Amending the Constitution: protection from the tyranny of democracy and republicanism
In the many posts I’ve written attempting to explain the basic neocon attitude towards the spread of democracy-(see this and this) I’ve tried to be careful to use the term “liberal democracy” to describe what is advocated. Why? Because democracy alone is not enough.
Democracy can devolve into tyranny almost as easily as a powerful central government can. The genius of our system is that it makes it exceptionally difficult for tyranny to occur by making it extremely hard to change our Constitution or to give up the basic rights guaranteed there (absurdly hyperbolic discussions of the Patriot Act notwithstanding).
This is not to say that some encroachments can’t, and don’t, occur. But they have been relatively minor compared to what is possible; so far, our system has worked to insure that we are among the freest people on earth.
Not only are we a republic rather than a pure democracy, but our republican form of government is designed with an exquisite system of checks and balances in place among the three different branches. But that’s not all. Our Bill of Rights establishes that certain basic liberties will be protected, and the mechanism for amending the Constitution and changing that system (including that Bill of Rights) is made almost fiendishly difficult to implement.
History teaches that the Bill of Rights was adopted with an eye to limiting the power of both the executive and the legislative branches, as well as to make clear that all powers not specifically listed in the Constitution as belonging to the federal government were retained by the states and the people. But what would prevent the people from voting away any of those rights? History also teaches us that crowds are strange and fickle things, subject to persuasive demagoguery as well as coercive threats, and that Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor wasn’t lying when he said that humankind is often willing to lay down the burden of freedom for easy answers and the promise of protection from its responsibilities.
As Lincoln wrote, our government is “of the people, by the people, for the people.” But the overwhelming power the people would wield in a pure democracy is limited by the powers and balances among the three branches, the fact that we have a representative republican form of government rather than a pure democracy, and by the aforementioned difficulty of amending the constitution.
Without these guarantees, democracy can mean “one person, one vote, one time.” The Ayatollah Khomeini was given dictatorial powers in a process that began, after the fall of the Shah and the Ayatollah’s triumphant return, with a nationwide referendum that was passed with an extraordinary 92.8% percent of the vote. This established the theocratic dictatorship that exists to this day, with the constitution of Iran being totally rewritten shortly afterwards.
Hitler came to power without ever winning a majority vote for his party, but the German government had another weakness—under its constitution, it was relatively easy to suspend civil liberties and establish a dictatorship. This did not even require the vote of its people, merely a two-thirds majority of its legislature. Therefore it was done by republican means; the Reichstag obligingly voted to abolish itself, although not without the “persuasion” of Hitler’s storm troopers surrounding the building with cries of ““Full powers—or else! We want the bill—or fire and murder!”
And recent less dramatic, but similar and still worrisome, events by which Venezuelan dictator Chavez has seized power with the full cooperation of the Venezuelan legislature—which, as in Germany of old, can amend the constitution by a mere 2/3 vote—demonstrate once again that there are not only “democratic” ways to seize power, but “republican” ones as well (and please note the small “d” and the small “r”).
One has only to look at the makeup of our own Congress, with its power-hungry politics-playing on both sides, to understand that we would by no means be immune from such a vulnerability if our own Constitution were similarly written. But, just as our checks and balances work to protect us from one branch of the government easily gaining ascendance over the others, and our Bill of Rights works to protect our liberties from encroachment by any branch, the entire edifice rests on the difficulty of changing any of this. The framers purposely built such roadblocks into the Constitution itself when they implemented the amendment process.
I haven’t done an exhaustive search, but my guess is that our constitution just might be the most difficult on earth to change. Yes, the first step is a vote by two-thirds of the legislature (with a never-used alternative form of proposal, two-thirds of the state legislatures calling for a special convention for the purpose of making an amendment), just as in Germany and Venezuela. But that, fortunately, is only the first step. The next one is approval by three-quarters of the states, either their legislatures or special conventions.
These hurdles placed in the way of easy amendment do not, of course, assure that our liberty will be protected. But they certainly make it more likely than it is in most countries. In the end, of course, even the constitution only rests on the general social contract and the consent of the governed (and, by the way, this is where the guarantee of the right of the people to bear arms comes in handy; at least it gives them a fighting chance against a possible runaway military).
