to be more attuned to rural issues, and more populous states wield more power in the congress, in an “all are created equal” sense. This is a “check and balance” between the interests of region (and the sovereignty of individual states), and “personhood” (the basic unit of power loaned to the government, under our social contract).
In the 1950’s, this stuff was taught at the Jr. High School level (middle school).
I object to the “masses” being co-opted by those would-be “rulers” who encourage dependency of the population on central government. When I object to “elitists”, it is within this framework. And when you talk about “power to the people”, do you mean independent citizens who consider themselves the political equal of even those who would be rulers? Or do you mean those who have lost morality, and become addicted to stealing from our grandchildren?
So be warned that snarky dishonest people would believe that conservatives are inferior to themselves, and when they say “neocons”, they intellectually deny that class may hold concepts that are beyond their understanding (spoiler warning: if you quote Rod Dreher, you probably belong to this group).