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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?
==============
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.
===================
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
=================
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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