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You Can't Become Rich In Your Pocket Until You Become Rich In Your Mind | ||||
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Our democracy may be the most important of thesePREREQUISITIES TO FUNCTIONAL DEMOCRACY MASSES VS. ELITES Many who have written skeptically about democracy have sought to link its appeal to a utopian belief in the perfectability of mankind. Skeptics have contended that a more realistic appraisal of our species would facilitate a more realistic view of government. As Plato insisted, the great unwashed masses are inherently incapable of governing, and there is little reason to be so optimistic as to believe that education would enlighten them to the point that they could be entrusted with political power. Even they would be better off if qualified experts ran society. Our founding fathers echoed this sentiment. But the rationale for democracy does not depend on universal enlightenment. Neither does the notion of government of, by and for the people imply that each person should be capable of running a government. The notion of the wisdom of ordinary people is not simple-minded. It is a belief in character, more than education or cleverness. Typified by Lincoln’s remark, “But you can’t fool all of the people all of the time,” it is reflected in our language, “common sense” and “common decency.” It may sound strange, but democratic sentiment reflects grounding in practical reality, as opposed to abstract theory. In the last 2,500 years no one has surpassed the characterization of democracy given by Pericles. Our constitution…favors the many instead of the few; this is why it is called a democracy. If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences; if to social standing, advancement in public life falls to reputation for capacity, class considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit; nor again does poverty bar the way, if a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition. The freedom which we enjoy in our government extends also to our ordinary life…. But all this ease in our private relations does not make us lawless as citizens. Against this fear is our chief safeguard, teaching us to obey the magistrates and the laws… Our public men have, besides politics, their private affairs to attend to, and our ordinary citizens, though occupied with the pursuits of industry, are still fair judges of public matters; for…we regard the citizen who takes no part in these duties not as unambitious but as useless, and we are able to judge proposals even if we cannot originate them; instead of looking on discussion as a stumbling block in the way of action, we think it an indispensable preliminary to any wise action at all. (The Landmark Thucydides, p. 112-3.) Pericles was not an academic theoretician, but governed Athens when it was engaged in the Persian War, and later the Peloponnesian War, multidecades life and death struggles that engulfed the entire Greek world. He was a tough practitioner of Realpolitik. He knew from experience the value of expertise and recommended that meritorious individuals be recognized for their contributions. An astute strategist, diplomat and political leader, he was not deceived about the enlightened wisdom of ordinary people. He understood that not just anyone could formulate satisfactory policy, especially in complex and dangerous times. Yet he remained a democrat, keenly aware of the advantages of an open society in which ordinary citizens could discuss, debate and vote on policy proposals. It may seem odd that Pericles was so staunch a democrat, for elitist theory sounds impressive. After all, shouldn’t those who have the requisite capacity and who are specially trained be the ones who would best govern? Not necessarily. What sounds impressive often fails. Reality often differs from high-sounding theory. As an antidote to dwelling excessively on the lack of capability of ordinary people, it may be useful to consider the track records of elites. The best and the brightest have regularly produced not just disappointments, but disasters. History is replete with elitist policies characterized by two dangerously misguided themes. One is that the ends justify the means, that even massive suffering in the near term is a small price to pay for the better world that is sure to be attained by the policies in question. Too often have elites caused horrendous suffering in the name of wonderful ends, sacrificing common decency as though it were an inferior standard that the powerful and enlightened could transcend on behalf of their cause. Chateaubriand expressed this with sardonic elegance: The members of the Convention prided themselves on being the most benevolent of men. Good fathers, good sons, good husbands, they took their children out walking; they acted as nannies, they wept with tenderness at the sight of their children’s simple games; they would lift those little lambs gently in their arms, to show them the horses pulling the tumbrels that were taking the victims to execution. They sang of nature, peace, piety, charity, innocence, the domestic virtues. These bigots of philanthropy had their neighbors’ heads cut off with extreme sensitivity, so that the happiness of the human race might be ever greater. (Mémoirs d’outre-tombe, v. 1, p. 292.) How similar this is to the “Long Telegram” of George F. Kennan, which did much to influence