democracy and rights

I've always thought of "democracy," at least insofar as it relates to this country, as a matter of the vote.  We elect our leadership, for example, in elections that are mostly fair and open -- mostly.  We could list the abuses here -- gerrymandering that undermines our pretentions to fairness and various registration laws that undermine our pretentions to openness -- but those are recognized problems amenable to solution, if, that is, we want a more (not less) democratic nation.  In a democracy, a majority vote decides matters, and so too I have always thought that democracy could be described basically as majority rule.  While there is room for greater nuance, the vote and majority rule seem to sit at the crux of the matter.

There are problems with the core idea of democracy, and our founding fathers recognized many of them.  What if, for example, a majority of the people (think the unwashed rabble) voted to take property from the rich and redistribute it?  This was the first and perhaps most enduring question of "minority rights," for the rich, the very rich, will always be a significant minority. They are significant, of course, because wealth clearly buys influence, if not outright power, disproportionate to their numbers. One might argue that this difference lies at the core of our two party system with the Democrats mostly favoring the acquisition of property through progressive taxation and its redistribution through social programs, while the Republicans are diligent in protecting property rights against taxation and redistribution.  Each side of the debate can present rational explanations, some better than others, some more persuasive than others, for why their way is the best way. 

I won't delve into the economic discussion here.  There are secondary, but equally enduring questions of "minority rights," those associated with religious, ethnic, and racial minorities.  Not to be crude, but if a religious, ethnic or racial minority is perceived to be a problem for whatever reason, the majority, particularly an empowered majority, will eventually ask itself, "why not kill them all?"'  Black slaves were too valuable a commodity for genocide, at least until their emancipation, and even then were valuable as a source of cheap labor, at least as long as they "knew their place," and so various repressive measures were enacted to keep them in place.  As we all know, however, the "only good Indian is a dead Indian."  Since Native Americans were not particularly adaptable to forced labor, they were subject to the genocidal urge as their property became more and more valuable.  One might think of it as a particularly despotic form of majority rule, genocide and redistribution.

Beyond "minority rights," there are other "rights" that seem crucial.  Free speech and the right to a free press, for example, seem crucial because the electorate, if it is to vote wisely, needs to be informed.  As the mast head of the Washington Post puts it, "democracy dies in darkness." There are any number of reasons to denigrate and defend the so-called media in general.  And whether the Washington Post in particular is itself a beacon of light can be debated.  Nevertheless, an initial step in a any would-be tyrant's playbook is control of the media, and if anything in Trump's presidency should give us pause, it is his insatiable desire to dominate the news with his presence on the one hand, while denigrating fact-based news, particularly inconvenient fact-based news, as fake-news on the other.  Still and all, there's room for optimism.  As Lincoln put it, "you can fool all of the people some of the time, some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time."  As I put it in my previous post, reality has a way of asserting itself, and despite everything we might want to believe, we nevertheless live in the real world.

Altogether, I am simply suggesting that democracy is, to use Churchill's familiar platitude, "the worst form of government, except for all those others that have been tried from time to time," and it stands to reason.  On the assumption that people do not want to suffer, there is a sort of utilitarian calculus imbedded within democracy as majority rule.  Given the opportunity to avoid suffering, most people will, and in the aggregate scheme of things, democracy will decrease suffering for a plurality and thereby give us a greater good.  Having said this, however, there is an assumption that the potential "tyranny of the majority" is restrained by "rights" that prevent a prevailing majority from inflicting pain on a minority. 

I am not suggesting, however, that there is anything like an equilibrium between majority rule and minority rights.   On the economic front, when unions first began to organize against their employers, one might suggest that federal troops were used to protect the minority rights of property owners against an emergent majority.  On the social front, when Rosa Parks resisted Jim Crow laws, one might suggest that local police were deployed to reassert a tyranny of the majority, while eventually federal troops were (had to be?) deployed to protect the rights of an emergent black minority.  Of course, there’s a good deal of “messiness” in both tales that cannot be captured in a sentence, nor am I attempting to elide the “messiness,” but there is a push and pull between “majority rule” and “minority rights,” and there is no reason to believe that we will ever reach any sort of perfect equilibrium.   

