Polite Kid

I have had a blog entry in mind for some days now, 'inspired' or, more accurately, provoked by what I have been observing with the election returns of the last week. It relates also to a piece I wrote about a month ago called 'Crisis of faith', in which I described my wavering faith in my fellow Americans.
Darrell Dow sums up what I have been thinking recently in this piece called Boobus Americanus
A friend once summed up his view of democracy and the limitations inherent therein with the following formulation: "The masses are asses."
While admittedly crude and by no means a wry, Menckenesque description of the folly of Boobus Americanus, my friend insisted he was merely quoting Alexander Hamilton. And in fact, he had hit upon an important truth. Though elites always and everywhere rule, in a democracy they do so by holding to the faith and aspirations of mass man. As Burton Blumert observed, "if we only unmasked the conspiracy, all our problems would be solved, but if the trouble is in all of us, then we really are in trouble."
Witness the current GOP primary. Sixty-four percent of all Americans oppose the Iraq war and fifty-nine percent think things are going "somewhat badly" or "very badly" in bringing stability to that blood-soaked land. Still willing to flak for the prez, an astounding sixty-four percent of GOP primary voters continue to support the war. Obviously, that means the remainder must be voting for Ron Paul, right? Well, no, they are voting for John McCain.''
Dow describes the irrationality behind most of the choices being made by voters across America; people claim to be concerned about illegal immigration and yet they failed to rally behind the candidate who spoke out most forcefully about it, Tom Tancredo. The same people, having 'moved on', then switch their allegiance to someone like Mike Huckabee, who has been an unashamed apologist for illegals for some years. Of course Huckabee made some kind of profession of being a born-again restrictionist, and his lip service to enforcement was enough to satisfy the undiscriminating voter.
And now we are told that McCain is almost certainly the Republican nominee -- which makes not a whit of sense, given that McCain's name is indelibly associated with the amnesty bill which so many Americans fought to defeat last year. We oppose amnesty and yet we are willing to accept the most pro-amnesty, pro-open borders politician out there? This is insane. The only possible explanations are that many people are irrational, or irremediably stupid, too stupid or lazy to find out what a candidate's record shows on a given issue, or that there is some kind of election-fixing going on. Or perhaps all of the above apply.
Dow lists all the issues like trade, smaller government, and the Iraq war -- on which McCain seems to be the worst possible candidate from the perspective of the majority of Republicans, if not all Americans.
What is going on here? Can we attribute this to voter ignorance or apathy? Short attention span? Or is it evidence that the real votes have not been reported, and that the elections are fixed? It is tempting to prefer to believe the latter, rather than to accept that the average American is so lacking in common sense and civic virtue as to vote for a McCain (or a Huckabee, or any of the others in both parties).
I've noticed, to my considerable frustration, that I can be talking with someone who seems to 'get it', who seems to understand that our country is now at considerable risk for various reasons, reasons which are familiar to all my readers. Just when I think I am talking to an aware and perceptive person, that individual will utter some complete inanity which completely destroys my optimism. Sometimes I despair of my fellow Americans. It seems that I will invest considerable time and effort to try to get people to think and to question, and then they will suddenly revert to the kinds of idiocies purveyed by the mass media. One step forward, ten steps back.
Our 'democratic' system puts excessive faith, I think, in the masses. We have become too enamored of the idea that there is some kind of mystic, magical wisdom inherent in mass man, or in the 'average' man or woman. The saying from Alexander Hamilton 'the masses are asses', which Dow quotes at the beginning of his piece, is in fact an echoing of a longstanding attitude, going back to classical times. Have we in fact made a god of 'democracy' or of the average man? Can it be that at the founding of our country, in a reaction against the idea of an aristocracy of birth, we went too far in the opposite direction, toward exalting the 'little guy' and disparaging the idea that perhaps an aristocracy of character and ability might be preferable?
In an ideal world, the average man and woman would be possessed of sound instincts and common sense as well as basic knowledge about the world around us. It was emphasized by those who founded our country that only a literate, informed, moral, righteous people were capable of sustaining our Republic. We may have strayed too far away from that ideal, and in present-day parlance, dumbed down our Republic by broadening the franchise while we diminish the average intelligence.
There is now no serious and informed political discourse except in various isolated places; what passes for political and philosophical discussion in the mainstream media, in newspapers and especially on cable 'news' channels, is crude and banal propaganda. It is no wonder that we have an electorate which does not make rational and informed decisions.
And maybe it was always thus, really. If we look at the quotes from various classical sources, we see that similar laments were heard thousands of years ago.
"In the common people there is no wisdom, no penetration, no power of judgment." - Cicero
"It is proof of a bad cause when it is applauded by the mob." - Seneca
''Since the masses of the people are inconsistent, full of unruly desires, passionate, and reckless of consequence, they must be filled with fears to keep them in order. The ancients did well, therefore, to invent gods, and the belief in punishment after death.'' - Polybius
For a while, perhaps, we had an anomalous age in which there was widespread literacy, and when children were given a sound education and a good grounding in logic and reason.
However as Nock and other observers have noted, the very fact that literacy became nearly universal was the beginning of the dumbing-down process. The advent of the printing press, too, may have made possible the wide dissemination of great literature, but mass literacy and mass production of cheap books spread a great deal of inferior and vulgar material as well. In this context, science-fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon was supposed to have said that "95 percent of everything is crap", the formulation which is now called Sturgeon's Law.
It seems rather a cynical statement, but looking at the media and the political world these days, it certainly seems true.
Sometimes I've had what seemed to be a fruitful conversation with someone about the urgent issues of our time, and about the election, and then later I talk to the same person and it's as though our earlier discussion never took place, or perhaps went in one ear and out the other. Is this just a sign of short attention spans? Poor memories?
It almost seems as if people are placed in a trance by the 'mainstream media'; what they hear on Fox News or on their favorite talk radio program or on Oprah seems to carry considerable weight with many people, and then there are those who, even worse, seem to change their minds by the hour, depending on which neighbor or co-worker they have spent time with. Many people seem highly impressionable, a fact which seems promising at first, because it is easily mistaken for open-mindedness and intellectual curiosity, at least at first glance. But too often, it's just malleability and fickleness, double-mindedness, lukewarmness. I truly do believe that many people vote based on the toss of a coin, or worse, based on what the consensus at the water cooler is. So many people are swept this way and that, and have no fixed beliefs or principles. Some people are fine on their own, in a one-to-one conversation, but put them in a group and they will passively agree with the group consensus.
This is not the stuff of which good representative government is made; it is fodder for demagogues and exploiters.
John Stuart Mill said
At present individuals are lost in the crowd. In politics it is almost a triviality to say that public opinion now rules the world. The only power deserving the name is that of the masses, and of governments while they make themselves the organ of the tendencies and instincts of masses. This is as true in the moral and social relations of private life as in public transactions. Those whose opinions go by the name of public opinion are not always the same sort of public: in America they are the whole white population; in England, chiefly the middle class. But they are always a mass, that is to say, collective mediocrity. And what is a still greater novelty, the mass do not now take their opinions from dignitaries in Church or State, from ostensible leaders, or from books. Their thinking is done for them by men much like themselves, addressing them or speaking in their name, on the spur of the moment, through the newspapers."
And given the present calibre of our newspapers, this is not a good omen.
Still, since John Stuart Mill wrote this in the 19th century, it's obvious that things were not much better in his day.
In this essay
Everything you need to know
James Leroy Wilson writes, of Albert Jay Nock:
The more Nock was persuaded that humans can not be perfected, the more he looked upon them with a "Christian spirit." Their drives, tastes, and prejudices didn't bother him any more.
It's good advice to those who believe that if only the masses can "be told the truth," they will see the light, change their ways, and reform the system. The best anyone can hope is to reach those with an open mind, who are open to persuasion. We shouldn't expect either the masses or the system to produce freedom or justice - only individuals can choose to be free, and only individuals can be just.''
Maybe this is the only sensible -- or Christian -- attitude to take toward the average man and his irrationality. It may be that we have unrealistic expectations. I have to return to Nock's beliefs that the masses are not amenable to reason or enlightenment; I am afraid that any other view is based on wishful thinking and not on a reading of history.
However, is this not bad news for 'democracy', if the average man, the mass man, is only prey for demagogues and exploiters? What hope is there for representative government, or specifically for our Republic if this is the case?
I suppose I put my hope in the fact that it does not take 'the majority' to make things happen. In fact, if we look at the world now, it's clear that the majority are mere pawns, while a few very powerful -- and very motivated -- people are manipulating the rest.
Maybe all that is necessary to work good is to awaken an equally determined and motivated few to counter the ascendant few who are working so much harm.
Forum comments here.