our view of the U.S.S.R. “In this dogma, with its basic altruism of purpose, they found justification for their instinctive fear of the outside world, for the dictatorship without which they did not know how to rule, for cruelties they did not dare not to inflict, for sacrifices they felt bound to demand.” Even the Grand Inquisitor was there to save souls. The other theme, also focused narrowly on ends, is the disregard of practical ramifications, of what could go wrong. Some of our own most foolhardy policies illustrate this pattern. “These dilemmas deepened when, in 1962, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara adopted the strategy of “assured destruction,” which based deterrence on the calculation of civilian devastation that would be theoretically unacceptable to the Soviet Union. This essentially academic concept presupposed unlimited willingness to threaten civilian casualties; minimum estimates involved tens of millions. This professorial strategy calculated everything except the willingness to resort to it. Inevitably it created a huge gap between our awesome military capacity and the moral convictions of almost any foreseeable American leader.” (Kissinger, Years of Renewal, p. 116-7.) More recently, the diversion of water from the two rivers that feed the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan, while it reflected the benign intent to irrigate 18 million acres of land and increase agricultural production, failed to consider environmental consequences. “Predictably this major diversion of water caused the Aral Sea to shrink rapidly. By the late 1980s two thirds of it had dried up, exposing the seabed across an area of over 12,000 square miles. Major climatic changes resulted — temperatures rose and rainfall fell. The effects locally were devastating. Nearly all the species of fish in the sea became extinct, the fishing industry collapsed and large numbers of villages were abandoned. The salinity of the Aral tripled; salt-dust storms swept the area; the water table fell, causing the sewerage system to collapse, with the result that typhoid rates rose thirty-fold, and nine out of ten children were diagnosed as being permanently ill.” (Ponting, The Twentieth Century, p. 73.) Good intentions are not sufficient, even for the morality of an act. It is not enough to mean well. One must also try to anticipate consequences. When it is known that some people have an allergy, potentially fatal, to penicillin, it may be immoral for even a well-meaning doctor to treat a patient with penicillin before checking to see if he is allergic to it. Despite many avoidable disasters, one might still try to construct a favorable case for elites where society has attempted to institutionalize a meritocracy: Confucian China, with its rigorous examinations for those wishing to enter government service; and nineteenth century England, with Eton and Harrow grooming a select portion of the upper class for Oxford and Cambridge, which then prepared them for government or the foreign service. Did these elites have better track records? Even though elitism does not by itself guarantee competence, it is plausible that providing a carefully selected elite with rigorous training might insure sensible far-sighted decisions. However, as if to fly in the face of such theoretical plausibility, carefully selected and well trained elites have displayed egregious incompetence for generations, without affecting their elite status. Despite the rigorous training of the Chinese mandarins, their inflexibility at critical times was damaging to China. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, the Chinese were poised to become the dominant civilization on our planet. They had a large population base and an impressively ordered central government. They were the technology leader in shipping, having invented the compass and astrolabe and having built ships of a size that dwarfed European efforts. Cheng Ho had led naval expeditions as far as Africa. The carefully selected and diligently trained mandarins squandered this impressive head start. “By the mid 1430s, the Confucians had not definitively won the factional struggles. But their values were well on the way to a nearconclusive triumph. The abrogation of overseas expansion, the demotion of commercial values and the renunciation of shipbuilding became such important badges for the scholar-elite that bureaucrats destroyed all Cheng Ho’s records in an attempt to obliterate his memory. The examination system and the gradual attenuation of other forms of recruitment for public service meant that China would increasingly be governed by a code of scholars, with their contempt for barbarism, and of gentlemen, with their indifference to trade.” (F. FernandezArmesto, Millennium, p. 133.) Nearly five centuries later this scholarly elite sided with the Dowager Empress in opposing the reform and modernization of Chinese society. Serious reform would have changed the future of China. It might have prevented, or at least changed the character of, Mao’s revolution. We have our own elite mandarins. For more than two centuries, elite military staff officers have been specially trained to run armies in much the same way MBAs are now trained to run corporations. They have a horrid track record, typically mounting unimaginative strategies based on little more than amassing an overwhelming advantage in firepower (Saul, Voltaire’s