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The Republican Assault on Democracy

Guest post by John McGowan

The official Bush Administration line in foreign policy is the promotion of democracy.  Yet the Republicans have launched a full-scale assault upon democracy at home.  Setting aside (for the moment) the simple fact that this assault is about grabbing and using power, it also reflects an impoverished view of democracy, basically one that limits democracy to free elections.  In this view, the people ratify a set of leaders—a government—in an election, and, in so doing, gives those leaders a blank check.  If the government uses the power given to it unwisely, the people can vote it out next time around.  Power rests solely in the hands of the people and in its delegated agent, the government.

This understanding of democracy tends toward the plebiscite—and toward the establishment of a strong leader, usually one who promises to sweep aside the complexities, compromises, frustrations, and inefficiencies introduced by parliamentary janglings and an independent judiciary.  From Napoleon III and Bismarck in the 19th century to the Governator in the late 20th century, the plebiscite has almost always favored right wing leaders impatient with legal and institutional impediments to forceful action.  In other words, the plebiscite is perfect for establishing the tyranny of the majority that Tocqueville and Mill feared.  By emphasizing a direct (even cult-like) relationship between “the leader” and the people, democracy by popular ballot bypasses intermediary associations (either voluntary or constitutional), precisely the kinds of associations that Tocqueville counted on to temper democracy’s possible tyranny.  The Progressives who established the plebiscite provisions in various states in the early 20th century aimed, of course, to circumvent corrupt legislatures, but their efforts were almost certainly fated to aid, rather than hamper, right-wing interests. 

Why?  Not because the right wing almost always does better in direct appeals to the people than the left, although historically such is the case.  (Opponents of democracy in the 19th century assumed, as did Marx, that the people, once given power, would insist on distributing wealth downwards—i.e. to themselves.  But that has never happened; the most the people have ever tried to do in a leftward direction is to improve working conditions and to make the playing field a little more fair by securing the workers’ right to organize.  Sorry for the gross oversimplification here.  The history—and theory—of plebiscites is fascinating and important.  For one thing, liberalism must rely on direct democracy to establish a constitution in the first place.  It cannot avoid the kind of plebiscite to which the EU constitution has just been submitted.)

It is not the results of actual plebiscites that are the issue, however.  More crucial is that plebiscites consolidate power.  From Montesquieu through the American Founding Fathers (particularly Madison) to Tocqueville, liberals have insisted that tyranny can only be combated by the multiplication and fragmentation of power.  A free society is one in which there are various centers of power, various positions from which people have the ability to influence decisions.  That’s the whole point behind creating three branches of government, the vaunted “separation of powers.”

It’s easy to say that the Republicans’ drive to consolidate power—a drive manifested in their attempt to create a disciplined party whose legislative wing serves its White House leader smoothly and which captures the judiciary through placing party faithful on the bench—is just what any party will “naturally” try to do.  After all, FDR tried to pack the Supreme Court.  So we should expect that parties will strive to overcome the “checks” that the constitution tries to establish.  Hence my colleague Tyler Curtain’s response to my post on the Amnesty Report.  “Of course, the Bush Administration will try to ignore a Supreme Court decision that it doesn’t like.  What else would you expect?” (I should hasten to add that Tyler attributed such shrug-of-the-shoulders cynicism to what he deemed a post-Watergate loss of any faith in our government being upright.) Or, as one commentator put it, the Bush response is “how many divisions does the Supreme Court have?”

My point is that liberalism, first and foremost, is a set of expedients (mostly institutional and legal) for minimizing tyranny by setting limits to government power. It also tries to prevent the consolidation of power by fostering the multiplication of power.  Democracy, in my view, is not worth a damn if it is not partnered with liberalism.  Democracy and liberalism are a squabbling pair; they each locate power in a different place—democracy in the people, liberalism in the law—and they aim for different goods: democracy (in its most ideal form) for something like the “general will,” liberalism for a modus vivendi in a world characterized by intractable conflicts among people with different beliefs, goals, ambitions, and values.  Neither one trumps the other; both, in my view, are essential ingredients of a legitimate polity.

Not only the Republicans, but the American nation as a whole, seem to have lost any sense whatsoever of what liberalism means and what it strives to insure.  Even at the best of times, the liberal check upon power is a tenuous bulwark that fights against the odds.  There is nothing that underwrites the rule of law except the continued practice of upholding it.  The law must be reaffirmed anew each and every time it is enunciated and enforced.  And the temptation to circumvent the law, to rewrite it to accommodate one’s current beliefs and practices, is also ever present.  To pay the law heed is to accept that one’s own virtue is doubtful—or that one’s own beliefs are, in every sense of that word, “partial.” It is their assurance in their own virtue that renders the Republicans most dangerous, most prone to set the law aside when it gets in the way of doing when they know in their hearts is right.  Impatience with the law is endemic—and it is the harbinger of extreme politics of either the right or the left.  (It is here, of course, that the leftist will leap.  But why should we think leftist self-righteousness any more attractive or less dangerous than the rightist variety?)