Labels: Democracy, Egalitarianism, Elections, Politics

In recent threads here, the subject of social class has come up, and of the relative merits of our political system. Most Americans of course believe that ''democracy'' or more correctly, our representative Republic, is the best possible political system. Along with that belief, many Americans also believe that there should be no class distinctions or hierarchies; everybody is as 'good as' the next man, and thus it it good that everyone has a vote and (theoretically) an equal voice in government.
These subjects turn up in a letter written in 1857 by British historian and statesman Thomas Babington Macaulay. The letter was written to American writer H.S. Randall who had written Life of Thomas Jefferson, and sent a copy to Macaulay.
Macaulay responded with a lengthy letter spelling out his doubts about the future of 'democracy' in America, and about the perils of democracy in any country. He specifically referred to the then-recent establishment of democracy in France, pointing out that the result was a looming crisis in France, which appeared to be leading to ''general spoliation, a national bankruptcy, a new partition of the soil, a maximum of prices, a ruinous load of taxation on the rich for the purpose of supporting the poor in idleness.'' But, happily, he says, the danger was averted -- though at the cost of a loss of liberty. It was a choice, he says between civilization and liberty. Macaulay said that the result of such a situation would be the same in Britain, and in the United States.
America, he says, has remained immune from such disturbances because of the smaller population and lower population density. When the United States became more populous, this country too would not be exempt from disturbances in economic hard times, with greater numbers of unemployed and discontented people at the lower end of the economic ladder. Such people would be fodder for demagogues stoking class envy, and promising an equitable redistribution of wealth. The presence of a ruling class would be a protection against such situations, because when the have-nots have sufficient political power, they will vote for their own immediate self-interest and not for the good of the people as a whole.
Macaulay says:
"I seriously apprehend that you will, in some such season of adversity as I have described, do things which will prevent prosperity from returning; that you will act like people who should in a year of scarcity, devour all the seed corn, and thus make the next year a year, not of scarcity, but of absolute famine. There will be, I fear, spoliation. The spoliation will increase the distress. The distress will produce fresh spoliation. There is nothing to stop you. Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor. As I said before, when a society has entered on this downward progress, either civilisation of liberty must perish. Either some Caesar or Napoleon will seize the reins of government with a strong hand; or your republic will be fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians in the twentieth century as the Roman Empire was in the fifth; -- with this difference, that the Huns and Vandals will have been engendered within your own country by your own institutions."
Some sixteen years later, James A. Garfield offered a response to Macaulay's words in a speech called ''The Future of the Republic." Of course Garfield took some exception to Macaulay's rather grim predictions, and to his arguments. He first chides Macaulay for his focus on social class, and being a good American, boasts that we in America recognize no such thing as social class:
"Our society resembles rather the waves of the ocean, whose every drop may move freely among its fellows, and may rise toward the light until it flashes on the crest of the highest wave."
Garfield then moves on to note that Macaulay did not take into account one factor, which Garfield calls ''the great counterbalancing force" -- universal education. Granted, back in 1873 when Garfield's remarks were written, education in this country had not been subverted, gutted, and rendered an absolute detriment as it has been since. In Garfield's day, this country had attained very high levels of literacy, and the immigrants who had begun pouring in from all over Europe were taught English, and Americanized.
In retrospect we can see that too much faith has been placed in our educational system, or universal literacy. If that is our only protection from the social crises that Macaulay warned of, then we are leaning on a very slender reed.
But here, Garfield unexpectedly offers warnings of his own:
"And here is a real peril, -- the danger that we shall rely upon the more extent of the suffrage as a national safeguard. We cannot safely, even for a moment, lose sight of the quality of the suffrage, which is more important than its quantity.
We are apt to be deluded into false security by political catch-words, devised to flatter rather than instruct. We have happily escaped the dogma of the divine right of kings. Let us not fall into the equally pernicious error that multitude is divine because it is a multitude.''
In mentioning the Latin maxim, ''Vox populi, vox Dei", the voice of the people is the voice of God, he says
''It is only when the people speak truth and justice that their voice can be called "the voice of God." Our faith in the democratic principle rests upon the belief that intelligent men will see that their highest political good is in liberty, regulated by just and equal laws; and that, in the distribution of political power, it is safe to follow the maxim, 'Each for all, and all for each." We confront the dangers of suffrage by the blessings of universal education.
[...]
Hence, as popular suffrage is the broadest base, so, when coupled with intelligence and virtue, it becomes the strongest, the most enduring base on which we build the superstructure of government..."
We are now living in a time when Macaulay's warnings are being validated, and when reading Garfield's words, we can see where this country went wrong in extending the suffrage, while at the same time corrupting our educational system and our media.
The colossal mistake of undermining national cohesion and identity by opening our borders to ever more disparate peoples was yet one more nail in the coffin of our republic.
I will give Macaulay the last word here by quoting from one of his essays:
''Our rulers will best promote the improvement of the nation by strictly confining themselves to their own legitimate duties, by leaving capital to find its most lucrative course, commodities their fair price, industry and intelligence their natural reward, idleness and folly their natural punishment, by maintaining peace, by defending property, by diminishing the price of law, and by observing strict economy in every department of the state. Let the Government do this: the People will assuredly do the rest.''

Labels: American History, Constitution, Democracy, Government

Dennis Dale at Untethered has a thought-provoking essay titled The Ever-Expanding Expansionist Compact, II, Empire Abroad, Empire at Home.
In it he very effectively ties together the issue of military adventurism of 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' and the illegal invasion. Here is just a sample:
This imperial expansion of the American Commons directs inward as well; twelve million or (likely many) more illegal squatters, invited by a willfully negligent government acting in defiance of popular will, now lay claim to certain rights, through the fait accompli of their residency, abetted by the lobbying of their native countries and their alliance with political power groups such as La Raza, through implicit compacts of questionable legality with "haven" cities, industries and even with the Catholic Church, that sees its own salvation through fortifying its ranks with the souls, and liberation theology, cast off from Latin America.
A fatal flaw in democracy is exposed: both political parties, each covetous and fearful of the emerging demographic plurality, can only seek to curry its favor through legislation. In this way legislation is extorted from congress through the mass, illegal migration of a group drawn primarily from one nation--a distinct foreign faction. Calling it an "invasion" is more accurate than even some who use the term know.
This elite-abetted invasion rests on the same notion of individual rights above national sovereignty that brings the disaster of the Iraq war--and just as in that case the moral argument is disingenuous cover for crasser goals. Just as the Iraqi became a quasi-citizen of an expanded American state, so too does the illegal immigrant. Expansion abroad is entirely consistent with expansion inward: our own border is ultimately as meaningless as any other. And just as the same liberal values ostensibly to be brought to the world through military conquest are in fact destroyed by it, they are similarly sacrificed to the inward expansion of the elite's imperium. Democracy will not survive the racial factionalization accelerated and aggravated by the current cycle of passive border enforcement relieved by periodic amnesties.''
It should be read in its entirety. Great piece.