How does this apply to the attempts to spread democracy to a country such as Iraq? It makes it clear that democracy itself is a highly flawed “solution” without the guarantees inherent in a liberal democracy, and that none of it is of much use if the constitution of a country is too easily amended or suspended.
“Democracy itself, without these guarantees, can mean one person, one vote, one time.”
That’s a very strong point. I also like to remind people that if we had pure democracy, we would elect people to office by random as in ancient Athens, and not by election. That we don’t suggests that virtue, and not democracy, is the higher, though not mutually exclusive principle.
An excellent point, and one that not enough people think and/or know about. It’s all very well and good to say you’ve got this marvellous democracy, and all this freedom, but if you can vote it all away with a minimum of effort, or worse, the legislature can take it away without even consulting the people, it’s practically useless in the long term. If there’s one thing you can trust about humanity it’s that, sooner or later, there will be someone with the right mentality and the right position to convince people they’d prefer life under a dictatorship. No need to make it easy when that person arises.
Out of interest, the method for passing a constitutional change in Australia is remarkably similar to that in the US.
Step 1) Absolute majority vote in both houses of Parliament approving of the proposed change (with some awkward circumstances arising if one house passes and the other doesn’t, but I won’t get into that).
Step 2) A majority vote of the entire Australian population, AND a majority vote in the majority of states (four out of the six).
Step 3) If applicable, there needs to be a majority vote in every state specifically and directly affected by the proposed change.
It’s telling that, in our entire history, only eight out of forty four referendums have passed.
humankind is often willing to lay down the burden of freedom for easy answers and the promise of protection from its responsibilities.
Pretty good description of the welfare state.
Perhaps this is why people who want to change things have found it easier to make the courts do their dirty work.
And thank goodness that those are roadblocks and not just speedbumps; the class of politician that gets in the legislature isn’t that good, and after four to six terms, becomes particularly foul. Of course, our execrable systems of civic education must take some of the blame, as well as our failure to teach children to apply an intelligent skepticism to what the media report.
If I could force one change on the rules of congress, it would be that after three terms a Senator or Representative would lose ALL seniority, and could not begin gaining it back until two more terms in office–or one term out of it. Granted that the political machines would create merry-go-round hacks, but they’d at least spend some time out of office, and wouldn’t always get rotated back in. The executive has terms limits; it’s time to impose them on the legislature by one means or another.
neo gives a shout out to the 2nd Amendment! Cool.
I agree with Mark. Congressional senority has become a problem for our nation. I wouln’t mind limiting the Senate to ONE term.
An argument may/will be made that we need experienced Senators to understand … whatever it is they need to understand. I say such an argument is horse manure. I could count forever and still not run out of Americans who are smarter and wiser than Ted Stevens, Barbara Boxer, Ted Kennedy, and John Kerry. Anyone done an IQ check on Patty Murray and Bernie Sanders lately?
I vote for a maximum of 12 years in government at any level. One could be a senator for 4 and president for 8, for example, or representative for 4, vp for 4, and pres for 4.
But we’ve had enough of legislators for life. In the early days of the republic, governmental service was a hardship; though Jefferson lived in Virginia, a few miles away from DC, he didn’t see his wife for two years! As things stand now, our “representatives” have $750,000 for “staff”, don’t have to pay for travel or gasoline, can misuse the franking privilege for postage, don’t suffer from HMOs for their health care, and have the cushiest pension system around. They are fully insulated from the policies that they foist on the rest of the public. It’s time for them to either lose the perks or get out of government in short order–no more lifetime sinecures.
gcotharn,
I agree. One question I’ve never heard asked is what did John Kerry, John Edwards and their esteemed colleagues on the Intelligence Comittee contribute to the intelligence failures pre-9/11.
I’d like to see term limits for bureaucrats.
I also think the voters will vote themselves into fascism if given half a chance. Most wouldn’t recognize it if it hit them over the head like a baseball bat. Case in point: smoking bans and other nanny state bs.
(and, by the way, this is where the guarantee of the right of the people to bear arms comes in handy; at least it gives them a fighting chance against a possible runaway military).
That’s not exactly correct, Neo. Yes, the military is one thing that the government may use to oppress the people, but for our times, it is police powers and bureacratic “troops” that are the most dangerous. They are the ones seeking to outlaw the use of weapons by civilians, not the US military.