Before I go on, as a detour that I promise will lead back to the main road, let me introduce a notion that I borrow vaguely from James Carse, without particular reference to his actual argument -- the notion of finite and infinite games.  The prototype of a finite game, of course, is any athletic contest.  There is a point of initiation and conclusion, a first pitch and a final out in the bottom of the ninth when a winner is declared.   The prototype of an infinite game is science.  If we think of science as "human knowledge and comprehension," there was no particular point of origin (unless one adds a modifier like "modern science") nor will there be a moment of conclusion when everything is known and completely understood.  There might be milestones along the way, when the rules of the game change (e.g. the shift from hermeneutics and deference to authority to experimentation and deference to observation which define "modern science") or when there are major leaps in understanding (e.g. the so-called Copernican revolution) but there is no particular end in sight for human knowledge and comprehension, unless it's the end of humanity, at which point it will cease to matter, at least to humans.

Between the clearly finite and the clearly infinite, there is a sort of intermediate stance.  If we consider the broader game of baseball itself, there is a point of origin for the game, and it has evolved over time with shifts in rules and norms of play, but there is no particular prescribed end to the game.  Any particular contest within "baseball" is clearly finite with a designated winner.  Any particular season within "baseball" is clearly finite with a designated "world series champ."  Still, for the players and the fans there's always "next year," and the game goes on with no foreseeable end in sight.  Having said this, however, few I think would assume that baseball is "infinite," and there may come a day when it is deemed barbaric or as irrelevant as roller derby.   Steps can be taken to make it less barbaric, like improved helmets for batters, or more relevant, like youth programs to foster interest, but the day may come when the last game is played and baseball fades into history as a curiosity.

Now back to the main road.  Our particular American form of government is less like science, and more like baseball -- it is played as if it were an infinite game, with no designated end in sight, with two teams, the conservative red sox lined up against the liberal blue sox vying for intermittent supremacy.  The red socks won in 2016, but just wait until 2020.  I say it is played as if it were an infinite game, though clearly it is possible to imagine a time when our government may go the way of the Habsberg Monarchy and fade into history.  Indeed, it seems a minor publishing industry has sprung up surrounding apocalyptic "end of democracy" scenarios, some more plausible than others, but there is an emerging anxiety that our particular American form of government, that balances the will of the majority against the rights of the minority, is under threat.  Although I would like to be, I have to admit that I'm not altogether optimistic myself that our government can emerge unscathed from the current political climate of which Trump is the major symptom, though not the underlying disease.

In the terms I have set out above, on the one hand, there is a prevailing sense that government no longer reflects the will of the people, but rather the will of their major donors.  During the run up to the election, both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump appealed to a popular sentiment that government is controlled by special interests and elites of one sort or another. Although one cannot know exactly what Sanders might have done, despite pledges to drain the swamp, Trump's administration has done more to ensconce elites and may well go down in history as one of the most corrupt in history, edging out Grant and Harding for the title.  On the other hand, there is a sense that "rights" are under attack.  Whether it is the 2nd Amendment right to own what many perceive as the means to mayhem, or the Roe v Wade right to commit what many perceive to be the murder of a child, the general feeling is the same, a sense that "rights" have been eroded.  In short, though our American form of government has always been adversarial, many feel, I feel, that we are no longer engaged in the actual sporting contest, as though the game itself has been abandoned, the teams have rushed the field, and a brawl has ensued.   