Labels: Bloggers, Democracy, Illegal Immigration, Iraq War

I noticed that all day, the news channels were covering Iran nonstop, with shaky video footage of the street disturbances. FoxNews seems to be covering it with the most urgency, with CNN slightly less so.
I've also checked in on the FReepers to see what the consensus over there is, and the original poster of this thread
challenges those FReepers who say 'it's none of our business' and asks "...how can we watch this brutality with good conscious [sic] and do nothing to stop it?"
Answers?
I am one of those the poster denounces, who say 'it's none of our business' and 'we can't be the world's policeman.'
Many Republicans argue that as Americans, we are the ones whose job it is to speak out for 'freedom' and 'democracy' in every country, and that when necessary, we have to be ready to intervene directly so that others can also have 'freedom' and 'liberty'. If not, we are hypocrites. Some are saying that Reagan was our exemplar, and he would surely intervene to 'free' the Iranians.
I can't help cynically wondering if some of those who decry our country's lack of action (so far) on behalf of the Iranians simply enjoy being able to criticize a Democrat President for his inaction. Mind you, I am not saying he is wise in his refraining from action; I think he is simply trying to stay above it and not ''take sides'' since he has aspirations to being some kind of world leader.
However, I don't know whether America will perhaps intervene and do something at some point.
And to be honest, I don't follow the internal politics of Iran to be able to judge their situation. I don't see it as a pressing need. We have our own worries right here in our country as to our own liberty.
For me, it all comes down to the question of whether every people is 'entitled' to freedom, or fit for it, or capable of it. Are all people meant to live under some kind of 'free' republican government, or representative system? And if so, should they not also be capable of establishing it themselves eventually? If freedom is obtained for someone without their having done so themselves, will they appreciate it, or more importantly, will they have what it takes to sustain it and preserve it, once having gotten it?
To me, it seems that this idea that we have to go around bestowing freedom and democracy around the world, and be the world's guarantor of what are vaguely designated as 'human rights', is an extension of colonialism in a way. Why should we have to be 'daddy' to the world, whether sugar daddy for immigrants, or Big-Stick Carrying Daddy for the world outside?
Benjamin Harrison spoke truly when he said "We Americans have no commission from God to police the world."
And Kipling said, accurately, that what we get in return for our troubles, when we try to shoulder others' burdens is "The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard".

Labels: Democracy, Interventionism, Liberty, Middle East, Non-Interventionism

In the wake of recent events in Egypt, it is disheartening to see so much eagerness among some to intervene there in the cause of 'democracy', 'freedom, or whatever high-flown concepts. And this is after we have seen the results of our intervening in Iraq, Afghanistan and wherever else we have left our footprint.
I find it troubling that many people on the right apparently do not know that 'democracy' is not only no panacea for all human ills, but that many great thinkers through the centuries have spoken very bluntly against democracy, and not only against democracy, but against representative government in the case of peoples who are ill-suited or ill-prepared for it. It goes against the egalitarian romanticism of our age to point out that not all peoples are able to be self-governing. The idea is -- well, racist and unfair!
And it's good to remind some of the idealists out there that a great deal of evil has been wrought in the name of 'democracy', and a great many scoundrels have pretended to be acting in the name of 'democracy.'
"Democracy does not exist for a long time - it wastes, exhausts and destroys itself. There was never a democracy that didn't kill itself" - Samuel Adams
"The American form of government is the republic. The true freedom does not exist either under despotism or excesses of democracy" - Alexander Hamilton
"Democracy always leads to conflicts and instability, but never provides for the security of the citizens or their property. Usually it is very short at life, and very bloody at death" -- James Madison
"Democracy is the rule of mobs, tempted by newspaper editors" - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Democracy - it's the rule of the wishes of the mob, or to be exact ambitions and vices of its leaders. The Founding Fathers of our constitution created a republic, which is more different from a democracy, than a democracy is different from despotism " - Fisher Ames
"I have been always sure, that democracy sooner or late will destroy freedom, or civilization, or both" - Thomas Macaulay
"Democracy - it's the tyranny of majority, or more exact, the majority party, which through fraud or cohesion is manipulating the electoral process" - Lord Acton
''Without morals a republic cannot subsist any length of time; they therefore who are decrying the Christian religion�are undermining the solid foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments.'' - Charles Carroll, Signer of Declaration of Independence, to James McHenry, November 4, 1800
"Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact." - Balzac
"It doesn't really matter what one writes into a constitution. The important thing is what the collective instinct eventually makes of it." - Oswald Spengler
''The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please; we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations which may be soon turned into complaints.'' - Edmund Burke, Reflections on the French Revolution
"Democracy is undone by the same vice that ruins oligarchy. But because democracy has embraced anarchy, the damage is more general and far worse, and its subjugation more complete. The truth is, a common rule holds for the seasons, for all the plants and the animals, and particularly for political societies: excess in one direction tends to provoke excess in the contrary direction" - Plato, The Republic
"I wish I could give better hopes of our southern brethren. [Mexico]� what will then become of them? Ignorance and bigotry, like other insanities, are incapable of self-government. They will fall under military despotism �" Thomas Jefferson, to Marquis de Lafayette, 4 May 1817
"Before the French Revolution, it was the prevailing opinion of our countrymen, that other nations were not free, because their despotic governments were too strong for the people. Of course, we were admonished to detest all existing governments, as so many lions in liberty�s path; and to expect by their downfall the happy opportunity, that every emancipated people would embrace, to secure their own equal rights for ever. France is supposed to have had this opportunity, and to have lost it. Ought we not then to be convinced, that something more is necessary to preserve liberty than to love it? Ought we not to see that when the people have destroyed all power but their own, they are the nearest possible to a despotism, the more uncontrolled for being new, and tenfold the more cruel for its hypocrisy." - Fisher Ames. The Dangers of American Liberty (1805)
"� it is a great and dangerous error to suppose that all people are equally entitled to liberty. [Liberty] is a reward to be earned, not a blessing to be gratuitously lavished on all alike � a reward reserved for the intelligent, the patriotic, the virtuous and deserving � and not a boon to be bestowed on a people too ignorant, degraded and vicious, to be capable either of appreciating or of enjoying it. � [A]n all-wise Providence has reserved [liberty], as the noblest and highest reward for the development of our faculties, moral and intellectual. A reward more appropriate than liberty could not be conferred on the deserving � nor a punishment inflicted on the undeserving more just, than to be subject to lawless and despotic rule. This dispensation seems to be the result of some fixed law � and every effort to disturb or defeat it, by attempting to elevate a people in the scale of liberty, above the point to which they are entitled to rise, must ever prove abortive, and end in disappointment. The progress of a people rising from a lower to a higher point in the scale of liberty, is necessarily slow � and by attempting to precipitate, we either retard, or permanently defeat it." - John C. Calhoun
"When the men of our State Department, especially after World War II, went all over the world trying to implant our form - freedom, balance in government, downward on cultures whose philosophy would never have produced it, it has, in almost every case, ended in some form of totalitarianism or authoritarianism." - Francis Schaeffer
"Even if it were desirable, America is not strong enough to police the world by military force. If that attempt is made, the blessings of liberty will be replaced by coercion and tyranny at home. Our Christian ideals cannot be exported to other lands by dollars and guns. Persuasion and example are the methods taught by the Carpenter of Nazareth, and if we believe in Christianity we should try to advance our ideals by his methods. We cannot practice might and force abroad and retain freedom at home.'' - Rep. Howard H. Buffett, during the Korean War
"After each war there is a little less democracy to save." - Brooks Atkinson
"If you want government to intervene domestically, you're a liberal. If you want government to intervene overseas, you're a conservative. If you want government to intervene everywhere, you're a moderate. If you don't want government to intervene anywhere, you're an extremist." - Joseph Sobran
"Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities. An altogether different set of leaders have the confidence of one part of the country and of another. Their mutual antipathies are much stronger than their jealousy of the government... Above all, the grand and only effectual security in the last resort against the despotism of the government is in that case wanting: the sympathy of the army with the people. Soldiers to whose feelings half or three fourths of the subjects of the same government are foreigners, will have no more scruple in mowing them down, and no more reason to ask the reason why, than they would have in doing the same thing against declared enemies. - John Stuart Mill: Considerations on Representative Government

