Grim's Hall

"The Chinese Vision of Freedom"

The entire democracy movement of Hong Kong was just arrested; I imagine they have a different 'vision of freedom' than this author, and they're Chinese too.

Half of this article's claims require taking official statistics from Beijing as if they were plausibly related to the truth; the other half is an argument that we should give up our ideas of freedom in favor of the PRC's. Tell it to the Uighur, or the Tibetans, or the Taiwanese.

The Blue Flu

Military more than political, really.

I had read that the DC guard was going to be deployed today. If I were handling the deployment, I would have put them around the Capitol as the OBVIOUS place that would be in danger, since that's where the Electoral College votes were being counted today. The only way even a very large protest could have disrupted that would be to penetrate the building; so, job one would be to prevent that from happening.

Turns out the Pentagon "rejected the request" from the civilian government to secure their own national capitol against an obvious risk at a critical moment. Just like the police who have been letting rioters carry on nationwide, the military decided it didn't want the bad press of having to enforce order against political protests that spin into violence.

National Guard units are activating now, at the President's order, to enforce the mayor's 6 PM curfew which could have been avoided if everyone had done their job in the first place. The Capitol should never have been left unsecured today.

This failure of professionalism and discipline by our officers' corps will have profound and negative consequences.

A Brief Political Post

Vice President Mike Pence, ex officio President of the Senate, has decided not to use any powers to choose alternative slates of electors. As the link notes, Pence is wrong about the history here; both John Adams and especially Thomas Jefferson used exactly the power he is disavowing.

Nevertheless, the matter is decided. Even under the understanding that the President of the Senate could choose which slate to prefer, Mike Pence has made his choice. He is the constitutional officer assigned with the duty, and he has decided what that duty entails. No one else has the right to gainsay this decision, including any of us.

As such, the electoral college results will -- after some Congressional theater -- produce a Biden presidency. Regardless of whether the popular elections that selected the electors were constitutional, legal, or fraudulent, the electors have sent their votes and the President of the Senate will accept them. Congress will count them, and Biden will win. There will be no legally legitimate grounds for further contests.

Vice President Pence has acted according to his own best judgment, in the most consequential decision of his tenure. He has the right and power to make this decision, and so the matter is settled.

Plato's Laws VI, 3

Of the modification of the laws over time, the Athenian admits its necessity but is clearly greatly bothered by it. In fact, he can barely bring himself to speak of it; almost the whole section that is supposed to be about letting future generations alter the laws turns out to be a long discourse on the importance of good courtship and marriage rituals.

The initial argument for accepting that modification should be permitted is a metaphor, or analogy, to a painter who wishes not just to perfect a painting but to keep it looking good through the ages.

Ath. Suppose that some one had a mind to paint a figure in the most beautiful manner, in the hope that his work instead of losing would always improve as time went on-do you not see that being a mortal, unless he leaves some one to succeed him who will correct the flaws which time may introduce, and be able to add what is left imperfect through the defect of the artist, and who will further brighten up and improve the picture, all his great labour will last but a short time?

Cle. True.

Ath. And is not the aim of the legislator similar? First, he desires that his laws should be written down with all possible exactness; in the second place, as time goes on and he has made an actual trial of his decrees, will he not find omissions? Do you imagine that there ever was a legislator so foolish as not to know that many things are necessarily omitted, which some one coming after him must correct, if the constitution and the order of government is not to deteriorate, but to improve in the state which he has established?

Cle. Assuredly, that is the sort of thing which every one would desire...

Ath. As we are about to legislate and have chosen our guardians of the law, and are ourselves in the evening of life, and they as compared with us are young men, we ought not only to legislate for them, but to endeavour to make them not only guardians of the law but legislators themselves, as far as this is possible.