Bastards). These strategies, including the bombing of population centers, have maximized civilian casualties and economic devastation while minimizing strategic military gain. In addition, military elites have resolutely resisted nearly every imaginative — and ultimately successful — effort to change the existing paradigm: from air power (Billy Mitchell, Claire Chenault) to tank strategy (Percy Hobart, Heinz Guderian); from small, highly mobile, specially trained units (Charles de Gaulle, Erich von Manstein) to nuclear submarines (Hyman Rickover) to guerrilla tactics (Orde Wingate). That the proponents of such unconventional — at the time — approaches to warfare were individualists who did not fit into an established old-boy network may have buttressed the stubborn resolve of General Staffs to sabotage any recommended changes. But such a picture of an elite General Staff hardly fits with competence, much less the ingenuity to lead armies. It is important to understand why elitist policies have failed so often. These failures are not coincidence but stem from endemic defects of institutionalized expertise. Sapin and Snyder’s description of the military mind-set: “Rigidity in thought and problem analysis — the rejection of new ideas and reliance on tradition rather than the lessons learned from recent experience…” (“The Role of Military Institutions and Agencies in American Foreign Policy” in Snyder and Furniss [eds.] American Foreign Policy), applies to other elites as well. General Staffs, like mandarins and other elites, resemble scientific communities in their preoccupation with applying existing paradigms to a delimited range of well-defined problems. Comfortable with their traditional understanding of the world, they resist paradigm changes, radical original thought, just as scientific communities resist major theoretical change. This may explain why radical progress often occurs in areas far from cultural or economic centers. The development of nation states in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries occurred in England, France, Spain, Eastern Europe and Scandinavia. These were backward areas in contrast to northern Italy, Germany of the Danube and the Rhine, and Holland. The more economically advanced areas, dominated by city-states, were slow to develop national identities. They were comfortable with their political paradigm and reluctant to change. They were surpassed by the newer states. Centuries later, the industrial revolution started in Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Birmingham and Leeds, far from London, England’s center of nearly everything. Even now, a disproportionate number of major advances in technology are made by smaller companies with a fraction of the research budgets of the giants. In the spiritual realm as well, each of the three major Western religions was born on the fringes of civilization, far from centers of culture and power. Shakyamuni, the founder of Buddhism, was born to a minor clan far from the mainstream of Indian civilization. A common theme underlies these examples. Where a conservative elite, resistant to paradigm change, is in a position of power, understanding ossifies along lines of pre-established doctrine and the potential for progress atrophies. Given the propensity of elites to insist on their established paradigms and to summarily reject radically new perspectives, given their chronic insensitivity to consequences of their actions, and given their track records, it may be appropriate to insist on reality checks on their recommendations. In government the notion of widespread competence and interest characteristic of participatory democracy may provide proper restraint. It is reasonable that while the conception and proposal of major new policies be relegated to elites, those policies should not be implemented until the common people have been legitimately convinced of their propriety. There may be wisdom in taking this Periclean principle seriously. “At the root of this [Athenian] constitution lay distrust of expertise and entrenched authority and confidence in collective common sense.” (J. Roberts, The Penguin History of the World, p. 189.) Despite this, we have seen a gradual devolution of power away from ordinary citizens to a variety of specialized elites. This is most evident in our judicial system. The power of juries has eroded, and judges have inordinate influence on court decisions. Even in the face of unanimous juries, judges can overturn the verdict or call for a new trial. Judges, an elite group of elite lawyers, are different in education, income, race and political inclinations from the average citizen. Until 1953, the American Bar Association did not admit African-Americans. Until 1967, the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary was all white, all male. Despite minor (token?) changes in the composition of this committee, little else has changed. The Judicature Society, assessing this committee’s evaluation of candidates for federal judge, concluded: “[T]he strongest possible relationship which emerged in our analysis was that between the American Bar Association rating and the candidates’ white male status.” (Elliott E. Slotnick, “The American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Federal Judiciary, A Contemporary Assessment,” Judicature, 66, p. 383.) Does this produce a higher caliber of justice? It has been argued forcefully