"There is no social engineering that can radically renovate a civilization and change its character, and at the same time keep it going, for civilization is an affair of the human spirit, and the direction of the human spirit cannot be reset by means that are, after all, mechanical. The best thing is to follow the order of nature, and let a moribund civilization simply rot away, and indulge what hope one can that it will be followed by one that is better. This is the course that nature will take with such a civilization anyway, in spite of anything we do or do not do. Revolts, revolutions, dictatorships, experiments and innovations in political practice, all merely mess up this process and make it a sadder and sorrier business than it need be. They are only so much machinery, and machinery will not express anything beyond the intentions and character of those who run it." - Albert Jay Nock, Journal Forgotten
''[In reference to the 'divine right to self-government' of all peoples]'What troubles me is that any civilized White man should write such nonsense. It discloses a total failure to understand or appreciate his own civilization. He has forgotten, if he ever knew, what centuries of effort it took to develop the capacity for self government. He has no real comprehension of the worth of what his forefathers bequeathed him. Consequently, he can have little pride in himself as the legatee.'' - Carleton Putnam, Race and Reality

Labels: Democracy, Freedom, Interventionism, Republican Government

''Where the people possess no authority, their rights obtain no respect.''
The above words were written by George Bancroft, who was a historian, diplomat, and a New England transcendentalist. He was also called 'the father of American History.'
My previous post had to do with the question of whether the 'average' citizen is capable of the demands of participating in the political process of our republic. It may be that because our population has been so dumbed-down and distracted, 'the people possess no authority', in Bancroft's terminology, although he intended another meaning by his words.
Bancroft, like others in his intellectual and social circles, had what I would consider an inordinately high opinion of human perfectibility. I wonder if he were able to time travel, as we discussed the other day, and visit 21st century America, if he would have such a high opinion?
Over at the Nolan Chart, EJ Moosa notes that debate is a lost art in our society.
What are we afraid of? Why are our debates so short? Why are we afraid to debate others on topics of importance? Why do freedom seekers seem to want to stifle debate at the first chance they get? Our presidential debates are not really debates. They are question and answer sessions. The candidates do not go toe to toe, and debate the underlying principles of their beliefs. Those that watch the debates do not have the patience to listen to such a dialog. Either that or they are not really interested unless what they hear reinforced what they already believe. This does not accomplish much.
[...]
Our forefathers debated for weeks and months on issues. Yet here we are and we must be suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder. A five minute discussion and we have had enough.
Why are we afraid of debate? Is it because we must know what we believe to defend what we believe? That we must have absolute principles behind our statements?
We are told that we should not discuss religion, sex or politics with friends. Yet, are those three topics not the most significant in our lives?''
[Emphasis mine]
That last paragraph is something I've said many times over the course of my life -- or at least regarding religion and politics, although Moosa and I would probably find little political or philosophical common ground apart from support for Ron Paul. But we can agree that debate is a lost and dying art.
When it comes to our presidential 'debates', I've lamented here on this blog how they are not debates in any sense of the word, being scripted and staged, and containing few exchanges of any substance, much less formal arguments and rebuttals. But to 21st century, short-attention-span Americans, these 'debates' and what passes for discourse seem good enough.
We may think this is a trifling matter, but I don't believe that we can have any kind of real participatory government, or an informed electorate, without real debate. And in order to have that, we would need to undertake the monumental task of educating the public from the ground up. Our public schools are meant for indoctrination and socialization only, and seem to actively discourage critical, independent thought. And they do not teach young people logic and analytical thinking, or rhetoric. They seem to purposely turn out young people with little capacity for deep thought or any kind of disciplined use of the mind.
But there is something other than poor education and attention deficit disorder that plays into this phenomenon. It has to do with personality traits or social habits.
Americans somehow seem to confuse argument with personal quarreling. Some people do not perceive any difference between a spirited debate about ideas or events, and a barroom brawl, finding both equally unseemly. Some people are quite willing to enter into a spirited debate or discussion and yet they cannot keep it on a detached and objective level, but must turn it into a personal attack. We see this last phenomenon a lot on the Internet; I suspect many of the attackers and trolls on the Internet may be polite people in the real world, who feel their inhibitions loosened in the anonymous world of the Internet. So we have two extremes: people who shy away from all debate and disagreement, even when it is of a very civilized kind, and people who are eager to turn a polite debate into a slanging match and a donnybrook.
We need to be re-educated on how to have a civilized but frank discussion of ideas and issues. We seem to have lost the art of it, if we ever possessed it.
Albert Jay Nock quoted Goethe as saying that the test of civilization is conversation. In The Right Thing, Nock said:
American life has long been fair game for the observer.
[...] So much, in fact, has been written about the way we live, how we occupy ourselves, how we fill up our leisure, the things we do and leave undone, the things we are likely to do and likely to leave undone, that I for one would never ask for another word on such matters from anybody. As a good American, I try to keep up with what is written about us, but it has become rather a dull business and I probably miss some of it now and then, so I cannot say that no observer has ever made a serious study of our conversation. In all I have read, however, very little has been made of the significance of the things we choose to talk about and our ways of talking about them. Yet I am sure that Goethe's method would give a better measure of our civilization than any other, and that it would pay any observer to look into it. For my own part, ever since I stumbled on Goethe's observation --- now more than twenty years ago --- I have followed that method in many lands. I have studied conversation more closely than any other social phenomenon, picking up from it all the impressions and inferences I could, and I have always found that I got as good results as did those whose critical apparatus was more elaborate. At least, when I read what these critics say about such people as I know, especially my own, they seem to tell me little with which I was not already acquainted
[...]
[T]he most significant thing that I have noticed about conversation in America is that there is so little of it, and as time goes on there seems less and less of it in my hearing. I miss even so much of the free play of ideas as I used to encounter years ago. It would seem that my countrymen no longer have the ideas and imagination they formerly had, or that they care less for them, or that for some reason they are diffident about them and do not like to bring them out. When I first remarked this phenomenon I thought it might be an illusion of advancing age, since I have come to years when the past takes on an unnaturally attractive colour. But as time went on the fact became unmistakable and I began to take notice accordingly.''
Nock remarks that Americans don't like to explore a subject in depth, or to hear a range of opinions; there is a pressure to agree.
It is a mark of maturity to differentiate easily and naturally between personal or social opposition and intellectual opposition. Everyone has noticed how readily children transfer their dislike of an opinion to the person who holds it, and how quick they are to take umbrage at a person who speaks in an unfamiliar mode or even with an unfamiliar accent.''
Nock notes the pressure to conform to popular opinion. I think this is especially strong in our society.
Surely this tendency has to translate into bad news for the success of our political system. A democratic republic relies on an informed and civic-minded citizenry, and an open and fair and thoughtful discussion of important issues. Do we have either of these on any scale in America, or anywhere in the Western world these days?
Nock wrote that the extension of the franchise has been detrimental to the character of politics and to the type of person who enters public service:
...One must also remark with interest that in a republic every extension of the franchise has been accompanied by a deterioration in the character of politics and in the personnel of the public service; and this, too, is by hypothesis what one would look for. When England extended its franchise in the last century, Mr. Mill asked pathetically how it was possible to produce great men in a country where the test of a great mind was agreement with the opinions of small minds; and one can easily paraphrase this saying to suit the terms of our hypothesis.
Allowing everything in reason for other contributing causes, there is at least a striking coincidence in the fact that the American public service, all over the land, became fully twofold more irresponsible, unscrupulous, and scandalously wasteful almost at the moment when the electorate was practically doubled by the extension of the suffrage to women.
[...] On its political side, the eighteenth-century doctrine of republicanism, on which the Declaration of Independence and the Federal Constitution are based, turns out to be utterly false and mischievous. This doctrine assumes that if the mass-men take control of politics, if sovereignty be lodged in "the people" and exercised directly by them, they will in time work out a true commonwealth, a political order established on principles of justice, as set forth in the Rights of Man. The ground of this assumption, obviously, is that the mass-man is human, and therefore capable of a degree of development competent for this purpose; and indeed, if this be true, the doctrine is probably sound enough, the only postulate being that of practically unlimited time.''
And now we return to the ideas of Alexander Hamilton, who was quoted in the blog excerpt I posted yesterday:
At the time our republic was established, Alexander Hamilton was one of many who were strongly against this doctrine [of republicanism]. He objected to the experiment of putting sovereignty in the hands of the mass-man, and he expressed himself about it in terms that are curiously anticipatory of the idea that we are discussing. "The people," he said, "are a great beast." Now, if the anthropologists should decide that Hamilton was right about this, if the mass-man be literally and actually not human, if he be essentially incapable of any such degree of development as our eighteenth-century political theory presupposes, then surely republicanism is about the worst system that could be devised, even for the mass-man himself; for, in practice, instead of promoting any such limited development as the mass-man, in common with the other more teachable and imitative forms of animal life, is capable of making, it seems bound to reflect the very lowest common denominator of the mass-man's intelligence and character, and its tendency must be continuously to depress that denominator ever farther.
Thus instead of improving and elevating the mass-man by means of political experience, republicanism serves merely to degrade him. This appears to be what we see taking place. The candidate for political favor is sedulously careful to approach the mass-man on a plane of intelligence and character which is never above that of the mass-man's ordinary self. It is a commonplace of republican politics that he not only does so, but must do so.
The issues and policies that he presents must be such only as are adjustable to a potential majority in a mass-electorate endowed with an unlimited franchise. Thus every republican campaign reminds one of nothing so much as the scene described by Plato, where a huge, sluggish, obscene monster is surrounded by people who are assiduously flattering it, pretending to understand its noises, and in every imaginable way courting its good-will. Hence, by a selective process almost automatic, the political organization of a republican society is bound to be in control of the mass-man who is gifted merely with a low type of sagacity somewhat in excess of his fellow-creatures; whereby he is able to exploit their lack of intelligence, their vagrant attention, their superficial spirit, their hot and cold fits, their superstitions, their tendency always to run to the short-time point of view�and worst of all, their occasional good impulses, their occasional good faith, their boundless credulity, their weak hopes and weaker fears.
