Why It Matters More to be Right than to Win

Republics die, as all men do. What matters is the seeds we sow:
I study ancient history, so I know nothing lasts forever: Republics have fallen before.... Cicero... became known, according to his biographer, Plutarch, “as the best orator ... of the Romans.” He was a true republican, dedicated to preserving Rome's representative government. When Julius Caesar invited him to join a backroom political coalition, Cicero refused. He worried that conspiratorial demagogues were undermining the republic.

He was right. The republic was dying.

...

The story of freedom is long; it's written by an author who plans millenniums in advance.
Don't worry if it works today. Worry that it's right.

16 comments:

Cass said...

The problem is when not everyone agrees what's right :p

We still have to find ways to live together peaceably, but that requires compromise and a willingness to accept that living in any society means you won't always have the ability able to force your preferred policy preferences on everyone else. You either earn their consent/support or you live under whatever rule the majority supports.

I suppose groups who don't have that consent/support can take up arms against their neighbors and achieve by force what they cannot achieve by persuasion. Intimidation and sabotage have worked before in history.

Is this a better way?

Grim said...

Depends. People often say 'the ends don't justify the means,' but the means don't justify the ends either. By the same token, 'might does not make right,' but it also doesn't 'make wrong.'

Cicero did what he thought was right, and though he couldn't save his republic, he did leave a legacy of moral thought that others -- long after -- could build upon. Maybe we can't save this republic either, but that doesn't justify joining in the business of 'giving people what they want' if what they want is morally wicked. If that's the way to win elections, I'd rather lose them.

Tom said...

Well, the Constitution was supposed to set up a basic framework and then we would vote on the policies we want that fit within that framework. Within that original framework, I would agree with you. However, we are no longer in that situation.

Since FDR, the Constitution has been merely a basic elastic idea that can be modified whenever judges decide it should be, for whatever reason, so it really isn't as simple as persuading people. E.g., a number of states spoke decisively about same-sex marriage, amending their state constitutions, but judges have decided the people were wrong and have stretched the Constitution yet again to mean something that was never intended in order to achieve goals they could not achieve democratically.

Now what? I certainly do not endorse violence over this, but what happens when the basic social contract is rewritten by one party to the contract and the other party gets no say at all in it? What good is persuasion when these judges simply declare by fiat the way it's going to be regardless of the people's desires clearly expressed at the ballot box?

Tom said...

PS 'You' being Cass in this case. Grim published while I was composing, so I hadn't seen his post yet.

Cass said...

Maybe we can't save this republic either, but that doesn't justify joining in the business of 'giving people what they want' if what they want is morally wicked. If that's the way to win elections, I'd rather lose them.

Who has suggested doing that?

...what happens when the basic social contract is rewritten by one party to the contract and the other party gets no say at all in it?.

Has that happened? If not getting the result you want because you can't get enough people to agree with you equals "not having *any* say", then America has been flawed from the beginning, hasn't it? That sounds to me rather like equating disagreement with disenfranchisement/silencing.

I don't think they're at all the same thing.

If a person lives in a system of representative government and *truly* has no say, then they have a valid complaint. If, on the other hand, the complaint is that people are allowed to vote for things you don't support (and, if they do so in sufficient numbers, change the law) then I'm not seeing the problem.

Cass said...

And by the way, who gets to decide what is (or is not) "morally wicked"?

Some Muslims truly believe they're justified (i.e., morally NOT wicked) in carrying out honor killings. Is their simple belief enough to settle the question for all time?

Grim said...

Who has suggested doing that?

You're surely as qualified to answer that question as I am. You note regularly that even many conservatives want a moderation on the ban against prostitution, for example.

I'd estimate roughly that nine-tenths of the writing on the Catholic church in the press is on this subject: 'Change your moral standards to fit in better with the modern world, and then you'll be more popular!'

Doubtless you've seen nearly endless examples of it, in politics as in religion, in culture as in society.

Grim said...

And by the way, who gets to decide what is (or is not) "morally wicked"? Some Muslims truly believe they're justified (i.e., morally NOT wicked) in carrying out honor killings. Is their simple belief enough to settle the question for all time?

The right source for moral truth is not in human thoughts or feelings, but in the structure of the world -- which we as well as they believe to be divinely crafted. If there is a moral law, as we believe, it is written in the world.

Thus I put natural law readings above alleged revelations of pure divine intent. I think that 'honor killings' are not settled Islamic law. But we might talk about things that are in the same terms. Islamic law ought to be subject to the same kind of natural-law reading that Aquinas does so much of in the Summa Theologiae: a testing of revelation against the world, to see what understanding of the text might be valid. If God is the author of the world, you should be able to find harmony between what you think God has said and what you think he has done.

Islam doesn't do that right now, but there were times when they have. It may be such times will come again: that, with Averroes as with Cicero, we're waiting between moments of glory.

Cass said...

I'd estimate roughly that nine-tenths of the writing on the Catholic church in the press is on this subject: 'Change your moral standards to fit in better with the modern world, and then you'll be more popular!

Can't claim to be as conversant with Catholic punditry as you are, but what I've seen more of is, "Don't harshly condemn people for sinning and perhaps they'll not reject Church teachings". IOW, calling for a change in tone rather than position.

Asking the Church to compromise core beliefs for the sake of popularity is nonsense, and rightly rejected as such.

Tom said...

Cass, you didn't reply to what I actually wrote.

Yes, it has happened, w/ same-sex marriage, this week.

Ymar Sakar said...

