Redstate

By Dana R Pico Posted in Liberals — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Sharon had an interesting article on her site concerning the essay of Andrew Bacevich, the Boston University professor, who wrote in The Washington Post that his son had died in a war he opposes. I had read Dr Bacevich's article, and even commented that he was the kinder, gentler Cindy Sheehan, someone the left could more comfortably embrace.

What interested me more, however, was Sharon's quick update:

This guy thinks you are too ignorant because you supported the war in 2003 (and/or still do). Since you don't vote the way he thinks is logical, he suggests that certain people who pass tests get extra votes to cancel yours out. Given that this would be entirely unconstitutional -- we do have that whole one-man-one-vote thing -- it's a ridiculous suggestion. But I wouldn't be surprised if someone took it seriously.

Here's the beginning of the article. You know the deal: copyright laws say I can't just reproduce the whole thing, so you'll have to follow the link to read it.

Clueless
By GARY J. BASS
Published: May 27, 2007

Of all the people who deserve some blame for the debacle in Iraq, don’t forget the American public. Today, about two-thirds of Americans oppose the war. But back in March 2003, when United States troops stormed into Iraq, nearly three out of four Americans supported the invasion. Doves say that the public was suckered into war by a deceitful White House, and hawks say that the press has since led the public to lose its nerve — but the two sides implicitly agree that the public has been dangerously unsure, or easily propagandized, or ignorant.

The disaster in Iraq has also fed a contradiction in American thinking about democracy. On the one hand, Americans continue to share the triumphalist, post-Soviet conviction that no other system of government has any real legitimacy. On the other hand, there is a deepening despair about whether and how the United States should spread democracy, prompted not just by Iraq but also by the endurance of authoritarianism in booming China and Vietnam and the disheartening Palestinian and Lebanese experiments in democratization.

Now Bryan Caplan, an economist at George Mason University, has attracted notice for raising a pointed question: Do voters have any idea what they are doing? In his provocative new book, “The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies,” Caplan argues that “voters are worse than ignorant; they are, in a word, irrational — and vote accordingly.” Caplan’s complaint is not that special-interest groups might subvert the will of the people, or that government might ignore the will of the people. He objects to the will of the people itself.

If you follow the link to Amazon, you'll see from the book cover, that he views the voters as sheep!

I haven't read Dr Caplan's book yet, only the review. But the review pretty much comes up with what needs to be known: another educated academic complaining that the voters take poor decisions because the voters are both mostly ignorant of the issues, and because they are so easily led by demagogues.

Winston Churchill said, in 1947, that "democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

Democracy isn't perfect: sometimes, as in the 2006 elections, the voters take bad decisions. But those are decisions the voters have a right to take, and the consequences of which they will have to accept. If that's harsh, consider the alternative: democracy is government by the elected representatives of the governed, while every other form is government by those not of the choice of the people.

It doesn't even matter than much whether the despot has the best interests of the people in mind, or only his own self-agrandizement and power; rule by those who are not elected by the people is despotism.

At this point, Hugo Chavez comes to mind. Yes, he was elected democatically; the guy who became Chancellor of Germany in 1933 was also elected democratically. But Señor Chavez has been not-so-slowly chipping away at democracy in Venezuela: he got his rubber-stamp legislature to eliminate the constitutional provisions limiting his terms in office. He got the rubber-stamp legislature to allow him 18 months in which he can rule by decree. He has closed down the opposition media. Venezuela isn't a completely authoritarian state yet, but it's well on the road.

Why? While a lot of people assume that Señor Chavez is just another power-grabbing Latin American thug, he has mouthed the platitudes of socialism and the good of the people -- and many people believe him. I have my doubts that our friends on the left who like Señor Chavez's words are open-minded enough to be convinced that he is doing all of this because he's a power-hungry tyrant; they'd rather think that this was necessary for socialism, for the greater good.

So, at least for the sake of argument, I'll give President Chavez the benefit of the doubt: I hereby accept the idea that everything he is doing is for the Greater Good of Venezuela and the common man.

It doesn't matter. Socialism is inherently at odds with liberty and freedom. It doesn't matter how benign the motives of the dictator, a benevolent dictator is still a dictator. And socialism requires dictators.

Why? The very definition of socialism is:

Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.

Trouble is, even claiming that the means of production are owned collectively still means that some entity (normally the state) has to take decisions on how the means of production will be allocated and used, and how rewards and punishments will be assigned.

But the "state" does not think, and the state does not decide anything; the people who run the organization of the state think and decide and take action. Since socialism is a concept in which the good of society outweighs the liberty of the individual, whatever decisions in support of socialism are taken must be at odds with individual freedom and liberty.

Why? Because dissent cannot be tolerated! If socialism is a system run for the good of the people, dissent is, in effect, the call for a selfish benefit, for some sort of thing that is not for the good of the general public. Indeed, the entire concept of individual liberty goes against the grain of socialism; individuality can only exist outside of the good of the group, and is therefore harmful to it.

Nor can democracy be tolerated. Socialism is held as that system which provides the good for society. The Soviets had the phrase, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." But in a democracy, people may choose to vote for their individual benefit. Obvious example: in the presidential elections of 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 2000 and 2004, (six out of the last seven campaigns) the American people elected the candidate who promised lower taxes. When Walter Mondale tried the interesting (and honest) tactic of telling the truth about his intentions, that he intended to raise taxes to reduce the deficit, he carried exactly one state.

Socialism can't afford that; the notion that people might vote to lower taxes, to seek their own benefit rather than to surrender more of their income to a government that was purporting to help other people, is simply intolerable.