There’s also the often stated argument, designed to delay and trip people up, concerning how the US military would destroy any civilian opposition regardless of the weapons, so this means the 2nd Amendment is useless and regretful given the number of firearm deaths.
People might be interested in the comments I made here link at bookworm room.
This is a good example of that Spycraft and Idiotcraft post I did recently. If you want to destroy a system, you need people from the inside that know that system intimately. You need them for two reasons. Motivation and Expertise. Only those from the Left, can understand the Left. This is not to ridicule the efforts of those that were always on the Right, it is just to explain a truism. Only those that have personal experience of a system or belief, can know how to destroy it. And if that system is bad, then only such a person from inside that system will have the strongest motivations To destroy it.
This applies to the Soviet defectors, the Arab allies of America, and to Hirsi. Understand this, for it is one of the simple truisms that run the cogs of humanity.
Inside jobs have been around siege warcraft and human attempts to annihilate each other since the dawn of time, it seems.
You notice how surprised he is in reaction to the things Hirsi says? This man obviously believes in what he says, and he obviously thinks just as we do. That you would have to be conditioned and been re-educated to have such beliefs. But of course, what is the real truth in essence? Which one of us were re-educated and conditioned to spout the lines that the Masters told us to?
Ah, that’s a tricky question isn’t it. The two narratives, Hirsi’s and her opponent’s, are competing narratives so to speak. Competing power structures, competing Alpha males so to speak, etc.
Hirsi is very good at controlling the narrative, not letting the rather psychologically strong points the guy was making, to throw her off her line. Her narrative. Control the narrative, and you control a lot other things in human belief circles.-quoting myself
There are some very nice specific recommendations for term limits you have here, Neo.
Even liberal democracies need new blood. Especially ours, and maybe even more so the budding Iraqi system.
Even the vaunted American non-expansive Imperium learned much from the blood and toil of Athens and Rome.
Pingback:Hirsi Ali; Believer in the Cause « Sake White
Good one. You’re linked.
iraqwatch.orgexpat,
Here you go:
http://www.iraqwatch.org/government/US/Legislation/ILA.htm
Of course back then, they weren’t “intelligence failures”, they were “facts”. Notice the unanimous vote in the Senate. Every Democrat authorised Clinton(who signed it into policy) to “impose democracy” on Iraq, and oust the violator of U.N. resolutions and ceasefire agreements.
You know, security and individual rights are sometimes portrayed as antithetical, such as in some Patriot Act discussions, which they can be if extended to the extremes of tyranny and anarchy. However, given the tumultuous times they lived in as British subjects and then free Americans, I doubt the founding fathers wished that their descendants would choose one over the other. Rather, it was important that we recognize the necessity of the former and the importance of the latter, and do our best to practice one and preserve the other.
The Civil Rights movement is a classic example of the American political system enduring to overcome the contradictory near-term motivations of American citizens. It took a civil war that ended a traditional economic way of life, spectacularly failed efforts at full-spectrum reform (eg, Reconstruction), and almost 200 years, but our Constitution remained intact and it eventually happened.
When I did a paper on MLK in college, I was surprised to discover the stark contrast between his shining record as a civil rights reformer, where his platform called for enforcing rights that were supposed to be guaranteed to all Americans but historically denied to some Americans, and his failed record as a socialist economic reformer, an economic state not guaranteed to Americans and therefore a far less successful advocacy for King.
It showed me that as great an American as he was, King’s civil rights success had as much to do with the strength of the American political system as his own enlightened leadership. Late in his life, King – a religious scholar and ordained minister – likened himself to a biblical prophet channeling the word of God. I like to think of him as a Constitutional prophet who channeled the wisdom of the Founding Fathers.
It’s a great thing to be an American, but it’s a tremendous burden of responsibility, too. It’s amazing we’ve kept it going as long as we’ve had.
The reason I suggested the loss of seniority for legislators rather than term limits is because it could give the electorate the choice of experience OR seniority, but not both–or not for too long.
Alas, the Constitution states that Congress makes its own rules of procedure, but doesn’t keep it at arm’s length from the executive.
