View 590 September 28 - October 4, 2009 (original) (raw)
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Thursday, October 1, 2009
Some Reflections on Democracy in America
"No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation," said Barrack Obama to the United Nations. One does wonder what he meant by that. The Carthagenians probably felt well and truly dominated when the Romans ritually sowed salt where their city once stood. The Confederacy was dominated by the North, but perhaps he would say that the South wasn't actually a nation, and thus doesn't count. French Canada seems to have been dominated once Wolfe took Quebec. I could give a few more examples. As to whether nations should ever be dominated, I haven't heard too much condemnation of the domination and occupation of Germany and Japan after 1945. The President continued "No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed." I wonder if the Uighers and Tibetans know this?
Why do people say things like this? Is it just a ritual that takes place whenever one stands at that podium? But, he said, "The future will be forged by deeds and not simply words." That, at least, is consistent with what happened to Carthage. It's also consistent with the Mein Kampf theory of cultural domination: "The noblest of spirits can be liquidated if their bearer is beaten to death with a rubber truncheon." I doubt that is what Obama had in mind, but after reading the speech I can't figure what he did want to accomplish with that speech. It appeared to be a declaration that the United States no longer considers itself the world's policeman, and that we will no longer be telling other nations what they can and cannot do. If so, if this did signal a return to the traditional foreign policy of the United States, with an absence of entangling alliances and involvement in their territorial disputes, we can all cheer. Is that what he meant?
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I don't know what the final form of the health care bill will be, but I can predict one major effect of it: the transfer of ever greater resources from the productive to the non-productive. This will be done in the name of justice, but it's a bit hard to discern precisely what is the fountain of that justice. Is it that the unproductive deserve more and the productive deserve to be made to pay for it? Is it that the calamities that befall the unproductive are not due to their own actions and fault, while the productive have amassed their resources through luck and deserve no credit for that? This may certainly be true for some individuals in both classes, but it's not so obvious that it's true for all. So how have the unproductive earned the right, and the productive incurred the burden? I have yet to see much of an answer to this question: to some the answer is obvious, to others it doesn't deserve an answer, but I still don't see actual answers. Perhaps it is my faulty memory.
Burke said that for a man to love his country, his country ought to be lovely, and there is something to be said for that. Investment in the general welfare was written into the Constitution, but that meant harbors, roads, canals, parks, public buildings and monuments, all of which had to be paid for by taxing the productive -- almost by definition the unproductive don't have much to tax -- but it hardly meant a direct transfer of resources from the productive to the unproductive.
Apparently that's just the way things are. If you're productive you owe it to those less fortunate. And there is a class that has the right to pay itself -- by taxing you -- for taking your output and distributing it among those who weren't so fortunate as you. Get used to it.
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Tocqueville, The Associations, and Welfare
Tocqueville's Democracy in America is a work few have read, although many cite it. At one time it was assigned in academic oriented high schools, but no more. It's too quaint, and a bit long, for the modern intellectual taste. For all that it remains an influential and important work.
One of his most important observations was that in America much of the activity done by government in Europe was done by private associations.This chapter is worth your attention. It is no longer as true as it was in Tocqueville's time, of course, but it remains an important observation, and a picture of what could be. Much of what we call "welfare" in the US has been and can be done by "the associations". One of Tocqueville's observations is the democratic nature of these associations: in Europe activities that would be headed by government, or by aristocrats and nobles, is done by the ordinary citizenry. The importance of this can't be overstressed. If you would have a republic, you need citizens who believe in their importance to the republic; who think, with reason, that they are valuable; that they are, to use a trite phrase, pillars of the community. To the extent that government takes over those activities which make the country lovely, it undermines the very foundations of the republic.
Nothing, in my opinion, is more deserving of our attention than the intellectual and moral associations of America. The political and industrial associations of that country strike us forcibly; but the others elude our observation, or if we discover them, we understand them imperfectly because we have hardly ever seen anything of the kind. It must be acknowledged, however, that they are as necessary to the American people as the former, and perhaps more so. In democratic countries the science of association is the mother of science; the progress of all the rest depends upon the progress it has made.
Among the laws that rule human societies there is one which seems to be more precise and clear than all others. If men are to remain civilized or to become so, the art of associating together must grow and improve in the same ratio in which the equality of conditions is increased.
Alexis de Tocqueville
The alternative to free associations of free men is paternalistic government and bureaucracy. The bureaucracy takes away all pride in the work done -- think of those who take care of their aged relatives as state employees, and who strike because their wages are being cut back toward minimum wage -- while not necessarily increasing the quality of the work. Mostly they render superfluous any association other than unionization to improve their wages. The result is predictable.
It would seem that if despotism were to be established among the democratic nations of our days, it might assume a different character; it would be more extensive and more mild; it would degrade men without tormenting them. I do not question that, in an age of instruction and equality like our own, sovereigns might more easily succeed in collecting all political power into their own hands and might interfere more habitually and decidedly with the circle of private interests than any sovereign of antiquity could ever do.
. . .
After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp, and fashioned them at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a net-work of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided: men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting: such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd. I have always thought that servitude of the regular, quiet, and gentle kind which I have just described, might be combined more easily than is commonly believed with some of the outward forms of freedom; and that it might even establish itself under the wing of the sovereignty of the people.
Tocqueville
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Note on the Afghan War:
I don't know what the proper strategy for Afghanistan should be, now that we are in there. I do not want to bring a defeated army home, and we have committed ourselves to some kind of successful outcome.
What I do know is that it is not in our interest, and it is probably beyond our ability, to set as a goal the submission of the provinces to Kabul. Afghanistan makes nothing we want. Its commerce isn't important to us. If it deserves charity and help, let it look to Moslem institutions: the Gulf Kingdoms have plenty of such resources, and there is need for what we can spare in nations that don't have claim on Islamic resources. What we do want is that Afghanistan not harbor our enemies, either in Kabul or in the provinces.
How we achieve that result isn't entirely clear, given what we have already done with troops and drones; but surely the objective ought to be clear? We don't need to establish democracy in Afghanistan, which is as well, since it is beyond our abilities.
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