All this is extremely bad for the mass-man. What it does in the long run is to snarl up his society in a terrific tangle, wherein he is utterly helpless. Not only the financial genius of Hamilton but also the transcendent philosophical genius of Hegel foresaw this consequence. Hegel said, at the outset of republicanism, that it would culminate in an unexampled catastrophe; for, when all comes to all, republicanism puts upon the mass-man a burden of responsibility which he is not only unable to bear, but wholly incapable even of comprehending. This view has been inconclusively debated ever since the end of the seventeenth century, and its satisfactory conclusion on a priori grounds now seems as remote as it was then. In our own history we find John Adams on one side of the question, saying that the political struggles of the mass-man, left to his own devices, could end only in "a change of impostors." On the other side we are confronted by the great name of Mr. Jefferson, who believed that the mass-man was indefinitely improvable, that he was capable of learning by political experience, and of learning fast enough to enable him to hold his society together in some sort of working order while he was learning more.''
Nock calls our attention to the stark contrast in opinion between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson in their views on the perfectibility of man. On the one hand, Hamilton's rather cynical (or is it realistic?) view, as opposed to Jefferson's more sanguine one. Also on the sanguine side was the assessment of George Bancroft, the transcendentalist historian I quoted at the beginning of this entry. Which view is the correct one?
In an 1835 speech, The People in Art, Government, and Religion, Bancroft said
...the best government rests on the people and not on the few, on persons and not on property, on the free development of public opinion and not on authority; because the munificent Author of our being has conferred the gifts of mind upon every member of the human race without distinction of outward circumstances. Whatever of other possessions may be engrossed, the mind asserts its own independence. Lands, estates, the produce of mines, the prolific abundance of the seas, may be usurped by a privileged class. Avarice, assuming the form of ambitious power, may grasp realm after realm, subdue continents, compass the earth in its schemes of aggrandizement, and sigh after worlds, but mind eludes the power of appropriation; it exists only in its own individuality; it is a property which can not be confiscated and can not be torn away. It laughs at chance; it bursts from imprisonment; it defies monopoly. A government of equal rights must, therefore, rest upon mind, not wealth, not brute force; some of the moral intelligence of the community should rule the State. Prescription can no more assume to be a valid plea for political injustice; society studies to eradicate established abuses and to bring social institutions and laws into harmony with moral right; not dismayed by the natural and necessary imperfections of all human effort, and not giving way to despair because every hope does not at once ripen into fruit.
[...]
The world can advance only through the culture of the moral and intellectual powers of the people. To accomplish this end by means of the people themselves is the highest purpose of government. If it be the duty of the individual to strive after a perfection like the perfection of God, how much more ought a nation to be the image of duty. The common mind is the true Parian marble fit to be wrought into the likeness to a God. The duty of America is to secure the culture and the happiness of the masses by their reliance on themselves.
[...]
It is the uniform tendency of the popular element to elevate and bless humanity. The exact measure of the progress of civilization is the degree in which the intelligence of the common mind has prevailed over wealth and brute force: in other words, the measure of the progress of civilization is the progress of the people.
[...]
It is alone by infusing great principles into the common mind that revolutions in human society are brought about. They never have been, they never can be effected by superior individual excellence. The age of the Antonines is the age of the greatest glory of the Roman Empire. Men distinguished by every accomplishment of culture and science for a century in succession possessed undisputed sway over more than one hundred millions of men, until, at last, in the person of Marcus Aurelius, philosophy herself seemed to mount the throne. And did she stay the downward tendencies of the Roman Empire? Did she infuse new elements of life into the decaying constitution? Did she commence one great beneficent reform? Not one permanent amelioration was effected. Philosophy was clothed with absolute power; and yet absolute power accomplished nothing for humanity. It could accomplish nothing. Had it been possible, Aurelius would have wrought a change. Society can be regenerated, the human race can be advanced, only by moral principles diffused through the multitude.
[...]
The irresistible tendency of the human race is therefore to advancement, for absolute power has never succeeded and can never succeed in suppressing a single truth. An idea once revealed may find its admission into every living breast and live there. Like God, it becomes immortal and omnipresent. The movement of the species is upward, irresistibly upward. The individual is often lost; providence never disowns the race. No principle once promulgated has ever been forgotten. No "timely tramp" of a despot�s foot ever trod out one idea. The world can not retrograde; the dark ages can not return. Dynasties perish, seeds are buried, nations have been victims to error, martyrs for right; humanity has always been on the advance, gaining maturity, universality, and power.
No truth can perish, no truth can pass away; the flame is undying, tho generations disappear. Wherever moral truth has struck into being, humanity claims and guards the greatest bequest. Each generation gathers together imperishable children of the past, and increases them by new sons of light alike radiant with immortality.''
[Emphasis mine]
There is a degree of truth, I think, in Bancroft's words, but I think his philosophical beliefs inclined him to think somewhat too highly of the perfectibility of the human being. History does not seem to bear out his belief that 'humanity has always been on the advance.' Too often, for the human race, it's one step forward and several steps back, just as I observed yesterday of certain individuals I've encountered. In a way, they typify the human race. Just as when we congratulate ourselves that humanity 'gets it', and we think we are on the way to solving the riddles of the human condition, we see a retrograde movement of the human race. We seem, as a species, to have to keep reinventing the wheel, where our moral and societal development is concerned.
Nock noted that the efforts of the political and social reformers hinged on the question of whether Man is perfectible, or even substantially improvable. If he is, then the pollyannas and the utopian reformers must keep on trying to perfect humanity. If he is not perfectible or even substantially capable of improving or 'evolving' then we had better scale back our hopes for do-gooding projects and government interventions. So this question is central to our politics.
But such questions are never considered, much less discussed by the reformers; we go blithely on assuming that we can continue our endless efforts to improve human nature, despite the observable lack of progress in that area.
Meanwhile, our public discussion is centered on the trivial and the superficial, our discourse deteriorates, and we are left with a feeling of dissatisfaction. In Nock's words,
The civilization of a country consists in the quality of life that is lived there, and this quality shows plainest in the things that people choose to talk about when they talk together, and in the way they choose to talk about them.
It can be taken for granted, I suppose, that man has certain fundamental instincts which must find some kind of collective expression in the society in which he lives. The first and fundamental one is the instinct of expansion, the instinct for continuous improvement in material well-being and economic security. Then there is the instinct of intellect and knowledge, the instinct of religion and morals, of beauty and poetry, of social life and manners. Man has always been more or less consciously working towards a state of society which should give collective expression to these instincts. If society does not give expression to them, he is dissatisfied and finds life irksome, because every unused or unanswered instinct becomes a source of uneasiness and keeps on nagging and festering within him until he does something about it.
Moreover, human society, to be permanently satisfactory, must not only express them all in due balance, proportion, and harmony. If too much stress be laid on any one, the harmony is interrupted, uneasiness and dissatisfaction arise, and, if the interruption persists. disintegration sets in. The fall of nations, the decay and disappearance of whole civilizations, can be finally interpreted in terms of the satisfaction of these instincts. Looking at the life of existing nations, one can put one's finger on those instincts which are being collectively overdone at the expense of the others. In one nation the instinct of expansion and the instinct of intellect and knowledge are relatively over-developed; in another, the instinct of beauty; in another, the instinct of manners; and so on. The term symphonic, which is so often sentimentally applied to the ideal life of society, is really descriptive; for the tendency of mankind from the beginning has been towards a functional blending and harmony among these instincts, precisely like that among the choirs of an orchestra. It would seem then that the quality of life in any society means the degree of development attained by this tendency. The more of these instincts that are satisfied, and the more delicate the harmony of their interplay, the higher and richer is the quality of life in that society; and it is the lower and poorer according as it satisfies fewer of these instincts and permits disharmony in their interplay.''
It would appear that we in America and probably in the West in general have developed the instinct for expansion almost to the exclusion of the other instincts, such as that for religion and morals, intellect and knowledge, and beauty.
And as ideas and ideals as well as emotions, that make us individuals, Nock observed that we are thus less individuated and more conformist. This, although he did not spell it out, would seem to make us inclined towards a mass society, which does not brook much dissension. There is a pressure toward consensus; peer pressure often shapes ideas and ideals and emotions, thus depleting our individuality in what should be the most individualized areas.
To bring this down to the mundane level of our present political campaign, we see the people stampeding, or being stampeded, towards candidates who seem to be the poorest of fits for the expressed wishes of the people: in an era in which many people mobilized to fight amnesty, we get three pro-amnesty candidates. In an era in which most people seem to be disillusioned with if not staunchly opposed to the Iraq War, we get three candidates who will pursue more war. How is this happening? Are the elections rigged? Or are people just being caught up in the bandwagon effect, and passively acquiescing in what is being presented to them as an inevitability, with which they had better get on board?
I think there is much of the latter, and it is no surprise in a society which thinks debate and argument is rude, a society in which people who differ from majority opinion are ridiculed as 'kooks' (Ron Paul and his supporters), that people are willing to be herded toward a comfortable consensus, in which everybody splits the difference though nobody really gets what they want.
I can't help but think that this is not what our forefathers had in mind when they conceived of our system.
How can we extricate ourselves from this situation? Or can we? Does the fault lie in our stars or in ourselves?
I think the very first thing that must happen, if there is any hope at all, is that we have to reinstate free speech, plain talk, and common sense. We have to re-learn, or learn for the first time in some cases, how to think logically and dispassionately, and we have to be able to debate and discuss and talk among ourselves in a civilized way about the urgent issues of our time. This is the absolute first step.
This would be the first step to 'possessing authority' and thus the first step toward obtaining respect for our rights as the people.
Forum comments here.