The republic that the Founders gave us suffered a crippling blow in 1913 with the ratification of the 17th Amendment, allowing for the popular election of Senators.
The House of Representatives and the Senate were set up as separate bodies with different purposes. Representatives were elected by the people, while the Senators were supposed to represent their state’s interest, and were chosen by state legislatures (which were also elected by the people). This was part of the “checks and balances”.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the runaway growth of the Federal government has happened since the ratification of the 17th. The states no longer have any meaningful representation in the Federal government.
I have come to hate the 17th Amendment even more than the 16th.
whitehouse.govLee,
Here’s a good accompaniment to the Iraq Liberation Act, the 2002 Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq.
WMD was just one trigger. Implicit in the ILA, and no evidence has disproved it since, is that for Saddam to comply with all the conditions we imposed on him, it would mean the collapse of his regime. If the only issue was WMD, maybe Saddam could have negotiated his way out of the mess. Originally, we wanted his compliance and for Saddam to stay in power. If he had done so in 1991, before the US and UN mandates were broadened, life would be easier for us, but he didn’t. After Op Desert Fox, which was a declaration of war whose expression was limited to bombings, the broad range of triggers we placed on Iraq – most of which are not in question – practically ensured an all-or-nothing situation where any serious enforcement effort would become a full intervention. War.
We’d exhausted the alternatives. The only remaining alternative to picking up what the Clinton admin started in 1998 was the suspended yet active Iraq punitive and containment mission that took place between Op Desert Fox and Op Iraqi Freedom. That limbo situation could only end either with Saddam outlasting the US and UN or regime change in Iraq, whether from within or without. (Despite the ILA rhetoric, we had already ruled out regime change from within as a desirable outcome when we betrayed the Shia – including Muqtada al Sadr’s dad, who died for his belief in us – to Saddam in 1991.)
Blaming the US – really, the West – for intelligence failures over Iraq isn’t inaccurate, and they point to institutional and policy faults that need fixing, but the accusation is also not fair. After Op Desert Storm, Iraq wasn’t an intelligence mission in that it wasn’t our responsibility to prove Iraq’s military capabilities as a competitive military power. Iraq’s guilt was established and conditions were placed upon it as a defeated nation. Saddam was supposed to prove compliance in order to restore full sovereignty. Again, we wanted him to. The role of the intel services was to support the inspectors in their work to monitor and eventually help Iraq facilitate its compliance under those conditions. However, once the inspection regimen fell apart, the inspectors withdrew, and Clinton’s declaration of war was sort of carried out, the responsibility for Iraq was dumped very awkwardly onto the intelligence services. It was a political cop-out move. The problem was that any intel capability for Iraq had been designed to work with the inspectors, and when the inspectors were pulled, that left intel with a new mission late in the game. Moreover, over-all human intelligence capability had been restricted while Iraq had become proficient in evading the high-tech methods of intelligence during the inspection process. Our foreign policy was generally unfocused in the post-Cold War period. Not enough effort was made to overcome the shortcomings in the Iraq mission since it was BS, anyway – political dump of responsibility from a suspended inspection regimen whose mission was to facilitate Iraq proving its compliance, not actually uncover or prove anything.
It’s no wonder that by 2002 the intel on Iraqi WMD was dressed-up guesswork, with the last reliable ‘eyes-on’ info at least 4 years old. That became a frightening situation post-9/11 when considering an angry, threatened, aggressive, ambitious and proud, non-compliant tyrant who was not above Islamist rhetoric, with a track record whose guilt on multiple fronts was established, including support of and negotiation with terrorists. 9/11 unveiled some very scary possibilities to go with a global nuclear weapons black market (AQ Khan) that made the flow of weapons from said tyrant reaching terrorists plausible.
Our only choices regarding Iraq were continuing our indefinite punishment and containment of Iraq, and absorbing any secondary effects of that mission in a post-9/11 world, summarily ending that mission and attempting a reconciliation with a non-compliant Saddam-led Iraq, or picking up where Clinton left off in 1998 and following through with an enforcement to which Saddam could not comply without surrendering his regime. War.
Focusing on intelligence failures is just one small, and relatively minor, part of the whole picture. If you want to blame intelligence failures, blame the politicians first who over 10-plus years of incompetent management of the post-Desert Storm Iraq mission forced our intel services into that position. Remove the WMD issue from the discussion, and Saddam would still be guilty, and we’d still be on the hook for Iraq and doing something about a bad situation that we screwed up.
