Cats, Kings, Republics

January 3, 2005

In a diverse republic it is tempting to adopt the mind-set that all those Other Idiots' votes are getting in the way of proper policy and governance.  But, contrary to the one assembled in the pristine mountains of  Plato's mind, the US republic does not aim or even allow for the rule of the philosopher-king, individually or as a class. The 20th century has chillingly demonstrated that certain high-sounding intellectually-compelling Procrustean theories can set a society on the Trans-Siberian track to nowhere. As it turns out, provincials and shopkeepers muddling through with decent unphilosophical pragmatism, enjoying one more day free of catastrophe, is not bad, not bad at all.

The prolific Richard Posner states it clearly.

Rawls and others have thought that religious beliefs shouldn’t be allowed to influence public policy, precisely because they are nondiscussable. But this view rests on a misunderstanding of democracy. Modern representative democracy isn’t about making law the outcome of discussion. It is not about modeling politics on the academic seminar. It is about forcing officials to stand for election at short intervals, and about letting ordinary people express their political preferences without having to defend them in debate with their intellectual superiors.

This cuts directly to current questions of political health. The belief regularly surfaces that creating more political forums, increasing participation -- especially "dialogue" -- in all kinds of political activity, could cure what ails US. That formulations and statements rule. Of course they do, in the mechanics of lawmaking, to be governed by law and not the vagaries of individual men. 

But the voter is not under that obligation, neither as to candidates nor in the policies (s)he supports. Judge Posner's remarks change the refraction, putting the populace's decisionmaking in softer focus.  Why each votes as (s)he does is less important than that we, those of us who do, vote as we do.  The opportunity, and the outcome. Pass/fail grading of those who have, or might, govern us.

So, as in so much else, the vote emerges from reasons the mind may not grasp or find fully explicable, particularly to the satisfaction of adversaries rooted in a different landscape of priorities, emotions, and intuitions.

Humans evaluate their lives and choices based on perceptions that span the entire context, 360 degrees times 360 degrees. The process does not operate neatly enough always to be distilled in commonly understood words and grammar.  Limiting legitimacy to discussion can be as imbalanced as an old-fashioned strength ordeal with the shot-put. Especially if the ground is uneven for those who have devoted their energies to something other than fluency, good diction, and wide reference, and who are strangers in their routine lives to sometimes idiosyncratic rhetorical rules. The earmark of a power differential is the right to demand an explanation from another human being, and to evaluate its sufficiency. It is a mercy of every citizen's individual freedom: I need not answer an exit pollster. To decide my vote, I may look to a person's acts and demeanor, and what they signify as to character, integrity and robustness; whereas others may require speech to ground their conclusions.

Power where equality is professed marks a deficiency of love, said Jung. In the sphere of equal citizenship, a term more useful than love may be good will, which in partnership with authentic intellectual curiosity can shift the undertaking of "discussion" from insistent interrogation or sterile repetition of arguments, to a muted beginning of comprehension and friendship where none existed before.  Com-panis, sharing and breaking and perhaps even blessing, bread.

Judge Posner's and others' entry into the blogosphere is welcome, and marks an important expansion of its field and depth of consideration, raising foundational issues hardly ever found in Wonkette. A cat may look at a king, and an archosauria may link, all in good order in cyberspace, to a judge.

Now that's discussion.