Labels: Democracy, Elections, Founding Fathers, Government, Politics, Presidential Debates, Societal Decay

A recent discussion on this blog addressed the question of potential scenarios for a breakup of the United States. What about the possibility of a political solution to our pressing problems? Is it plausible? Can it be done by political means, presumably by means of working within the existing system?
I've made it pretty clear that I no longer think it can be done, simply because the two existing parties have both been subverted and destroyed from within. Not too many years ago I wouldn't have imagined that I would become one of those cynics who says 'the system is rigged' or 'no matter who you vote for, the Government always gets in.' But I have lost faith in our system. I have no confidence that the electronic voting system is honest, or that various forms of voter fraud (which are known to occur) haven't decided the outcome of our elections. And even if the casting and counting of ballots were scrupulously honest and above board, it seems that the candidates at a national level are handpicked by people behind the scenes. The candidates are pre-chosen in ways that give us little say or little choice. In this last travesty of an election, we had two candidates who were in favor of amnesty, for example, and who differed little on crucial matters that beset our country, such as race relations.
The primary system, too, was seemingly rigged in a way that skewed the results.
Never have I had so little trust in 'the system.'
I spent a lot of time and bandwidth arguing for a third party which would represent some alternative to the status quo, a party which would represent traditional America, or at least a party which is not one more variation on the same old PC themes. The Constitution Party seemed an acceptable alternative, as did Ron Paul's candidacy, though Paul and his followers insisted on race-denial.
However it seems that both those alternatives made a dismal showing, in part because some voters on the right felt that the possible scenarios would not allow for ''throwing one's vote away'' on a third party, and so they felt compelled to vote for McCain or in some bizarre cases, for Obama on the 'worse is better' theory. How's that working out, by the way?
So, given that for the moment we seem to be stuck with the existing two major parties, both of which have seriously failed us, what chance do we have for staying with the status quo and turning this ship around before we hit the lethal iceberg, in 2042 or before?
Read the discussion at Sailer's blog on the question 'What can the GOP do to revive itself?' However, if you don't want to be completely demoralized and discouraged, best not read it. The impression I get from many of the comments is that most people think 'winning' by compromising in various ways (stop 'gay-bashing', get rid of those annoying Christians, ''reach out'' to some minority or other, go libertarian, etc.) is the only thing.
Sailer's commentariat is, I would guess, slightly to the right of most Americans and even they are far to my left.
Even if the GOP somehow was revivified and regenerated into a recognizably conservative, American party, the part of the White majority, do we even have time to use electoral means to avert the crises which loom ahead? Will it be possible to do so after four years (at least) of the reckless 'remaking America?' Could a 'remade' America even be put back together again, or would it, like Humpty Dumpty, be irreparably broken?
Would even an ideal political party be enough to offset the changing demographics of America, and the intractable problems of dozens of competing nationalities, races, and religions under one 'American' tent, however big?

