Re: Down with Democracy!

Seth David Schoen (schoen@uclink4.Berkeley.EDU)
18 Jan 1998 19:40:36 GMT 

Jeff Bishop writes:

>Seth D. Schoen wrote:
>
>> Since most people are _not libertarians_ and most people in the U.S. _support
>> Democracy_ it doesn't seem likely that a lot of people are going to agree
>> right off.  But one of the points of the protest was presumably that many
>> people haven't even thought about it; if the protest can raise the
>> consciousness of a few people even while annoying a few people, it may be
>> worthwhile.
>
>Whether or not the agree is not the point.  If they *do* agree, what result?  More
>liberty or more laws from Sacramento?  The difference between a democracy and a
>republic is simple: do the people vote directly or delegate this decisionmaking
>power to a legislature?  All the countermajoritarian arguments apply equally to
>democracies and republics alike.  If the people have no right to vote directly on X,
>where on earth do they get the "right" to enlist a legislature to do it for them?

Sorry, it wasn't my argument for a republic.  Yes, I agree with you on this
point, basically, with my position more explicitly below.

I don't have much faith in devolution, as some libertarians do; your local
friends and neighbors might well have stronger and more arbitrary prejudices.

But anarchy, minarchism, and regular democracy with a longer and stronger
and more philosophical Bill of Rights might all be preferable to what we
have now; none of these has so much to do with devolution/anti-federalist
issues at all!  There's no reason to take those issue on at all; they can
seem (as they usually do to me) like cosmetic arguments about the structure
of a democracy.

>> This protest can work if someone sees it and says "They're crazy for protesting
>> Democracy" and then, a few years later, is ganged-up upon (metaphorically) by
>> a majority and is moved to remember what we had to say and, perhaps, to agree
>> with it a little more.  We should aim to legitimize the dislike of majority
>> rule, and not expect that everyone will agree immediately.
>
>Au contraire - expect plenty of support from the ACLU, Thelton "I like affirmative
>action, therefore th econstitution requires it" Henderson, Tom "I have a
>constitutional right to lifetime employment" Bates, Dan "What Medical Marijuana
>Law?" Lungren, and a host of other, mostly unsavory, types.  The choice between a
>democracy and a republic is between majority rule and special-interest rule, not
>between majority rule and freedom.  Let's forget "majority rule" and instead aim to
>legitimize the dislike of "rule."

Still, lots of people have a conditioned (note, not "conditional") love of
democracy.

"Law X is bad, because it infringes on human rights."
"Yes, but it was enacted democratically, so if you don't like it, you should
try to change it democratically."

"Law Y is unfair."
"Well, that's how democracy works, you know; everyone has to make a few
compromises in order to live in a society."

"People are being oppressed in the United States (England, France, Israel,
etc.)."
"Perhaps, but they have representative governments, so they must have
decided that their trade-offs were worth it."

"The government has no fundamental authority."
"Yes, but its authority is granted to it by the people through the voting
process."
or
"Yes, but the people choose it as their representative through the voting
process."

alternatively,
"The government has no authority."
"What?  Of course it has authority!  It was democratically elected, so it's
the representative of the people!"

You also hear things like:
"... a legitimate, democratic government"
"... illegitimate, undemocratic governments"
"... illegitimate, unelected governments"

Democracy itself is what legitimizes the _like_ of rule (sorry, bad word,
but it works well) for most Americans*.  Therefore, I think it's relevant
to fight against the tendency to approve automatically of democratic things
(governments or actions) _as_ democracy.  We might say that like of rule
is hidden for many people within like of democracy, and so dislike of
democracy may help the case for dislike of rule.

* I don't mean that all Americans are not authoritarian, although if we
can trust what I remember of T. W. Adorno's work, perhaps most aren't.  (He
used the word in a fairly specific way, though.)  Anyway, I don't mean
what _causes_ the like of rule, but rather what _legitimizes_ it,
intellectually.  Lots of governments and actions would be intellectually
indefensible (though perhaps popular by making the trains run on time)
without the support of concepts like democracy, social contract,
populism, or majoritarianism.  So fighting against the popularity of
democracy undermines the foundations of most contemporary Americans'
rationalizations for liking rule.

And only a silly anti-democracy protest, at least silly on our part,
would bias people in favor of rule!  You choose the particular objections
to show why, philosophically and not only practically, you oppose
democracy in general (if such is your cup of tea), and then people can
draw the conclusions you intend from this.

There's no reason, then, that all libertarians, minarchists and anarchists
participating in the protest shouldn't stress that democracy is preferable
to a number of other things; they just don't see it as a satisfactory
answer because it still countenances certain evils of majorities oppressing
minorities (or vice versa, through clever manipulations of the system).
So the anti-democracy protest _could_ be largely an anti-rule protest, with
democracy in particular as its focus.  (In a similar vein, one of the big
atheist web sites says that it does oppose all religions, but it's going
to focus for now on opposing Christianity in particular, just because
Christianity is, for the potential readers, the overwhelmingly predominant
alternative answer, and therefore the most vital to oppose specifically.
I think that argument translates especially well to our situation to
show why an anti-democracy protest can be useful to us.)

The Welfare Party, the main Islamic party in Turkey, was just disbanded
by the Turkish government for being subversive.  One of the leaders of
the party was quoted as claiming that democracy is a means and not an
end.  The secularists in Turkey were unhappy at this concept; the Welfare
Party probably felt that the end was Islam rather than liberty, but still
it should serve to show how attached some people are to democracy as the
only and final answer...

So my vision of the anti-democracy protest is not a vision of an
anti-democracy, pro-special interest protest; it's a vision of an
anti-democracy, pro-freedom protest.  I do believe such a thing is possible.
Whether it has any effects is a reasonable question, but you have to
start somewhere, and a generic anti-rule or other protest has all the
same prospects of practical uselessness, I think.

-- 
   Seth David Schoen L&S '01 (undeclared) / schoen@uclink4.berkeley.edu
Magna dis immortalibus habenda est atque huic ipsi Iovi Statori, antiquissimo
custodi huius urbis, gratia, quod hanc tam taetram, tam horribilem tamque
infestam rei publicae pestem totiens iam effugimus.  -- Cicero, in Catilinam I