So they agree that the young must be taught to be guardians of the law, and the Athenian proposes a speech to try to convince the young of the importance of doing this. Yet almost at once he begins talking about marriage: how to structure society so that there is proper interaction between families, so that potential brides will be known to families into which they might marry; the importance of games and sports and dances for the youth, where they will get to know one another (including, he states, in various 'states of undress appropriate to the sport, such as modesty allows). There is a restatement of the rule that all men must be married by thirty-five, or else pay various fines and penalties; and of the bar on dowries, which is relaxed a bit (especially for the rich) provided that even more fines are paid.

The Athenian proposes here an explicitly anti-eugenic arrangement, whereby the rich must marry the poor and the intelligent must marry the "slow." He argues that "[e]very man shall follow, not after the marriage which is most pleasing to himself, but after that which is most beneficial to the state." That principle is from the Republic, but the mode of marriage being proposed in the Laws is the exact opposite of the Republic's model.

Presumably this is of the utmost importance in the Athenian's mind toward ensuring that there is a well-settled, disciplined population into which the adjustment of the laws might be trusted. The segue is not clearly justified, so it must be a thought that follows so naturally in the Athenian's mind -- and perhaps in Plato's, though it is important to keep their identities separate given Plato's love of irony -- that he doesn't see why anyone would need a justification for what seems to me like a significant departure. Indeed, he not only does not justify the departure, he returns to the subject for a single (rather lengthy) sentence, and then immediately dives back into marriage.

In any case, right in the middle of this discussion of marriage he does eventually tell us what he thinks the process for amending the laws should be. It should be a ten year apprenticeship, with the original legislator working with a younger man to adjust the laws of the colony as they find the need. Once that ten years is past, the laws should be fixed in a permanent form. No adjustments should be possible except with the unanimous consent of many different people:

Ath. A ten years experience of sacrifices and dances, if extending to all particulars, will be quite sufficient; and if the legislator be alive they shall communicate with him, but if he be dead then the several officers shall refer the omissions which come under their notice to the guardians of the law, and correct them, until all is perfect; and from that time there shall be no more change, and they shall establish and use the new laws with the others which the legislator originally gave them, and of which they are never, if they can help, to change aught; or, if some necessity overtakes them, the magistrates must be called into counsel, and the whole people, and they must go to all the oracles of the Gods; and if they are all agreed, in that case they may make the change, but if they are not agreed, by no manner of means, and any one who dissents shall prevail, as the law ordains.

Now this is a city of 5,040 households, which is perhaps the size of a small town. Has anyone been to a town council where there was no dissenter on any public question of importance?

A similar regulation affects NATO, by the way; it was brought into being in spite of significant distrust among its member states, and consequently it cannot act nor change any of its regulations except by the consent of all members. That gives each state a great deal of confidence that the alliance will not be turned into an oppressive system: every state can object to any decision, and any such objection shall rule.

NATO was nevertheless highly functional for decades, and won the Cold War, and even today it manages joint actions in various places. Turkey's drift towards China and Iran (and Russia) suggests that the alliance may no longer be capable of achieving its original major project, though fortunately Russia is less threatening than was the USSR.

So perhaps there is something to be said for this suggestion, since it seems to remove much of the danger of tyranny. You will have known the laws when you joined the colony, and if you get through the ten years without having reason to object to them (in which case exile or outlawry is the path of the good man), you will gain a household veto on any new laws. It will be hard to change the laws yourself, should you wish to do so, but in return you gain a measure of stability and confidence that the government will not be turned against you (as the NATO members feared the alliance might be).

On the other hand, the system is highly non-adaptable. Our own constitution would probably not have survived a similar process, even if every state rather than every household were given the veto. In fact the only one of our amendments to occur in the first ten years was the 11th (the Bill of Rights having been passed at the same time).

Back on the first hand, however, Plato's colony is not intended as an expansionist project. The big compromises of the first decades of the United States were over expansion as it changed the balance of power between the states. Aside from that, the 13-15th amendments were products of the war that was sparked in part because of the changes in the balance of power brought about by the introduction of new states, slave or free; and the 17th-21st were reactions to mass immigration, chiefly, which Plato's colony would forbid. (The 19th would presumably not have been necessary in any case, given Plato's view of equality for women.) The 16th we'd have been better off without; the 22nd was really just a restatement of a traditional principle that FDR chose to violate; the others are mostly small adjustments. If the United States had remained in its original form, perhaps many of the changes that followed later would not have been needed.