Our friends on the left have been, if somewhat less blunt about it than former Vice President Mondale, honest about their intentions. Senatrix Clinton said:

Many of you are well enough off that ... the tax cuts may have helped you. We're saying that for America to get back on track, we're probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.

Of course, that was 2004, when Mrs Clinton wasn't actually running for anything. In a way, it might have been subtle sabotage of Senator Kerry's campaign: little noticed among his campaign promises was a middle-class tax cut.

Now, where have I heard that one before? :)

It didn't make much of a splash, in part because the Kerry-Edwards didn't really push it hard, and in part because no one would have believed him anyway.

Naturally, Democrat politicians don't (usually) say that they want to raise your taxes; they always want to raise taxes on someone else: the rich, big oil, all of those evil corporations out there, because they have to get socialist programs (the promises are easy; the taxes are hard) passed the electorate.

Which brings me to former Vice President Al Gore. I mentioned previously that I had ordered his book, The Assault on Reason. It came in the mail today, and I have started reading it. My intention is a full book review, and I haven't completed the book yet.

But I have gotten through the introduction and first chapter, and, in a way, it is of a similar theme to Mr Caplan's, though approaching it from a different vector. Mr Gore spends the introduction (at 22 pages, a rather long one) setting up his basic premise, that political discourse in this country has ceased being reasonable and has become one based on emotion and fear. To Mr Gore, the greatest culprit is television, which has turned news over from readers to viewers. He spends a lot of time on this, giving numerous examples: the O J Simpson trial (the first 24/7 coverage, by CNN, that told network executives that viewers wanted massive coverage of sensational events), JonBenét Ramsey, Natalee Holloway, the "Runaway Bride," the Michael Jackson trial, the Robert Blake trial, Chabdra Levy, Laci Peterson and Anna Nicole Smith.

Television news has, to Mr Gore, dumbed down the news -- and dumbed down the public. Insofar as it goes, I agree: reading the news rather than watching the news allows the consumer of news the time to take the information at his pace, allows him to go back and reread something if necessary, allows him to set it down for a moment to digest a particular bit of information.

A bit of personal bias here: I've spent most of my professional life around noisy concrete plants and revved up trucks, and I have some hearing loss. It is somewhat difficult for me to watch television without the closed captioning. Reading is simply easier for me.

But Mr Gore betrays a peculiar bias here that I doubt he even recognizes.

It was universally understood that the ultimate check and balance for American government was its accountability to the people. And the public forum was the place where the people held the government accountable. That is why it was so important that the marketplace of ideas operated independent from and beyond the authority of government. The three most impostant characteristics of this marketplace of ideas were the following:

1. It was open to every individual, with no barriers to entry save the necessity of literacy. This access, it is crucial to add, applied not only to the receipt of information but also to the ability to contribute information directly into the flow of ideas that was available to all.
2. The fate of ideas contributed by individuals depended, for the most part, on an emergent meritocracy of ideas. Those judged by the market to be good rose to the top, regardless of the wealth or class of the individual responsible for them.
3. The accepted rules of discourse presumed that the participants were all governed by an unspoken duty to search for general agreement. That is what a "conversation of democracy" is all about.¹

Mr Gore was wrong on all three points. The "marketplace of ideas" was open in one direction only, from the elites down to the masses. Editors and publishers controlled everything, and while people could attempt to contribute, their ideas and prose had to first pass muster with the "gatekeepers." The "emergent meritocracy of ideas" was not judged by the marketplace, but by the gatekeepers of publication.

And as for his third point, eventually the "conversation of democracy" led to elections, in which it was not general agreement which was sought (and secured), but the political victory of one group over another. Some countries, which employ proportional representation, may come closer to such, because coalitions and compromise are virtually required for government. But the United States employs what is known as the "single member district," in which the person who wins the most votes in a given district wins the seat, and the people who voted for his opponents have simply lost, and must wait for the subsequent election.

The oddest thing about this is that Mr Gore seems rather unaware of the freedom of the internet that he invented! :) This site, and millions of others, contribute to exactly the first two points that Mr Gore mentioned, because the gatekeeping function of editors and publishers has been circumvented. He is committed to democracy, but does not seem to understand what the "marketplace of ideas" actually means; at least in his introduction and first chapter, he decries the presence of information that does not satisfy his concepts of reason versus emotion. I agree with Mr Gore that our televiewing society is far too concerned with the fluff information on Entertainment Tonight and the like, and not enough on what I think is real, important news, but unlike the former Vice President, I recognize that the rise of such is the result of the choices that millions of free people have freely taken.

That, too, is part of democracy.

In the end, both Dr Caplan, who would give additional political power to those elites he sees as possessed of more information and better judgement, and Mr Gore, who trusts democracy, but only if the people have the "right" information and take their decisions properly, seem to have a real problem with the choices people take in democracy; those choices simply don't fall in line with what those gentlemen think they should be.

And thus the problem that socialism has with democracy. By its (theoretical) nature, socialism is supposed to be creating a society that is good for all of society, regardless of the protests of individuals. In socialized medicine schemes, as an example, participation must be mandatory, at least in payments into the system; individuals cannot opt out in a way which takes their mandatory payments into the system out of the system. But, in a democracy, people tired of higher taxes could do something radical like vote for politicians who promise to lower them -- and that is something that socialism cannot tolerate. Dr Caplan would grant heavier political power to those who are just so much smarter than the rest of us (Plato's philosopher kings?), while Mr Gore would restrict the information voters have in manners controlled by the elites, so the voters could only choose to vote for the common good. (He certainly didn't say that, explicitly, but that is the direction in which he has headed.)

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¹ - Al Gore, The Assault on Reason (New York: The Penguin Press) © 2007, page 13.
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Cross posted on Common Sense Political Thought.