that it does not, that juries of peers are fairer than elite judges, who tend to systematic bias. “More often than not, our cases on appeal are decided by a jury of judges composed of persons most lawyers would have challenged summarily from any jury panel. An attorney for a party injured in an automobile collision might be guilty of malpractice were he to accept a juror who had spent his life working for a liability insurance company. But, on appeal, his case will often be decided by judges who, before they rose to the bench, spent their lives and amassed modest fortunes defending insurance companies in similar cases.” (Spence, With Justice for None, p. 93.) This reinforces an old judicial pattern: Through tattered clothes small vices do appear; Robes and furred gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold, And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks; Arm it in rags, a pygmy’s straw does pierce it. (Shakespear, King Lear.) Despite compromising our ideal of equal justice, judicial power, like political power, serves large corporations. This, too, fits corporatism rather than democracy. As in the political arena, corporate influence in the judicial arena does not reflect a premeditated power grab. Aided by our tendency to associate (confuse) wealth with respectability, the corporatist transfer of judicial has been inexorable, but gradual, imperceptible. We have failed to notice the change. The ease of transition from democracy to corporatism in both the political and judicial arenas underlines the importance — and difficulty — of vigilance in defense of democracy. But because most of us are leading comfortable lives, we barely notice what has happened to our government. Our corporatist system has not been working, but its failure has been covered by a rising economic tide. The relative decline in the economic status of the middle class has produced only stagnation in its absolute purchasing power. We are comfortably numb. Social mores exacerbate the situation by stressing that we have earned our leisure and richly deserve it. Modern culture has all but deified the freedom to do what we want while creating a bevy of diversions that our grandparents would neither understand nor value. We have become addicted to these diversions, to the honey of Plato’s drones. Even aside from the problems created by the laissez faire mindset, commitment to democracy and the effort it requires is overshadowed by personal agendas. We just don’t have the time. So why change? It may take a protracted economic decline — which is likely, given our record levels of debt, the potential for massive losses in the equity market, and the adverse economic impact of the negative wealth effect — to cut through our complacency and sharpen our perception of the unfairness of the system. But such a catalyst would be fraught with danger. In so far as poverty and a decline in standards of living breed fear and violence, an extended economic downturn could revive latent xenophobic tendencies, known to surface even in good times. Because we have a tradition in which fomenting hatred directed at powerless minorities has been used to political advantage, there is precedent to redirect economic frustration and pain into sociopathy. To the extent that populism generated by widespread economic hardship panders to scapegoating, it would endanger the fabric of society. The most viable alternative to seeing our problems as the work of “bad guys” may be seeing them as reflecting systemic flaws. For generations we have been tweaking our institutions in response to perceived short-term inadequacies. Only in the last decade have advances in computer modeling enabled us to gain insight into the longer-term behavior of systems. Sophisticated models show that systems — even economies — designed for optimal short-term performance often perform poorly in the long run. Sprinters don’t win marathons. It will be important to consider a number of our institutions in this light Our democracy may be the most important of these. Short-term pain jeopardizes incumbents, even if that pain is necessary to avoid more serious consequences later. That makes the primary political rationale — to get elected or re-elected — incompatible with a long-term approach. By the time a problem grows to the point that band-aids no longer work, it will be someone else’s problem. So there is little incentive to pursue anything more than short-term palliatives, even at the expense of the long-term health of society. At least in today’s world, natural selection does not favor democracy. The success and even the survival of this form of government requires a conscious effort to develop a citizenry that is both aware of and committed to its obligations as citizens. Otherwise, citizens may abrogate those obligations and the democracy may quietly slip into an oligarchy with democratic trappings, as it has done in the U.S. The need for a citizenry that understands long-term societal needs and is willing to place those ahead of private desires is why a realistic commitment to democracy requires a commitment to a broad education based on the traditional, classical view. It underscores the wisdom in H.G. Wells’ remark (The Outline of History) that history is a race between education and catastrophe. For it is doubtful that a democracy of idiots can survive in the modern world. |
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