Of course, it is not merely constitutional amendments that Plato's colony would enact only by unanimous consent, but any sort of changes to the law. The largest and most obvious objection is that this might have prevented us from abolishing slavery; by coincidence, slavery is the subject of the next and last part of my commentary on this book.

Justice

Flyboys, 2006, after a pilot complains about a German pilot who killed a bailed-out pilot unlawfully:

Captain Thenault: "Reports can be filed. But you want "justice"? *You're* the man in the air. *You're* the man with the *gun*!"

Apropos of nothing. Just an old movie quote that happened to come to mind.

Cool if it works

SpaceX is trying to move toward more reusable rockets. The next step is to snag the returning rocket with a launch arm, which would save having to add "bulky legs" to the cylinder. Watching SpaceX videos is starting to be a lot of fun.

Plato's Laws VI, 2

These next two days are potentially momentous, politically; but few of us are in a position to have even an indirect effect on the outcome. Thus, I shall try to studiously ignore the matters of the moment in favor of the more important matters of the eternal. Let's return to Plato's Laws, Book VI.

While I am going to continue to ignore the discussion of particular offices, e.g. how judges and magistrates should be distinguished, I do want to note in passing the truth of something Plato has to say about the officer in charge of education.

Ath. There remains the minister of the education of youth, male and female; he too will rule according to law; one such minister will be sufficient, and he must be fifty years old, and have children lawfully begotten, both boys and girls by preference, at any rate, one or the other. He who is elected, and he who is the elector, should consider that of all the great offices of state, this is the greatest; for the first shoot of any plant, if it makes a good start towards the attainment of its natural excellence, has the greatest effect on its maturity; and this is not only true of plants, but of animals wild and tame, and also of men. Man, as we say, is a tame or civilized animal; nevertheless, he requires proper instruction and a fortunate nature, and then of all animals he becomes the most divine and most civilized; but if he be insufficiently or ill educated he is the most savage of earthly creatures. Wherefore the legislator ought not to allow the education of children to become a secondary or accidental matter.

The idea that children must be properly trained less the advantages of civilization be lost to the worst kinds of savagery is an important one. This is, as he says, in some ways the first business of a society. If it fails in this, as we appear to be doing in spite of sending more children to more years of education than ever before, there is a great peril of failing in everything.

That dire point aside, note Plato's interest in ensuring that the girls and boys are both considered in education. It's not just that he mentions "youth male and female," but that his ideal officer will be someone who has successfully raised both sons and daughters. (I would not qualify, both because I'm not quite old enough and because I've only raised a son.)

Plato has the Athenian restate this view of equality in his discussion of the final purpose of life and of the state:

Ath. There was one main point about which we were agreed-that a man's whole energies throughout life should be devoted to the acquisition of the virtue proper to a man, whether this was to be gained by study, or habit, or some mode of acquisition, or desire, or opinion, or knowledge-and this applies equally to men and women, old and young-the aim of all should always be such as I have described; anything which may be an impediment, the good man ought to show that he utterly disregards.

It is not merely that women are capable of some virtues, and should be encouraged to develop the ones that they can; but that, exactly like men, the whole business of their lives should be the inculcation of virtue. Courage, temperance, justice, all these things are just as important for women as men.

This is familiar ground for readers of the Republic, but it's even more strongly stated in the Laws. In the Republic, Socrates defends merely the proposition that highly capable women should be admitted to the Guardian or Auxiliary classes, 'though it is hardly to be expected that they are going to be the equals of the men in those classes.' The view of the Republic is eugenic, in that the hope is that the classes will breed true, although some measures are taken to push failures back into the lower classes. The Laws view is not: all citizens, male and female, are to be educated and taught to strive for virtue to the best of their ability.