As Norm Ornstein put it for the Atlantic, the malaise is

stronger and deeper than most veteran political analysts realized or were willing to acknowledge.  They are neither immediate nor transitory phenomena.  The disdain for the status quo, for authority figures of both parties and other institutions, and the anger at inexorable changes in society are real, enduring, and especially deep on the Republican side.  Ideology forms a significant part of that anger, but it transcends much of the predictable divide between liberals and conservatives.

How do we understand the current malaise?  The first key to a real understanding might be "don't panic."  Although I find Trump alarming, and his rhetoric boorish and dispiriting, I nevertheless share Pinker's appraisal that the state of the world is better today than at any time in the past.  To lend credence to his optimism, he suggests a Rawls-like thought experiment.  Imagine you are in line waiting to be born on earth.  You can choose any historical period you like, but you must choose under a veil of ignorance -- that is to say, you cannot choose what today we might call markers of identity, your race, your gender, your ethnicity, your parents education and income level, et cetera.  Anyone who chooses any time other than the present is setting themselves up for a huge disappointment.  It may have been great if you're born white, male, Anglo-Saxon, of a well-educated and rich lineage, but what if you're born black, female, African, of an illiterate and slave lineage?  Not so great. 

Ezra Klein, who shares Pinker's optimism, quotes Ian Haney Lopez, who calls the 20th century United States "'a herrenvolk liberal democracy' -- a democracy for the majority ethnic group but something very different for the rest of society."   Having said that, it was a “herrenvolk” democracy, a majority ethnic group subject to the push and pull of minority rights.   If "being more democratic" represents progress – that is to say, if the inclusion of racial and ethnic minorities into the political system has extended beyond the “herrenvolk” represents progress -- then are more democratic today than we have ever been in the past.   Not only do women have the franchise, but blacks and Hispanics are better (though not perfectly) able to exercise their right to vote.  As I've noted above, there are still impediments that need to be addressed, but they are not the impediments of 1840, nor are they the impediments of 1940, nor even the impediments of 1960.   

Trump's promise to "make America great again" is in part a call to reinstate our “herrenvolk liberal democracy,” and he might succeed in a limited fashion, for a limited time.  I doubt, however, that he will succeed for long.  I am not suggesting that the resistance should quit resisting – Hitler, after all, succeeded in a limited fashion, for a limited time in creating his Nietzchian paradise -- but Trump’s over-sized ego and his hyperbolic bravado poorly disguises something desperate and pathetic.  As many have noted, for example, the tide of demographics is clearly against him.   We are edging into a minority-majority future, and so long as the conservative red sox identify themselves more and more as the provincial party of the white Christian nationalists, the liberal blue sox will continue to build a cosmopolitan multi-racial, multi-ethnic plurality.   One suspects the future will be more blackish than black and white, more tacos and tempura than chicken-fried steaks and gravy.   And there are reasons to celebrate Meghan Markle's wedding that go beyond the fairy tale of a British royal wedding.   Perhaps I am seeing something that isn’t there, but it strikes me that corporate advertising is not only featuring more and more diversity, but they also featuring inter-racial couples with racially ambiguous children, and they’re doing so without much hoopla.

Having said all that, a couple of things to note here.  First, although Trump and Trumpism have usurped the GOP, the heart of the GOP is anything but the party of Duck Dynasty and Rosanne.   Trump’s most loyal supporters might be the white Christian nationalists, those who feel the loss of status within the “herrenvolk” most acutely, but as Ornstein intimated above, he tapped into a deeper and more pervasive anger at “elites.”   As a sort of preliminary analysis, there really are two sorts of “elites” at the present moment in history, and for the sake of brevity, let me call them the “technocrats” and the “plutocrats.”  