Labels: Conservatism, Democracy, Demographics, Gop, Political Parties, Politics, Social Change

Darrell Dow at the Dow Blog has a particularly fine post about 'Guilt, Atonement, and Foreign Policy.'
How has this desire for atonement driven American foreign policy? Through the systematic propagation of guilt, Americans have been indoctrinated with a belief that their history is little more than a series of power-grabs, a desolation of innocents. We are repeatedly assured that our history is simply an account of guilt toward Blacks, Jews, Chinese, Indians, Mexicans and ultimately the entire world.
The result of this defective history is a politics loaded down with guilt, in the face of which the populace assumes a posture of submissiveness. A foreign policy elite than is able to advance its interests by claiming a "humanitarian" justification for military adventurism, effectively placing guilt on one party in the midst of great complexity (e.g., Serbs vs. Bosnians, Russians vs. Georgians, etc.). Thus we are urged to atone for our sins by "saving" a "tyrannized" people from their "oppressors."
The other possibility is to heap the guilt upon ourselves and assume responsibility for every malady on all continents. All the guilt for the starving and oppressed of the world or the ruination and environmental degradation of the planet is thus placed squarely at our feet. Atonement in this scenario leads to foreign aid schemes and similar looting of taxpayers.
Good points. And so many of the Christians I know are heavily into guilt over poverty and want in the Third World, which they deal with by constantly fixating on the Third World in their charitable works, at the expense of charity nearer to home. But there isn't as much glory and applause and potential for patting oneself on the back with doing kindnesses to people right here at home.
But please read the rest of the post at Dow Blog.

Labels: Democracy, Foreign Wars, Interventionism, Poverty, Racial Guilt

More ''lighthouses in a foggy world'', with some wisdom on these subjects.
Liberty, equality, fraternity -- and democracy:
"Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people... Be not intimidated, therefore, by any terrors, from publishing with the utmost freedom...nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberty by any pretenses of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery, and cowardice."
-- John Adams
"When you become entitled to exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be impressed on your mind that God commands you to choose for rulers, just men who will rule in the fear of God. The preservation of a republican government depends on the faithful discharge of this duty; if the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made not for the public good so much as for the selfish or local purposes. Corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the Laws; the public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizens will be violated or disregarded. If a republican government fails to secure public prosperity and happiness, it must be because the citizens neglect the divine commands, and elect bad men to make and administer the Laws." - Noah Webster, History of the United States
"The destiny of any nation at any given time depends on the opinion of its young people, those under twenty-five." - Goethe
''If men use their liberty in such a way as to surrender their liberty, are they thereafter any the less slaves? If people by a plebiscite elect a man despot over them, do they remain free because the despotism was of their own making?" - Herbert Spencer, The New Toryism, 1884
"I could see how 'democracy' might do very well in a society of saints and sages led by an Alfred or an Antoninus Pius. Short of that, I was unable to see how it could come to anything but an ad-hocracy of mass-men led by a sagacious knave. The collective capacity for bringing forth any other outcome seemed simply not there. To my ideas the incident of Aristides and the Athenian mass-man was perfectly exhibitory of 'democracy' in practice. Socrates could not have got votes enough out of the Athenian mass-men to be worth counting, but Eubulus easily could, and did, wangle enough to keep himself in office as long as the corrupt fabric of the Athenian State held together. As against a Jesus, the historic choice of the mass-man goes regularly to some Barabbas." - Albert Jay Nock, Memoirs
"A democracy is a state in which the poor, gaining the upper hand, kill some and banish others, and then divide the offices among the remaining citizens equally, usually by lot." - Plato, The Republic, VIII
"Democracy arose from men thinking that if they are equal in any respect they are equal in all respects." - Aristotle, Politics
"A democracy is a government in the hands of men of low birth, no property, and vulgar employments." - Aristotle, Rhetoric
"If there were a nation of gods they would be governed democratically, but so perfect a government is not suitable to men.'' - Rousseau, Du contrat social, III
"Equality may exist only among slaves." - Aristotle
"Equality is a slogan based on envy. It signifies in the heart of every republican: 'Nobody is going to occupy a place higher than I.� - Alexis de Tocqueville
"Political equality is against nature. Social equality is against nature. Economic equality is against nature. The idea of equality is subversive of order.'' - Edmund Burke
''There is nothing more unequal, than the equal treatment of unequal people.'' - Thomas Jefferson
"It is inequality that gives enlargement to religion, to intellect, to energy, to virtue, to love and to wealth. Equality of intellect stabilizes mediocrity. Equality of wealth makes all men poor. Equality of religion destroys all creeds. Equality of energy renders all men sluggards. Equality of virtue suspends all men without the gates of Heaven. Equality of love stultifies every manly passion, destroys every family altar and mongrelizes the races of men. Equality homogenizes so that cream does not rise to the top. It puts the eagle in the hen house so that he may no longer soar." - R. Carter Pittman
"The acceptance of democracy by all European nations is deadly for the proper governorship, freedom, law, order, respect of authority and religion, and at the end will lead to chaos, out of which will appear the worldwide tyranny" - The Duke of Northumberland
"Democracy does not exist for a long time - it wastes, exhausts and destroys itself. There was never a democracy that didn't kill itself" Samuel Adams
"The American form of government is the republic. The true freedom does not exist either under despotism or excesses of democracy" Alexander Hamilton
"Democracy always leads to conflicts and instability, but never provides for the security of the citizens or their property. Usually it is very short at life, and very bloody at death" -- James Madison
"Between republic and democracy there is the same difference as between order and chaos" - John Marshall, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court
"Democracy is the rule of mobs, tempted by newspaper editors" - Ralph Waldo Emerson
''Enforced fraternity destroys liberty.'' - Frederic Bastiat

Labels: Democracy, Egalitarianism, Equality, Founding Fathers, Politics, Quotations