This last passage is immediately followed by a remark, perhaps important to us today, about what is to be done if the civilization ultimately fails and falls into vice.

Ath. And if at last necessity plainly compels him to be an outlaw from his native land, rather than bow his neck to the yoke of slavery and be ruled by inferiors, and he has to fly, an exile he must be and endure all such trials, rather than accept another form of government, which is likely to make men worse.

Death before dishonor; become an outlaw before submitting to tyranny. This much I wholly endorse.

There are two more matters in this book before we finish with it that each deserve their own section. The first is the matter of leaving the legislative power to future generations, so they may correct flaws while hopefully not undermining the original project. The second is a discussion of slavery, which even this idealized ancient society did not imagine it could avoid.

Thank you, Mr. Nunes

A good summary of a disgraceful episode.

A Band Like This

It's been a tough year, but this guy's was at least as bad as yours.

I hope so, anyway.

Tempora, Mores

This is quite a development.

This means that in my lifetime we will have gone from a nation that could be scandalized by a President giving an interview to Playboy to a nation incapable of being scandalized by a President plagiarizing from Playboy.

Well, she'll be President the day after tomorrow, so to speak. Unless Trump's people pull off a miracle, and then win the war they'd start if they did. The point isn't about her, though, it's about us.

Authority and Legitimacy

D29 links an essay with an interesting conception of what the terms "authority" and "legitimacy" mean. It's a little idiosyncratic, but it's a plausible frame for thinking about the problems Plato's Athenian has been encountering. (The essay, and its predecessor, are also worth reading in their own right; at least for those who accept that the recent election, characterized by outright violations of law and state constitutions, which were then blessed by all the courts, represents an effective end to constitutional government. However, I am here interested in the philosophy, not the politics.)

So here is how he defines his concepts:

I'll try to be more explicit about what I mean by the terms 'authority' and 'legitimacy'. Authority derives from the degree that a regime reflects the truth of human nature. Legitimacy refers to the degree that a regime reflects the views of the population it purports to represent. A bit of reflection will suggest that a given regime may be legitimate, yet lack authority--and vice versa, unfortunately. In an imperfect world, authority and legitimacy will normally be imperfect, as well. However, I take it as given that the regime established by our written Constitution had sufficient authority and legitimacy to command the consent of the population.

Arguably those are exactly the problems the Athenian is wrestling with in the last two books of the Laws. On the one hand, he needs a state that has legitimacy in this sense: the people who live under it will continue to consent to be governed by it. He takes it as read that some sort of equality is necessary to maintaining this legitimacy. So, in Book V, he proposes several approaches to ensuring this legitimacy, e.g., the complete equality of common ownership of everything, or the proportionate equality of his more complex system of tiered wealth.

Book V falters on the ground of human nature, though: the first approach is one no one will endure, anywhere at any time. The second is also one that is going to break up on the rocks of human nature, including the ordinary human activities of reproduction, economic activity, etc. These states can't exercise authority on these terms, which means that whatever legitimacy is gained is insufficient.

Book VI has the Athenian turn to an important point of human nature, which is inequality: specifically the inequality of virtue, which enables only some to be trustworthy with powerful political offices. He has an elaborate system, again, designed to try to ensure that only the best people gain power and exercise it well: that is, a system of authority that one could trust.

The problem here proves then to be legitimacy: human beings will not accept that they are unworthy of equality of power, and will revolt against a scheme that sets out to rule them without giving them a share. The Athenian proposes accepting some schema that will allow the less-worthy to participate in government offices, but proposes that it needs to be minimized because it's terribly dangerous and destructive to give power to the vicious.

So whether or not you think these essays describe our current conditions well, I think it's very helpful for trying to see the problems Plato is teasing out. Feel free to reference it in our discussions of the Laws.

“Awomen”

It’s more rhetoric than prayer, I guess.