Interesting article, as usual.
Interesting comments.
First observation: The restraints of the plainly written Constitution were broken by the Supreme Court in the Thirties to enable the New Deal and Federal control of local issues. This continues and, seemingly, is generally accepted by the public although it is clearly unconstitutional. This is despite the Supreme Court’s general sense that the Constitution is what it, the Court, says it is. That is nonsense. Anyone can read.
Second Observation: “Democracy” has become the catchword, rallying cry, whatever, of the times. That is off the mark. Freedom of the people is the issue. Democracy does not necessarily lead to freedom, as our founding father well knew. Freedom of the people will most probably lead to a free society. In one of the many perversions of our language where “bad” means good, “liberal” meant liberty from oppresive government while it now means just the opposite.
Minor comment to “D.”
Smoking bans and other politically correct nanny state regulations are not “Faschist” but Communist. Both,of course, are totalitaritan or at least authoritarian in nature. (The political spectrum is not linear but circular.)
Faschism is the legal combination or cartelization of industries with the approval of and under the control of the State such as our existing agricultural marketing boards. These are state authorized monopolies created under the New Deal.
Case in point: smoking bans and other nanny state bs.
If you don’t mind toxins, why mind terrorists? We’d save more lives bombing the cigarette companies, than most anyone else.
You can’t shoot an intruder with a cigarette. Doesn’t even give you a decent buzz like alcohol or one of the illegal drugs. Plus, it makes you prematurely ugly. And you smell bad.
Yes, democracy can result in tyranny.
I think part of the problem is bad framing. People tacitly or explicitly pose the operative question as “What sort of government should we have?” Most people, myself included, would answer “A democratically elected government.” Insulation from democratic accountability can only be justified in exceptional circumstances where democratic control clearly fails, and then other stringent checks and balances must be employed to prevent abuse.
But a better version of the question would be “How should our actions be governed?” To this, most people would answer “By our individual wills.” Restrictions upon individual liberty — even democratically agreed upon restrictions — are now relegated to exceptional circumstances where self determination clearly fails, and stringent checks and balances must be employed to prevent abuse. This is the gist of liberalism. Democracy is, at best, the second layer.
By framing the question in the first form, we tacitly cede governance to an external agency. We have already met the would-be tyrants and the petty busy bodies half way.
Just a heads up but your reply and two links are in the Neo-Con post a few threads back, Eric.
If your right to swing your fist ends just short of my nose, doesn’t your right to smoke end when a significant amount of it enters my nostrils? What is significant? Enough to trigger allergies, enough to ruin the taste of the dinner or the wine I have paid for, enough to give me nicotine cravings in the morning, enough to raise my risk of illness by something greater than one-in-a-million–we can argue about which rules apply when.
But we shouldn’t be arguing the principle.
And don’t tell me that non-smokers don’t get cravings. Smoke-filled rooms are a great way to get hooked on the stuff.
Freedom goes hand-in-hand with responsibility. If you give over your responsibility to another and trust that he will guard your freedoms at the cost of his interest over the years or generations, you will find too late that you made a grievious mistake. If you convince him that his job is to make society run better, he may take you at your word, with consequences you don’t like. Or he may just use the job to enrich himself. Either way, you’re in trouble.
Mark: Enough [smoke] to trigger allergies, enough to ruin the taste of the dinner or the wine I have paid for,…?
And where does your freedom to regulate my conduct stop? Before you’ve ruined my enjoyment of the meal and wine I’ve paid for, with an after-dinner smoke? Why should your allergies, tastes, habits, etc., be other people’s problem? Or, if they are, then why should your bad taste in clothing, hair styles, etc., be allowed to visually pollute my environment? Freedom goes hand-in-hand with responsibility, after all.
(By the way, I’ve never actually smoked — I am arguing the principle.)
I won’t argue the “principle” to Mark, Sally. Let’s get real.
My proverbial “fist” had to find your nose. Mark’s “nose” comes up to me and says “You’re not doing anything I don’t approve of, are you?”