I will continue on this line of thought in my next post.  Here I just want to end by noting how “unnatural” liberalism seems.  It involves self-abnegation, accepting the frustration of my will.  It involves, as I will detail in my next post, compromise in almost every instance, and thus can seem akin to having no strong convictions, no principles.  Yet its benefits are enormous; it provides, I am convinced, the only possible way humans can live in peace together in a pluralistic world.  Given how distasteful liberal expedients are in experience, it is a miracle that they ever get established and maintained.  But the benefits of that miracle are multiple—and we, as a nation, will sorely regret it if we trash our liberal edifice out of impatience, frustration, or, even worse, sheer forgetfulness of why that edifice was put in place, how it works, and what it accomplishes.

Posted by on 06/06 at 02:00 PM

  1. Well thought out.  Yes, democracy is the love-child of liberalism (there’s a pun there, but we’ll leave it for now), and our Republican and conservative brothers and sisters either can’t grasp this or they refuse to.

    Posted by  on  06/06  at  03:34 PM

  2. Excellent post. I believe a perfect example of this mentality is evidenced in President Bush’s response when asked by the Washington Post why no one was being held accountable for the state of Iraq: “Well, we had an accountability moment, and that’s called the 2004 election”

    I think this post also provides some insight into why many people are so distrustful or ngo’s and world government; if we’re still fighting to accept liberalism against our instincts at the national level, then it’s no wonder that people would be hesitant to accept liberalism at the global level.

    Posted by Hume's Ghost  on  06/06  at  05:04 PM

  3. The Republican assault on democracy?  Democracy dies the death of little bites.  Or a thousand nicks.  Does it now bleed out on a clear night?  Aristotle said republics degrade into democracies and then democracies turn to tyrannies.  But we live in the present age. The past is just the past. Or is it?

    Posted by The Heretik  on  06/06  at  08:03 PM

  4. The past is just the past.

    A lie is just a lie;
    the fundamentalists shanghai
    democra-sigh

    Here I just want to end by noting how “unnatural” liberalism seems.  It involves self-abnegation, accepting the frustration of my will.  It involves, as I will detail in my next post, compromise in almost every instance, and thus can seem akin to having no strong convictions, no principles.  Yet its benefits are enormous; it provides, I am convinced, the only possible way humans can live in peace together in a pluralistic world. 

    I think I agree, John, but I think I agree if we’re using a different definition of “liberal” than is currently en vogue. One that would encompass Democratic Socialism, for instance.

    Posted by Chris Clarke  on  06/06  at  09:03 PM

  5. "the plebiscite is perfect for establishing the tyranny of the majority that Tocqueville and Mill feared.”
    Hmmm, yes, I see! Kind of like the tyranny the Democrat side of Congress has shown with the obstruction tactics they have used blocking nominees.
    Your hypocracy cracks me up.

    Posted by paulknowsthetruth  on  06/07  at  06:25 AM

  6. "Kind of like the tyranny the Democrat side of Congress has shown with the obstruction tactics they have used blocking nominees.”

    At least John tries to acknowledge when he oversimplifies.  It has been well-documented that the democrats have blocked relatively few of Bush’s nominees, and only those who have records that are extremely anti-environment, anti-UN, and/or pro-corporate greed.  And that doesn’t even take into consideration the number of democratic nominees the republicans blocked under Clinton--not through filibuster, but simply by letting them fester and die in committee.

    Complaining about democratic interventions against the republican power grab (now that some dems realize what a monster rhey created by kissing Bush’s ass after 9/11, when he promised not to exploit it for political gain--yeah, right) makes you sound like a petulant child who throws a fit because he can’t have the candy bar, the soda, *and* the ice cream cone.

    As for the problem of liberalism, John:  so, what can we do about it?  It seems to me that this is in some ways a classic case of tragedy of the commons--with power being the limited resource to which politicians appear to have, at least in potential, unlimited access.  It makes sense that individual politicians would seek to maximize their own power, despite its being a limited resource. 

    The thing is, the political right has complicated this notion by getting the vast majority of its politicians to understand that only through cooperation can they maximize power as a group.  That is, the “rational actor” presupposed in a tragedy of the commons model isn’t a person but a group of people who have emerged, through a coordinated but distributed network of relations, as a single “actor.” In a way, it’s the ultimate fantasy, in a perverse kind of way, of the liberal model:  a group of people who recognize that the greatest good lies in subordinating, at least at times, individual needs to those of the group.  But, of course, that group is small, and the way they define “good” flies in the face of how you, I, and most respondents on this list would define it.

    So, back to my question:  what to do?  How does one convince a society of individuals that support for the public good--which is what the dems ought to and, in a few rare cases, do, stand for--in the long run is more important than individual gain (either monetarily or morally, or both) in the short run.  Sure, it may feel good now to sport a “Ha ha!  Bush won!” sticker in the window of your SUV (I’m not generalizing:  I keep finding myself parked next to this SUV in my smallish southern town), but when that SUV sits on cinder blocks in the front yard and Americans are emigrating at uncontrollable rates, the sticker may not be as funny.