UPDATE:

Some clever rejoinders:

"How will the churches know which are the hymns and which are the hers?"

"Joe Biden to call for national mask mandate and womandate."

Add any more you find in the comments.

Venison Mince Pies

I forgot to take a picture, but the venison pies were great. I took AVI’s advice and omitted ingredients I wasn’t sure about, but left in Christmas spices that sounded plausible with game. Highly recommended.

Plato's Laws VI

The sixth book of the Laws contains an important argument on the need to maintain equality versus the need to ensure that not just anyone is given a public office with great powers. The last book showed us limits on how much equality human beings are really prepared to accept, with the Athenian nevertheless advocating for taking it as far as possible -- the ideal society absolutely abandoning any idea of property or ownership per se, and the second-best society at least trying to impose a kind of proportionate equality. Neither one was really workable, but we're going to proceed 'as best we can' with the second-best society.

(Note that the Athenian promised us a third-best kind of society, and then said he'd get back to it later.)

In this book, though, the Athenian himself is suddenly pointing out how important it is to set limits on equality. Equality of wealth may be fine and dandy, but equality of power is really dangerous. Power should only belong to those who have been carefully trained and taught how to wield it in accord with society's values and constitution. If it should fall into the hands of people who don't understand the value of the society's laws and existing order, they'll run things up on the rocks.

I'm going to skip nearly all the discussion about the proper offices, since they pertain to a kind of social organization we won't attempt. I'm going to focus instead on two points: who the proper voters are, and who the proper officials aren't.

This is going to be a kind of representative democracy, with officers like magistrates elected by voters. The Athenian wants voters who will make good choices, but he thinks that it takes time to see the value of a set of laws. The thing to do is to reserve the right to vote, then, to only those who "have been imbued with them from childhood, and have been nurtured in them, and become habituated to them." These will choose officers, it is hoped, who will use the power entrusted to them to support the constitutional order and the values of the state. Until that class has had time to develop, the original founders of the colony will serve as trustees.

That class of voters turns out to be a subclass of citizens, but not just anyone who grew up in the new colony. They're going to be veterans: nobody gets to vote who has not served in the infantry or cavalry (a surprising and pleasing addition, given the earlier discussion of the worth of the infantry vs. the marines -- who were like the cavalry in the way the Athenian criticizes). They also have to have continued their service for as long as the law permits, i.e., they can't stop showing up for drill and duty and retain the power to vote.

Now this will not be an expeditionary army, but a defensive one. So we are not talking about committing to endless tours of war, but about remaining part of the defensive force in the city -- somewhat akin to being qualified to vote by being a member of a volunteer fire department, or the citizen's militia, or the National Guard, or the police. Those citizens, who put their lives on the line and do the hard work of being on call to protect the city, are the ones qualified to elect officers.

There is no secret ballot. There is the opposite of a secret ballot. You have to put your nominee's name on a tablet with a list of all your ancestors and relatives. Then there is a process of multiple ballots, so that if anyone objects to any of the proposed magistrates all your ancestors and relatives can be asked to discuss the matter with you before you vote again. Only after this process has occurred three times is the selection final.

Note that the voting is a sacred process, done in the most revered sanctuary, but the objections and disputation about who is a fit officer is moved to the marketplace. It interests me that this ties the whole of the public spaces of town into the process and allows for hot disputation, while emphasizing the sacredness of the duty to vote wisely.

Who are the right officers to elect? Obviously, at this point in the dialogue, you know the answer: the right officer is the person who has the right virtues for the job. Virtue is worthy of honor. A just society rewards that virtue by assigning the person who has it an office that is an honor, and also allows that person to exercise their virtue in a way that benefits everyone. There is a very nice reflexivity between the virtues you have and the duties and honors you receive.

Who are the wrong people? Just as obviously, those who lack the right virtues for the job. But there's a problem: people who lack virtue may also lack humility, and be unwilling to accept (or unable to recognize) that they aren't the best person to be entrusted with power.