See, Mark could have chosen a non-smoking environment to go to dinner in, go dancing, etc., but conciously chose to come and hang around me, where it “stinks”.
In most cases, Mark would never choose to come where I frequent, but the possibility he “might, someday” means it must have “clean air” for him to breathe “just in case”.
They seem to think that a place of “public accomodation” is the same as “public property”, which also tells us the typical “social leanings” of activist non-smokers. So I ask: “Would you ever go to a gay bar?” When the answer is “no”(since most smoking nazis aren’t gay), I’ll ask: “Then, why do you care if they smoke in there? ‘Your’ air isn’t in the gay bar.” Then, of course, you get some “rationalization” about the poor employee, who “has no choice” but to work there, and “we” as a “society” need to take care of the “slaves” out there(waiters, waitresses, cooks, rock stars, stand-up comics, etc.)
If they really cared about the “public’s health”, they would pass laws to regulate “their smoke”, too. I’m sure Mark here drives a car, which puts out more carcinogens and carbon dioxide driving two blocks to pick up a gallon of milk than I could blow in his face chain-smoking for a month. He probably heats and lights his house by “smoking coal”, or maybe just “fissions nuclear material”. I’m willing to bet he can “smell” my cigarette smoke from a block away when I’m in my back yard with a smoke, but when he BBQ’s and his smoke comes into my house, he says “What’s the big deal? It’s just a barbecue. It’s not like I’m ‘killing you’. ‘My’ smoke is different from ‘your’ smoke.”
Anyone notice outdoor “European style” seating is becoming more popular? Many are only five feet from the curb, with hundreds of cars smoking in their face, throwing dust from the street on them and their food, but they don’t seem to care about that. Catch a whiff of one “puff” off the end of my cigarette, and suddenly, they’re “dying”.
So it’s not about “making the world safe from tobacco”, it’s about “restricting behavior(still “legal” behavior, by the way) we don’t approve of”, because it’s “my air”. Selfish hypocricy, nothing more.
That is why I have become ‘Taliban Tobacconist’. And I hereby issue my fatwa: “To blow smoke in the face of the smoking nazi infidel is pious and good.”
I also fart(as loudly as possible) more in public, now.
Keep your nose away from me, Mark, or it might just find itself in the way of a “swinging fist”.
Carbon “monoxide”, too.
Because you are releasing the noxious substances into the air we must share. That’s the key point: we do all have to share the air. If you grant me the right to a natural life, you must grant me the right to breathe. That’s not communism, it’s a fact of nature. The atmosphere is a commons.
If allergies to smoke were rare, if only a small fraction of the population were susceptible to nicotine addiction, if most people could smoke without resisting lung damage, it would be different. You’d be accidentally infringing upon the rights of a rare few. But you are instead affecting everyone around you.
You do realize that this principle does not cover chewing tobacco, don’t you (so long as you spit in appropriate receptacles)?
So, When I affect everyone around me, it matters. But when you affect everyone around you, it’s okay. Because your “smoke” isn’t as “harmful” as my “smoke”. Right?
Mark: Because you are releasing the noxious substances into the air we must share. That’s the key point: we do all have to share the air.
That’s a point, Mark, granted. But you’re missing or dodging my and Lee’s point. Nobody is forcing you to “share the air” of a particular restaurant or bar — you’ve chosen to place your nose just where others want to swing their arms. Furthermore, you’re imposing your particular definition of “noxious” on everybody else — what if I find your aftershave, perfume, deodorant, or just your body odor noxious? What if, as I said, your very appearance I find visually polluting? Or, taking it in the other direction, if second hand smoke is now to be defined as noxious, why isn’t car exhaust, as Lee indicated? Shouldn’t we ban cars as well?
Actually, there are people and movements afoot recommending regulations and/or bans on all those aspects of life, so these aren’t mere argumentative hypotheticals. Going down this path leads not just to the Nanny State, but to the Control-freak or Busybody State, and at the end of it we’ll find ourselves in that utopia where anything not forbidden is compulsory.
This is like loud noise in an apartment. Complain to the damn landlord. That’s his responsbility.
Excellent Article. Hope people in the West listen. The struggle to spread democracy in the Middle East has to be based on spreading liberal democracy and not just an elections that would ensure an Islamists victory.
An Egyptian Neocon
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