    Posted by  on  06/07  at  10:48 AM

  7. More importantly in response to paul"knows"thetruth, it is not hypocritical (I assume paul means “hypocrisy” when he accuses John of “hypocracy") to express concern about the tyranny of the majority and support the minority party’s effort to prevent that tyranny.  They are, in fact, completely consistent. 

    Your ignorance disturbs me.

    Posted by  on  06/07  at  11:59 AM

  8. What John’s really talking about is what I was taught in school way too long ago to think about. Our form of government is a democratic republic. It’s not a pure republic, where ALL power is vested in elected representatives and/or executives. Their power is tempered by the separation of powers, state’s rights (once a dirty term to those of us on the left, but, in the current era, starting to look good), and of course elections. And it’s not a pure democracy, where most every important issue is brought to the people for a vote. Their representatives were assumed to have good collective common sense to deal with most matters.

    For most of our history, except possibly in 1861-65, this has occured, at least to the degree that the nation wasn’t in mortal danger at home. I’m not sure I can say that today.

    Posted by  on  06/07  at  01:31 PM

  9. I’ll go look up abnegation right now.  Not a clue.

    “The law must be reaffirmed anew each and every time it is enunciated and enforced.”

    Read Bush vs. Gore.  The rule of law is dead and all we’re playing is a sick game I’m ashamed I buy into every morning.

    It’s true.  Everything I believed in growing up has turned into one big fat lie.  This country is a total disgrace and if I had the alternative I would have left long ago.  Lying polluting savages, the place is full of them and I’m sick if it.

    Posted by paradox  on  06/07  at  03:18 PM

  10. This site is usually refreshingly free of the mouth-breathing True Believers, but I see one ("paulknowsthetruth") has come slinking in, full of denunciations of “hypocracy” (what is that, the opposite of democracy?), not to mention the obligatory reference to something called the “Democrat” party.

    Paul, I suspect your epistemology (I’ll wait while you go look it up) is not nearly as solid as you think it is.  You might at least consider that the current Congress is not exactly the first to block judicial nominees.

    Posted by  on  06/07  at  04:00 PM

  11. Back to the non-troll-baiting section of the thread… I had a minor realization - a demipiphany I suppose - while reading this joint interviewof Christopher and Peter Hitchens, in which Peter refers to Christopher’s former alleged Stalinism.

    It’s a trivial observation, I suppose, but it occurred to me that some of the reason C. Hitchens transferred his affections to Bush and Co. so seamlessly is precisely because Bush and Co. have become NeoStalinists. The same hewing to ideological tenets in disregard of empirical evidence, the same insistence on blind obedience, the same drive to not only prevail against opponents but crush them.

    Posted by Chris Clarke  on  06/07  at  07:06 PM

  12. Could it be that you’re overinterpreting?

    With the exception of the Patriot Act, whose parents and sugar daddy I don’t think have ever been identified, broad Republican actions have been fairly transparent and most solicitous of a majority of the voters, that is, some 25+% of the adult population.

    Since January 2001 Republicans have spent their efforts in identifying themes that benefit them and disposing of issues which might benefit Democrats:  the No Child Left Behind act, Reagan tax cuts and “tariffs for votes,” a Thatcherite foreign war, a Medicare drug benefit plan.  They were even willing to accept the Democrats’ stupidest idea—establishment of the Department of Home Land Security.

    This pragmatism doesn’t seem particularly plebiscitory or Gaullist.

    Posted by  on  06/07  at  10:02 PM

  13. There is no overinterpreting. The Bush administration has acted in a systematically undemocratic fashion. I can think of no more essential example of this than the way that the administration has treated science.

    I say this because I view science,as a method of open communal inquiry, as being intrinsically intertwined with the democratic process of testing ideas versus reality, of moving towards a better understanding of the truth, and of letting an informed public participate in the political process.

    But under Bush science has been subverted to support ideology. Science inconsistent with the beliefs of the administration have been suppressed, distorted, or ignored.
    The two links I provide below detail the extent to which this administration has misused science

    http://www.ucsusa.org/global_environment/rsi/page.cfm?pageID=1641
    http://www.house.gov/reform/min/politicsandscience/pdfs/pdf_politics_and_science_rep.pdf

    Posted by Hume's Ghost  on  06/08  at  12:18 AM

  14. The two links I provide below detail the extent to which this administration has misused science...

    Here’s another, which I wrote a couple years ago.

    And today, the New York Times has another.

    Posted by Chris Clarke  on  06/08  at  12:42 AM

  15. Here’s another, which I wrote a couple years ago.

    Oops: blog posting software didn’t like that Cold Fusion URL.
    Try this.

    Posted by Chris Clarke  on  06/08  at  12:44 AM

  16. And here’s a case in point from today’s NYT’s

    http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/08/politics/08climate.html?pagewanted=1

    “A White House official who once led the oil industry’s fight against limits on greenhouse gases has repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents.”

    Posted by Hume's Ghost  on  06/08  at  01:51 AM

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