Democracy, wrote Mr. Kagan in "Pericles of Athens" (1991), is "one of the rarest, most delicate and fragile flowers in the jungle of human experience." It relies on "free, autonomous and self-reliant" citizens and "extraordinary leadership" to flourish, even survive.In just the last few weeks I have come to a realization about the way the Founders structured our system of government. As we have discussed here many times, Aristotle argued that there were three basic forms of government, each of which could become perverted by self-interest among the ruling class. Each of the three had characteristic strengths and weaknesses. The three forms of government are rule-by-one, rule-by-few, and rule-by-many: you can call them monarchy, aristocracy, and polity. If the monarch comes only to care about his own thoughts and interests, he becomes a tyrant; the aristocracy, an oligarchy; and the polity, on Aristotle's terms, a democracy.
These kinds of citizens aren't born—they need to be educated. "The essence of liberty, which is at the root of a liberal education, is that meaningful freedom means that you have choices to make," Mr. Kagan says. "At the university, there must be intellectual variety. If you don't have [that], it's not only that you are deprived of knowing some of the things you might know. It's that you are deprived of testing the things that you do know or do think you know or believe in, so that your knowledge is superficial."
As dean, Mr. Kagan championed hard sciences, rigorous hiring standards for faculty, and the protection of free speech. Those who see liberal education in crisis return to those ideas. "Crisis suggests it might recover," Mr. Kagan shoots back. "Maybe it's had its day. Democracy may have had its day. Concerns about the decline of liberty in our whole polity is what threatens all of the aspects of it, including democracy."
Taking a grim view of the Periclean era in Athens, Plato and Aristotle believed that democracy inevitably led to tyranny. The Founding Fathers took on their criticism and strove to balance liberty with equality under the law.
What I've realized very recently is that the Founders took some pains to give us all three forms of government. It isn't just that the branches of government have checks and balances. It is that they are different forms of government, on just Aristotle's terms. The Congress is a polity (or democracy). It is popularly elected, and enacts decisions by majority rule. It is susceptible to both the goods and the harms of rule-by-many.
The judiciary is an aristocracy (or oligarchy). It is built around an elite class with barriers to entry. It has the strengths and the weaknesses of rule-by-few.
The executive is essentially a monarchy (or tyranny). One man dominates it, selects its leaders, and orders its functions. It has all the potential benefits and hazards of rule-by-one.
What the Founders did was to give us a system that not only checked three branches with three separate functions against one another. They also provided us with a system in which the three basic kinds of government were all present, and counterbalanced. We could get every good Aristotle saw in every system; and when one branch went bad, there was the hope that the competing interests of the other forms of government might right it.
It was a good idea. There is only one problem, and it is one Aristotle did not consider: the problem of scale. More and more, I think a government must adhere to a human scale in order to be just. I mean by "a human scale" that maximum set of people such that the members can all know one another, and care about one another. At levels beyond this, a fundamental aspect of humanity is lost: we don't love each other any more, and are content to treat the unloved members as less than the beloved ones.
Whether such a government can practically exist on earth, I do not know: much of that depends on the difficulty of being able to defend yourself against the other humans outside the order, who do not love you in any case. Unless we find a way to achieve it, though, I cannot imagine a society that will escape Jefferson's requirement: that of periodic overthrow and replacement, in order to keep the tree of liberty hale.
11 comments:
The machinery of any large government--the rules and people hired to enforce the rules--becomes more than any one person can understand or manage. Therefore that machinery can become a "player" in the game as well--you can't rationally change the rules if you don't understand them or issue orders to the bureaucrats and get the results you want. The emperor could become a prisoner of the eunuchs.
So maybe Aristotle missed one: government by a "government" not really controlled by anybody any more but running on its own precedents.
Here's what may be a problem, though, with the idea that the scale of our government is too large.
Government, like property and markets, is a system we cooked up to deal with the problems of cooperating with groups of people too large to be members of our intimate groups of beloveds. If we got the scale down all that far, we wouldn't need government at all, any more than I need rules of property of markets under my own roof.
But if we truly eliminated everything that wasn't on the human and personal scale, we wouldn't have a prosperous, free, or loving society, we'd have little bands of people scrabbling out a meager existence in isolation, at the constant mercy of marauders.
That government (like property and markets) is a way of dealing with strangers is its glory, not its drawback.