Over at American Thinker there is a pretty good piece entitled 'How Democracies Become Tyrannies'. It sums up the process rather well, by examining Plato's Republic.
In the Republic, two young men, Glaucon and Adeimantus, accompany the much older Socrates on a journey of discovery into the nature of the individual soul and its connection to the harmony of the state. During the course of their adventure, as the two disciples demonstrate greater maturity and self-control, they are gradually exposed to deeper and more complex teachings regarding the relationship between virtue, self-sufficiency, and happiness. In short, the boys begin to realize that justice and happiness in a community rests upon the moral condition of its citizens. This is what Socrates meant when he said: "The state is man writ large."
Near the end of the Republic Socrates decides to drive this point home by showing Adeimantus what happens to a regime when its parents and educators neglect the proper moral education of its children. In the course of this chilling illustration Adeimantus comes to discover a dark and ominous secret: without proper moral conditioning a regime's "defining principle" will be the source of its ultimate destruction. For democracy, that defining principle is freedom. According to Socrates, freedom makes a democracy but freedom also eventually breaks a democracy.''
It's good as far as it goes, and it applies to our present situation. Still, it could be said that our decline into tyranny was in the cards, given the trends of the last half-century, or even a century -- or more, depending on how you read and interpret our history.
But over at Gates of Vienna, El Inglés writes a piece called Pick a Tribe, Any Tribe, in which he examines how the presence of Moslems in the European countries, including the UK, has been a destructive force for democracy and freedom. And he discusses how a resurgence of tribalism may be the only way in which the incursions of Islam may be resisted.
The central contention of this essay is that tribalism will prove to be an essential component, if not the central component, in allowing a defense of Western societies against Islam. There are two reasons for this. The first is that such tribalisms will tend to keep Muslims out of those societies in the first place, and the second is that certain types of situations impose such severe psychological pressure on those who would confront them that they cannot consistently or usefully do so without a type and degree of psychological reinforcement that can only be provided by a tribe.''
But wait; he does not define 'tribes' by the conventional dictionary definition.
According to my old Webster's, the word 'tribe' means 'a social group comprising a series of families, clans, or generations...', whereas El Inglés says that
The most obvious and common tribal types would be those organized along racial lines (for the most obvious and literal type of tribe), cultural lines, religious lines (which tribes could be considered a subset of cultural tribes, as they pertain to behaviour and belief), ideological lines (Communists vs. Fascists), regional lines (my nation against yours, North against South), or organizational lines (a British Army regiment).''
I've said on this blog before that 'tribes' which have been formed on ideological lines, such as the hard-core left in this country, have taken the place of real tribes in postmodern America. Certain other groups, such as young single people under, say 30 or perhaps 35 also have become a kind of tribe. This goes back at least to the Woodstock days -- remember how the Woodstock rock festival was billed as 'the gathering of the tribes'? For some people, the American identity is their only 'tribal' identity, but the people who are that kind of 'patriot' also tend to be the types who aver that anybody and everybody is potentially one of us, by virtue of saluting our flag or 'believing in freedom.'
But I would say that these quasi-tribes, these superficial identities would not have morphed into 'tribal' groupings had we not become deracinated. For years there has been a conscious effort to remove all vestiges of genetic tribal loyalties, and to convince us that we are all brothers under the skin, at least as long as we believe in 'freedom and democracy.'
It's obvious, though, to those who have not been blinded to group and race differences that when an American, or a Western European, says 'freedom' it likely has a much different meaning than it does to a Middle Easterner or a Latin American or an Asian.
Yet we engage in this pretense that all men speak a common language and are of the same mind when it comes to these slogans and shibboleths like 'freedom', 'liberty' and 'democracy.' And it is this pretense that has allowed so many people to believe that we can admit millions of people from very alien societies under the assumption that they 'love freedom and democracy' in exactly the same way that we do, and moreover, who are we to deny 'freedom and democracy' to these poor people by refusing to let them come and live with us?
El Ingles discusses how 'principle' is not sufficient to motivate Europeans to oppose Islam, and how principle itself can be (and has been) corrupted in the attempt to 'dialogue' or engage peaceably with Moslems. And it's not only the Moslems themselves who twist and pervert principles, but their multicultist groupies in the West also do their part.
He points out how principle, had it been applied usefully to prevent the mass settlement of Moslems in Europe, might have been sufficient, but once the enemy is within the gates and using Western rhetoric to diminish the rights of their host peoples, it's too late.
This applies very much to America, too, although our percentage of Moslems is at this point considerably smaller than in Europe. However the tidal wave of Latin American immigrants, legal and illegal, are our equivalent of the Moslem problem. And we are weakened in defending ourselves for the same reasons: we have become deracinated and stripped of normal and healthy tribalism, while they themselves are allowed to be openly tribal and aggressively ethnocentric towards us.
Many Europeans, and even many shortsighted Americans, refuse to recognize the fact that Latino immigration is as big a threat to us as Moslems are to Europe. The people who minimize the threat they pose usually justify that attitude by saying 'well, at least they aren't trying to blow us up, and at least they are Christian, and at least they are hard workers...'' and so on. In fact, I would say that the sort of 'humble' image Latinos have acquired makes them appear more harmless than they are. The idea that 'at least they don't blow us up' is sufficient reason to welcome them is absurd, and I wonder if the people who say that ever read their local newspapers or look at the 'most wanted' posters for their towns or cities. So far there is no open terrorism, but many, many crimes against Americans by Latino immigrants constitute a kind of low-grade terrorism in my book, and it's fact that more Americans have been killed by those 'hard-working' folk than in the Iraq war, as of now.
And even were they not committing violence, low-grade or otherwise against us, it's clear that their presence is changing our country beyond recognition in many areas, and that they are bringing their culture with them, and replacing ours.
And the real way to deal with this problem should have been to act preventively, but once we have masses of these interlopers in our country, we have already sacrificed a great deal of our right to speak freely and candidly and honestly, because of the PC censors, and because we censor ourselves. It's easy and painless to declare pre-emptively that we don't want immigrants from certain countries, and we used to have such sensible policies, before 1965. But now that we have tens of millions of Latinos and who knows how many other immigrants in our midst, we cannot speak so frankly. And once we 'know' individuals from each group, we soften somewhat; somebody has a Hispanic co-worker, or they have Hispanic famiies attending their church, or someone knows friendly Moslems who run a local business. On and on it goes, and soon it becomes unthinkable to think of suggesting these people don't belong among us. We begin to see them as part of the natural American landscape, or we feel pity or sympathy for them. Nobody wants to be the hard-hearted person who would repatriate them. So the more of them living among us, the harder it becomes for us to think tribally and thus 'exclude' anybody. Even if we are not multiculturalist bleeding-hearts, most of us don't want to be harsh or unfriendly when we look at the outsiders who are among us -- even if they have no problem being hostile towards us.
I used to believe that the UK and the rest of Europe had an advantage in resisting the invasions of their countries, in that Islam is a much more obviously threatening system which is so obviously alien to Europe. For that reason, one would think that the natural ethnocentrism and desire to defend oneself and one's people would kick in and enable the Europeans to resist the Islamization of their countries. But for some reason, such doesn't seem to be the case.
We, on the other hand, are lulled by the fact that we have been next door to Mexico for centuries, and we have had small numbers of Hispanic immigrants for decades, with many of them having become quasi-assimilated after several generations. Again, we are lulled into thinking that they are 'Christian' like most of us, or that they are 'Western' as some people strangely claim. Many Americans thus blind themselves to the Hispanic presence here.
I don't quite understand El Ingles's ambivalence towards the BNP:
Let me put it succinctly: if the BNP won two seats at the next general election, I would be delighted. If it won two hundred, I would emigrate. I view BNP support as playing a role similar to that of a price in a free-market economy, which is to say that I see it as a signal conveying a certain type of information. If the BNP were to be banned and its support therefore to disappear at the electoral level, this information would be lost to the system, easing the pressure on the establishment parties to formulate a real response to Islamization, which I fervently hope they will eventually do. Lamenting the advances of nativist groups at this level would be like lamenting a rise in the price in oil when demand grows more quickly than supply. That said, given my beliefs about the gap between the true ideological commitments of the BNP leadership and the motivations of those who vote for it, it is impossible for me to avoid the conclusion that it would be a disaster for it to obtain real power.''
but then I am not British; I don't know the full situation as he might.
I encourage you to read the whole piece.
From where I sit, the BNP are the only party speaking up for the historic British people; without them or someone like them, there would be no hope, as the two major parties are as anti-British and pro-multiculturalist as our two useless parties are.
My doubts about the BNP come from the opposite direction: it seems I detect some efforts to be 'inclusive' and to thus play to the politically correct and the timid. I think this is always a bad move. Being 'inclusive' to outsiders or attempting to prove one's lack of 'bigotry' is always a victory for political correctness. I believe that a sharp correction to the right is absolutely essential to counter the many decades of leftward movement. The effort to prove one's lack of 'xenophobia' or 'racism' is exactly what has put the West at the edge of the precipice. More of the same will push us over the edge.
I fear that ingrained vestiges of political correctness on the right will doom any nativist efforts to resist what is happening. We have been taught for so long that ethnocentrism and nativism are evil, and that we must lean over backwards to expunge any hint of these things from ourselves and our political organizations. This merely helps our foes and may ultimately doom the West, if it continues.

Labels: Cultural Marxism, Democracy, Ethnocentrism, Islam, Mass Immigration, Multiculturalism, Political Correctness, Tribalism, Tyranny