And yet Cicero helped kill the Republic.

In the guise of preventing change, he forced it to be necessary. What resulted was thus the reverse and obverse of his planned goal.

When the Republic is dying, it cannot be saved by people loyal to the past and afraid of blood in the future.

Cass said...

Cass, you didn't reply to what I actually wrote.

Well, I thought I did :p But I didn't respond to your entire comment - only part of it.

Yes, it has happened, w/ same-sex marriage, this week.

Yes, and it happened with interracial marriage decades ago, too. I've always thought that was an interesting counterpoint b/c I never see anyone on the right who claims to be angry about that decision and yet the reasoning is basically the same.

The Constitution was silent on the question of marriage, but it was not silent on the question of equitable application of state law:

No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Virginia argued that the law applied equally to whites and blacks since it prohibited both from marrying the other. For the crime of getting married in DC and returning to VA, the couple were convicted of a felony and sentenced to a year of jail (unless they voluntarily left Virginia, in which case sentence was suspended).

The reasoning is basically the same - the ruling infringed the State's power to define marriage and criminalize the act of getting married in a state with a different legal definition and then setting foot in VA.

Legally I'd say that case was wrongly decided too, though I broadly approve of the result. You're right that no one voted for this result, just as no one voted to desegregate schools paid for with public funds.

And of course, Americans were free to vote to amend the Constitution to protect the power of states to put people in jail for marrying someone of another race. That we did not do so matters, I think.

We didn't actually lack the power to vote on this matter. We did lack the will or desire. So I don't think we were deprived of our say.

Does that help to clarify what I'm arguing?

Tom said...

Me: Yes, it has happened, w/ same-sex marriage, this week.

Cass: Yes, and it happened with interracial marriage decades ago, too.

So, as I said, we have no say. Our votes are irrelevant. I could get ALL of the voters to vote with me and it would be to NO avail.

That's OK if the Constitution lays it out that way. E.g., if all of the voters wanted to get rid of the first amendment, too bad. That's not up for a vote. (Though, if enough people want it, the Constitution can be amended, of course.)

However, that's not the case here. The social contract includes federalism -- powers not given to the national government are reserved to the states. The people in the states whose marriage laws were recently struck down were not only deprived of the power to vote, their already cast votes were nullified by judicial fiat.

Tom said...

Tangentially, if we apply the equal protection clause as it's written, doesn't it eliminate any limits on marriage or age or ability? Polygamy should certainly be allowed for every reason same-sex marriage is, but not only that, what about all the age discrimination?

Wouldn't any drinking age above 18 be unconstitutional under this clause? Clearly, we are depriving citizens of a privilege w/o due process of law. Could we even have a legal age of majority at all? Are 2-year-olds not citizens?

Just thinking out loud. Anyone know?

Cass said...

Tom:

You're right to say that the votes of people living in a State *are* disregarded whenever a State law is ruled unconstitutional, but that's a feature not a bug.

State voters have another chance to prevail if they can convince the rest of the country that the Constitution needs to be changed/clarified/amended (as has been done 27 times in our history). In 1971, the 26th amendment prohibited state denials of the right to vote to US citizens over 18 on account of age. That was just such a clarification. The votes of people in States that had denied the vote were overridden by the votes of the rest of the country (who amended the Constitution to grant a new right).

As they did with the 26th A., voters could amend the Constitution to protect the right of states to define marriage. When We the People feel strongly enough about something, clearly we do have recourse.

So yes, State voters have been overridden by the court. But they have not been completely silenced, nor are they powerless so long as they retain the ability to vote to amend the Constitution.

Moreover, the basis for ruling state bans on gay marriage unconstitutional is itself an amendment that the States voted for in the past. And the entire point of the Constitution is that it protects certain rights of individuals living in a State from that State.

It just wasn't your right to vote to ban gay marriage that was protected. This wasn't an accident: it's the result of a deliberate vote on a national level that, when applied (rightly or wrongly), led to this end. A state law that conflicts with the Constitution was never going to be upheld because that's how our system of govt. was intended to work. Again, a feature, not a bug.

FWIW, I am not a supporter of gay marriage, though I strongly support civil unions :p

Tom said...

Cass, as you know, the principle of federalism is that there are certain things that the people decide on a national level and other things that the people decide on a state level. When that balance is arbitrarily changed, it isn't a feature, it's a violation of constitutional rights agreed upon at the national level.

We, as a nation, decided not to include marriage in the purview of the national government, and in the 10th amendment we also decided, as a nation, to leave it to the states.

I find anti-miscegenation laws vile, as I'm sure the court that struck them down did. However, as you yourself suggested, that decision was wrong. It decided something at a national level that we, as a nation, had agreed should be decided at a state level. The proper course of action for the member of that court would have been to uphold the odious laws and start agitating for a constitutional amendment.

As a nation, we agreed on federalism. If we want to change that, we can, as you say, amend the Constitution to do so, but that hasn't happened. What has happened is that a very tiny group of judges have arbitrarily decided to rewrite the Constitution themselves and progressively eliminate the federalism that our nation agreed to abide by.

You are right that the practical remedy is yet another national amendment (which may also be ignored or willfully misconstrued by that tiny judicial elite), but that is not how we as a nation agreed to handle this. We agreed to handle this at the state level. That agreement has been broken, that right has been amputated, and we have no recourse but to appeal to the nation on a topic that the nation had already agreed the states should handle.

The social contract includes the requirement that the government protect our rights. When the government begins smothering our rights, we are perfectly correct to be outraged.