There is only one problem, and it is one Aristotle did not consider: the problem of scale. More and more, I think a government must adhere to a human scale in order to be just. I mean by "a human scale" that maximum set of people such that the members can all know one another, and care about one another. At levels beyond this, a fundamental aspect of humanity is lost: we don't love each other any more, and are content to treat the unloved members as less than the beloved ones.
It may be that our Founders anticipated this in Aristotle's absence--or their "anticipation" is a side effect of the final check and balance which was acknowledged in our Declaration of Independence--twice, for emphasis perhaps:
...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government....
and
...when a long train of abuses and usurpations...it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
What we have was good for 200, or so years (though I"m not convinced the present situation is irretrievable). So: exercise our right and start over for another 200, or so, years.
Sort of a Foundation writ smaller.
Eric Hines
That government (like property and markets) is a way of dealing with strangers is its glory, not its drawback.
That may be. But if it is so, then we may be stuck with throwing it out periodically and starting over.
It may be that we can't do better than what Aristotle warned against, even with the Founders' innovation. A couple of hundred years between necessary revolutions may be the best humanity can manage.
A couple of hundred years between necessary revolutions may be the best humanity can manage.
I wouldn't call that so bad. Not after we've survived being climate-trapped on the tip of Africa with a barely viable species population, then glaciation, then pandemic diseases that reduced the population of Europe (and who knows about Asia) by one-third, Dark Ages, etc, etc, etc. And after each we came out stronger, richer, smarter.
After the last 200 years of progress on a number of fronts, I'm not worried about another 200 year burst.
Though it would be jake to skip some of those inconvenient interregnums. But life isn't monotonic.
Eric Hines
I wouldn't call that so bad.
Well, talk to me about it when we're done. In the meantime, I'm taking contributions for the revolution at grimbeornr at yahoo dot com.
It may well be that we are right now crafting the means to control a large-scale government. So far, the printing press, the fax machine, and the cell phone have figured large in revolutions. There's no reason to think these same innovations might be used to more effectively control government.
During the last election, the Democratic Party constructed a get-out-the-vote machine that relied on phones, enormous contact lists, and automobile rides to maximize votes. That is, they tapped into new means of enhancing participation in the voting process. Other efforts might be made to enhance the quality of information flowing to voters, so that participation could be educated.
Right now I worry about breaking the social compact. There seem to be some very deliberate efforts along this line, and if they prevail, we will have revolution, and it will be squalid. The latest example is the scathing mischaracterization of the actions of the police and FBI in Boston as being unprofessional and unConstitutional. We have people in this country who will tell any lie in order to portray our government as ineffective, immoral, tyrannical, and often all three at once.
I believe the people of this country are generally competent and of good will. I worry about the effects of slander and disinformation, though, because people of good will can make terrible mistakes.
Valerie
...the scathing mischaracterization of the actions of the police and FBI in Boston as being unprofessional and unConstitutional.
I've apparently missed this. Is there an example that particularly bothers you?
Valerie,
What mischaracterization of the police and FBI are you referring to? I’ve seen the videos and posture of the police/FBI and can honestly say that was all super aggressive. The only time my infantry platoon in Iraq was EVER that aggressive was when we performed a targeted raid on a house based on specific intelligence. (And then it turned out we had the wrong house… gate with the blue trim door next to the house with the large all blue door. Blue door on the intel means the all blue door, right? Well, we found out differently after using our Bradley to breach through the wall… I went personally and apologized for that mistake to the head of the family to make reparations after that. Somehow I don’t think the SWAT/HRT folks will do that to the families and kids traumatized from being pulled from their houses in a hyper dominant manner).
Would it be correct to say that was the way it was all the time? I don’t think so because I have seen video of reasonable police coming to the door and just asking if everything was ok – no guns in faces and forced evacuations there.
Just because it didn’t happen in every instance doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen for blocks of families at a time.
And there's the lockdown of a significant portion of the metropolitan area--a locking up of inconvenient civilians into their own homes--for the convenience of a search.
Eric Hines
" The Congress is a polity (or democracy). It is popularly elected, and enacts decisions by majority rule. It is susceptible to both the goods and the harms of rule-by-many. "
Senate was split into an aristocracy vs the congressional democracy. Senate converted to a democracy due to Leftist strategic initiatives.
Democracy was merely the excuse totalitarian tyrants gave to the population to lead them to believe that they were ruling themselves. As if that was going to happen.
For every day and year that people attempt to delay the inevitable storm, oceans of the blood of tyrants and patriots will be required to equal the balance. Liberty only comes after that.
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