There's another problem: this recognizes a basic inequality between the citizens. Some are good and worthy, and others are not. This society is supposed to be based on equality, to the point that the Athenian is striving to create mathematical equalities as far as possible. Yet at the root of the politics, if it is going to work, they need good officers and not bad ones. The truth is that not everyone is equally fit to wield power.

What this is likely to produce, says the Athenian, is a demand from the unworthy for offices to be assigned randomly -- so that they will not miss out, or be treated as lesser men by their society. The problem, of course, is that they are lesser men. Not treating them that way is very perilous.

Ath. The mode of election which has been described is in a mean between monarchy and democracy, and such a mean the state ought always to observe; for servants and masters never can be friends, nor good and bad, merely because they are declared to have equal privileges. For to unequals equals become unequal, if they are not harmonized by measure; and both by reason of equality, and by reason of inequality, cities are filled with seditions. The old saying, that "equality makes friendship," is happy and also true; but there is obscurity and confusion as to what sort of equality is meant. For there are two equalities which are called by the same name, but are in reality in many ways almost the opposite of one another; one of them may be introduced without difficulty, by any state or any legislator in the distribution of honours: this is the rule of measure, weight, and number, which regulates and apportions them. But there is another equality, of a better and higher kind, which is not so easily recognized. This is the judgment of Zeus; among men it avails but little; that little, however, is the source of the greatest good to individuals and states. For it gives to the greater more, and to the inferior less and in proportion to the nature of each; and, above all, greater honour always to the greater virtue, and to the less less; and to either in proportion to their respective measure of virtue and education. And this is justice, and is ever the true principle of states, at which we ought to aim, and according to this rule order the new city which is now being founded, and any other city which may be hereafter founded. To this the legislator should look-not to the interests of tyrants one or more, or to the power of the people, but to justice always; which, as I was saying, the distribution of natural equality among unequals in each case. But there are times at which every state is compelled to use the words, "just," "equal," in a secondary sense, in the hope of escaping in some degree from factions. For equity and indulgence are infractions of the perfect and strict rule of justice. And this is the reason why we are obliged to use the equality of the lot, in order to avoid the discontent of the people; and so we invoke God and fortune in our prayers, and beg that they themselves will direct the lot with a view to supreme justice. And therefore, although we are compelled to use both equalities, we should use that into which the element of chance enters as seldom as possible.

This is an interesting philosophical move, one that tries to preserve the idea of equality while admitting blatant inequalities -- 'gives to the greater more, and to the lesser less.' The basic idea is that the same rule is being applied to all parties, and those who are found by the rule to be more worthy are given more. They're held to the same standard, and gain more honors (including especially the honor of being assigned power) if they prove worthier.

So why not just say, "Look, people aren't really equal, so let's stop pretending and give the better people more power"? According to the passage, that leads to sedition among the worse; and sometimes that sedition grows strong enough that even the best kind of society can't help but distribute honors at random, or anyway according to some scheme that makes sure they're more available to the less worthy. That should be minimized, the Athenian suggests, but it can't be expected to be avoided.

Note again that this is about power, not wealth. The same society is going to enforce some proportionate limits on wealth, at the same time it tries to assure inequalities of power as much as it can. If successful, the inequalities of power won't cause corruption in the wealth equalities because virtuous people will be given the power, and they won't use it to dodge limits or enrich themselves. But we know it won't be successful: sometimes powers have to be assigned by lot, or in another way to ensure the less worthy have offices. Thus, corruption is sure to arise at least insofar as less virtuous people are elevated to positions of power.

Aristotle viewed this approach as unlikely to be workable anyway; as he says in the first book of the Rhetoric, it's always best to give as little power as possible to even carefully-chosen magistrates because even the best people tend to use it to help themselves and their factions and families. It's a human weakness. Yet for the Athenian, the only hope of maintaining a successful equality of wealth lies in an unequal distribution of power he admits is impossible to maintain.