By way of confession, my sympathies lie with the “technocrats,” and for a complete and optimistic description of the “technocrat,” one should read Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now.  These are the people who ask, “what exactly is the problem we’re trying to solve?” and then go about finding tangible, real-world solutions to the problem.  In some respects, the technocrat has displaced the role of educated elite played by the clergy, a displacement that took place gradually, in part because technocratic ministrations were about equally efficacious with clerical ministrations – in medicine, for example, bleeding and prayer were on a par in the curing of disease – until modern medical science took off on its geometric climb in the early 20^th century and suddenly there really was no contest if one actually wanted to get “better.”   Having said that, of course, modern medical science is not perfect, nor does it make any claims to perfection, and so there will always be room for prayer in the gap between “better” and perfection, but each medical advance narrows the gap. 

There are difficulties with science, as such, but its “amorality” is perhaps most fundamental, particularly as the technocrat competes with the clergy for status.  Pinker wants to make the case that the technocratic enterprise itself has pretentions to morality, but he’s unconvincing.  At the end of the day, the problem at hand might be “how do we mitigate the effects of lung cancer?” or it might be “how do we make cigarettes more addictive?” and both problems are amenable to “technical” solutions.   One can come up with numerous examples where technocrats, so to speak, have been working diligently on both sides of the fence, and for some that is sufficient reason to distrust the whole technocratic enterprise.   We might instinctively feel that those working on behalf of the American Cancer Society have a greater pretense to morality than those working on behalf of R. J. Reynolds, particularly since their work has gone to enrich a select few plutocrats at the expense of the people at large, the question of their relative morality requires an answer outside the technocratic enterprise itself.

One way to examine this might be to examine the moral pretentions of a largely technocratic enterprise.  John Benjamin, for example, writing for the New Republic points at the technocrat's moral dimension.  He notes that "an MBA class will consider a business issue ... in isolation.  Its challenges are delineated; its society-level implications are waved away."  The over-riding reason for this comes back to the singular business goal, or as he put it, "the principals over-riding goal, profit maximization, is assumed," and the issue, whatever it might be, is considered with "mechanical efficiency" relative to this singular business goal of profit maximization.  Echoing Pinker's advice, if in doubt, quantify, Benjamin contends that "individual choices are abstracted into numbers or modeled in graphs."  At one level, of course, there's nothing particularly immoral about "maximizing profits," and as Benjamin puts it, "when the [issue] is benign, these exercises aren't problematic, just technically challenging."  Yet, as he notes,

there are times when the topic of a study widens, and an inquiry into a business issue raises questions about business in general, and what our economic system should be calibrated to incentivize and allow.  These instances lay bare the limits of the MBA world view, [and I would extend this generally to the technocrat's world view] as student's shy away from the economy's moral outcomes ...

So again, we might instinctively feel that those who do take into account the broader social context have a greater pretense to morality than those blinkered by in the search for an elegant solution to the singular goal of profit maximization, but the question of morality seems to require an answer outside the technocratic enterprise itself.        

Here, of course, the clergy want to insert themselves with the claim that religion has the answer to questions of morality.  I find the claim dubious, in part because the follow-on question, “which religion?” cannot be answered in any way that feels definitive, or objective, apart from accidental biases accrued from the culture of one’s birth.  That a Christian man in a Christian nation finds the obvious answer in Christianity, the Muslim man in a Muslim nation finds the equally obvious answer in Islam.  Even within a religion, objective decisions seem problematic.  Is the Catholic or Protestant or Mormon version the correct version of Christianity?  Is the Shite or Sunni version the correct version of Islam?   What objective evidence would one muster to support the conjecture that this (and not that) religion has a “better” claim on morality, much less the only claim on morality? 

It may be the case that science is amoral, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that we need religion for morality.    One can simply ask, “does this decrease human suffering?” or conversely, along with Pinker, ask “does this increase human flourishing?”  While there are, one supposes, definitional issues involved – e.g. “what counts as human suffering?” or conversely “what counts as human flourishing?” – but here one can trust the democratic impulse.  People are adept at knowing when they suffer.  They are not always adept at knowing why they suffer, or how to alleviate their suffering, but they are adept at “feeling their pain,” great and small.  Because they are not always adept at knowing why and how, all of the people fall prey to charlatans some of the time, some of the people fall prey to charlatans all of the time, but eventually reality asserts itself.  Once the smoke has cleared and we know that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer, among other noxious diseases, it seems rather clear that they increase human suffering.   Consequently, the technocrats at R. J. Reynolds are engaged in an enterprise less moral than those at the American Cancer Society. 

