Democracy is not the solution, it’s the problem

This article, by Angelo Codevilla, has been making the rounds. It’s well worth a read and it touches on many of the topics that I have discussed recently.

In sum, Codevilla believes that American politics are moving toward a clash of classes. On one side is the ruling class of politicians and their patrons. On the other side is the "country" class (Codevilla never explains the choice of terminology) which consists of those who long for "self-government" (another undefined term). This class construct will be familiar to Moldbug readers as the BDH-OV conflict.

Codevilla is, at root, conservative. His analysis therefore comes close but goes awry in certain key respects.

He correctly diagnoses the problem facing the country class. The class has no political party in the US: "only a fourth of the voters who identify themselves as Republicans tell pollsters that Republican officeholders represent them well."

"SCIENCE"

He get close to understanding why this is the case, but he doesn’t ever bring the point home. Here are a few quotes that almost get there: "for the sake of getting on the right side of history" . . . "By identifying science and reason with themselves, our rulers delegitimize opposition" . . . "Today’s ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits."

This point needs to be made very explicit. The ruling class of today is in power because of the historical successes of hard science. Nothing has a better record of revealing the truth than hard science. The hard sciences triumphed over religion during the last centuries and therefore, the systems of government that were embraced by religion were destroyed when religion fell to science.

The new ruling class then pulled a clever switcheroo. They cloaked various subjects that cannot be scientific with a veneer of science. Thus, the rulers can make it appear that their rule is the outcome of a scientific process. Unfortunately, this is impossible. The movement of falling bodies is amenable to scientific processes, the governance of people is not.

This scientific veneer allows the ruling class to claim truth. It therefore allows them to write history. Thus, no politicians will challenge the core beliefs of the ruling class as doing so will put them on "the wrong side of history." The ruling class, after all, writes the history.

My favorite example of this is Joe McCarthy. During McCarthy’s time in the Senate, it became clear to any well-informed, unbiased observer that the US government had been infiltrated by lots of Soviet spies. To be clear, we now know this to be true. McCarthy stated this fact . . . and is considered a pariah. No politician will ever be able to speak out about something and be more factually correct than McCarthy. No American politician is more reviled by mainstream history than McCarthy. What is the lesson?

THE OLD CONSTITUTION

Codevilla, as a good representative of the CRB, is very fond of Lincoln. He also seems to hate Woodrow Wilson. In doing so, Codevilla makes another typically conservative mistake: he believes the problem can be solved by returning to some previous version of the US Constitution. He quotes Lincoln as saying: "How, for example, to remind America of, and to drive home to the ruling class, Lincoln’s lesson that trifling with the Constitution for the most heartfelt of motives destroys its protections for all?" Yet if one must name the destroyer of the original, federal, understanding of the US Constitution, one must name Lincoln. The rise of the Federal Government, as the controlling entity, began with Lincoln. Wilson just filled in the dots.

CLASSES

I’d like to conclude by noting a few additional points.

Codevillas description of the ruling class is rather good. It does, at times, lapse into conspiracy theorizing. Such a view is incorrect. For example, Codevilla notes that most new laws simply grant power to agencies:

Because modern laws are primarily grants of discretion, all anybody has to know about them is whom they empower.

I don’t believe that this result is explained by some sort of patronage conspiracy. Our government is simply too big for Congress to make all these decisions. More importantly, Congress does not want responsibility for making these decisions.

Responsibility is the key word that is missing from Codevillas analysis. The ruling class holds power without holding responsibility. That simple observation – not some conspiracy – is the key to understanding their actions.

Codevilla’s analysis of the "country" class is worse, because it’s less clear that such a class actually exists. I agree that there are people who long for self-government, but it’s far from clear that any of these people agree on what that actually means, or anything else. In the end, they seem to be a class only in opposition to the ruling class.

Finally, Codevilla doesn’t go far enough in various respects – I’ll take two:

The ruling class wears on its sleeve the view that the rest of Americans are racist, greedy, and above all stupid. The country class is ever more convinced that our rulers are corrupt, malevolent, and inept. The rulers want the ruled to shut up and obey. The ruled want self-governance.

Codevilla seems to believe that the country class has the better of the argument here. I would prefer to argue that both classes are correct. The bulk of Americans are stupid and have no business in governance – most, respectably, don’t want any part of it. They do not long for "self-government" in any meaningful sense, if the alternative is some sort of subsidy that benefits them. They love self-government, but beware the politician that suggests changing their medicare, for example (this position is gibberish and it is commonly held).

The rulers are inept and corrupt. The ineptitude and corruption are a results of the incentives that the rulers face. The problem, at root, is democracy.

DEMOCRACY

And this is where Codevilla jumps the shark:

If self-governance means anything, it means that those who exercise government power must depend on elections. The shorter the electoral leash, the likelier an official to have his chain yanked by voters, the more truly republican the government is. Yet to subject the modern administrative state’s agencies to electoral control would require ordinary citizens to take an interest in any number of technical matters. Law can require environmental regulators or insurance commissioners, or judges or auditors to be elected. But only citizens’ discernment and vigilance could make these officials good. Only citizens’ understanding of and commitment to law can possibly reverse the patent disregard for the Constitution and statutes that has permeated American life. Unfortunately, it is easier for anyone who dislikes a court’s or an official’s unlawful act to counter it with another unlawful one than to draw all parties back to the foundation of truth.

For Codevilla, the solution to too much democracy is more democracy. Self-government, for Codevilla, means democracy. Why, does Codevilla believe that a return to an America of roughly 1900 will solve all our problems? We’ve been there before and we ended up here. The solution is not democracy. The problem is democracy. If our last, best hope is citizens caring a lot about "insurance commissioners," then we’re screwed.