Although science is not a religion, to many it must seem like a religion and one in a pitched battle with their own religion. There are any number of explanations, not least the invidious comparison between ignorance and knowledge.  The vast majority of Americans are scientifically and technically ignorant. While almost everyone has an opinion on the matter, I doubt that one in ten Americans could begin to explain, for example, the difference between “green-house gasses” and other “gasses,” how the “green-house gasses” are raising the average (the average, not the immediate) temperature of the earth, or why that might not be such a good thing.  Though I could take a stab at it, I’m pretty sure my attempts would be laughable to the real experts, and like the vast majority of Americans I must simply put my faith in the expertise of the experts.  Although I would assert that there are real differences, to many this “faith” feels no different than the “faith” demanded by the clergy, and it comes with fewer social and psychological benefits, that sense of belonging to something larger than oneself and the reassurances of being special, in the know, among the elect, superior to the heathen.

At one level, there is nothing democratic about the expertise of the expert, and to the extent that it demands deference, it is authoritarian.  If I can be permitted a bit of anthropomorphizing, science and the technocratic enterprise, as such, don’t really care what a majority of people might think or feel or prefer.  Reality is reality, and while any positive statement about reality is conjecture, some conjectures are better than others.  How so better?  It is not merely, or not only, a matter of individual opinion, in part because, at another level, science is deeply democratic.  Science and the technocratic enterprise are really concerned with a majority-minority opinion – that is to say,  the majority among the minority of their peers.   In another domain, the coterie of economists might not much care what an “ignorant” public might think, but they do care what other economists, examining their conjecture, and its supporting data, might think.  It is perhaps more indicative of human nature than bad science that, on occasion, individual technocrats fudge data, ignore inconvenient realities, follow the cash, succumb to areas of blindness, or the like.  Reality has a way of asserting itself, and while one economist might fool all his peers some of the time, some of his peers all the time, it’s unlikely that he’ll fool all his peers all the time.  Science and the technocratic enterprise are concerned with being “right,” or at least “not wrong,” and the conjecture of any individual technocrat, if it is to have “authority,” must meet the test of confirmation or refutation among peers. For a sense of how this plays out, compare Matthew Stewart's article for the Atlantic, "The 9.9 Percent is the New American Aristocracy," with Jordan Weissman's article for Slate, "Actually, the 1 Percent are Still the Problem."  

Consequently, science and the technocratic enterprise are concerned with two sets of rights – free inquiry and free expression.  Not necessarily the same thing.  One of the most discouraging things about the gun debate, speaking as a technocrat, is not the influence of the NRA’s money or the congressional inability to address gun violence with positive measures, but the current restrictions on research.  If one cannot examine the facts, then everything becomes simply a matter of opinion and taste.  It’s as though there were anamorphous “right to fly,” and the political structure banned research on airline accidents or measures to improve the safety of airlines.  Having said that, it's not as if there is no research on the topic, and one can hear the technocrat's frustration in an article like that of German Lopez of Vox.  The headline of his piece reads, "I've covered gun violence for years.  The solutions aren't a big mystery."  He speaks, that is, with the authority of an expert, having "covered gun violence for years," and the solutions he proposes are "evidence-based," which he provides throughout the article, with caveats as appropriate.  The fundament problem, which cuts to the core of the technocrat's world view, is that it "hasn't come to grips with the problem."  We haven't, that is, defined gun violence as the problem to be solved.  We haven't formulated policy conjectures that can be enacted (as they have elsewhere with some success) and the results measured.    

To be continued