Don Enss
On May 25th when our final report was first mentioned,
I already had an idea for what I wanted to report on. It came from a discussion
question on the May 18th quiz. “Democracy had proved to be a
disappointment to ‘nearly everyone in Greek intellectual circles in the mid-4th
century BC.’ Has democracy in our time disappointed you? Can you give a rousing
defense of democratic practice, not just democratic theory? Are we living
through another epochal democratic decline, or are you hopeful that our
politics will rally?”
Over twenty-five hundred
years have passed since Greek intellectuals expressed disappointment in
democracy and some of their concerns are still ones that generations of
Americans including our own have wrestled with and future generations will have
to address. In May, we were in a heated primary season and a single candidate
had not been selected to represent each of the major political parties for president;
now that issue has been resolved. On November 8, 2016, barring some unforeseen
event, we will learn which candidate is to lead our nation during the next four
years. In all probability, with candidates from at least two other parties to
choose from, the winning candidate will have less than a plurality of actual voters
who will cast a ballot. Additionally, historically, forty percent of registered
voters will not vote. Given that approximately twenty-five percent of American
citizens are under eighteen and have no vote in choosing the next president,
the winner of the Presidency could be elected with less that twenty-five
percent support from all of our citizens.
Now that the party
conventions have been completed, we can expect during the next one hundred days
to be assaulted with a barrage of lies, half-truths (mostly lies), distortions,
name calling, character assassinations, and everything but the kitchen sink and
all for the sole purpose of winning an election, with no regard for how hard those
attacks will make it for the winner to govern. And this is just at the national
level, add additional layers for state and local elections and one could be
justified in questioning how successful our democracy is.
But before you let this
negativity depress you, let’s remember that most people live in the moment and
forget their history, even some of those who have taken the time to study it. We
tend to think that our democratic process is the worst of all times and we
“harken” back to the good old days. Well, they weren’t always that good. The
accusations and insinuations levelled by John Quincy Adams’s supporters against
Andrew Jackson make today’s charges seem mild in comparison. From Mother
Jones’s Ten Most Awesome Presidential Mudslinging Moves Ever: “And the 1828…
Adams supporters attack Jackson's family, calling his dead mother "a
common prostitute, brought to this country by the British soldiers," after
whose service she "married a MULATTO MAN, with whom she had several
children of which number General JACKSON IS ONE!!!" Jackson's wife, who
was previously married and (accidentally) not completely divorced prior to her
second marriage, they call a "convicted adulteress." When she dies
within days of Jackson's victory, he blames Adams' vicious campaign practices,
exclaiming at her funeral, "May God Almighty forgive her murderers as I
know she forgave them. I never can,” and “1844 Democrats backing James K. Polk
claim that Henry Clay had sex with whores and, furthermore, broke all 10 of the
commandments; in lieu of evidence, they declare simply that the details are
"too disgusting to appear in public print," and “Whigs senselessly
call 1848 presidential hopeful Lewis Cass a "pot-bellied, mutton-headed
cucumber" in response to Democrats' accusations that opposing candidate
Zachary Taylor is, among other things, a crappy dresser,” and a more current
one, “Karl Rove-engineered robo-calls help Bush win the 2000 Republican
nomination by asking primary voters if they would be "more likely or less
likely to vote for John McCain if you knew that he fathered an illegitimate
black child?" Negative points for not outright declaring, but just
implying, the charge. Bonus points for slinging it inside own party. McCain
speculates that "there is a special place in hell for people like those."
You know what happened after that?” John McCain lost the South Carolina primary
and the Republican presidential race to George W. Bush.
It’s worth noting that
in the 1828 voting was restricted to white men and fewer than ten percent
actually voted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1828 . So maybe our democracy today is not as
disappointing as we are led to believe. Maybe in retrospect Winston Churchill
was correct when he said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except
for all the others.” Also, if we look closely maybe we can see lots of rays of
sunshine piercing the clouds of doom and gloom. So what should we do?
I had two objectives in
taking this course, first, to learn to be a better student and second to become
a better citizen. As I have strolled through the history of western philosophy
contained in The Cave and the Light, A
Philosophy of Walking, and parts of
The History of Western Philosophy, I encountered philosophers whose names I
had only heard about but never taken the time to read any of their works or to
discuss any of their ideas. This semester I have learned about life, politics,
and religion from them and I was able to express my thoughts about them and
their ideas much like they were able to question and challenge Plato and
Aristotle because they had the writings of Plato and Aristotle on which to contemplate
and debate.
In the first part of my
final report, I will focus on democracy and on the second part on citizenship.
To begin, I believe it is important to understand that to evaluate Plato’s and
Aristotle’s views on democracy and how that relates to American democracy we
must first agree that the city-state of Athens, Greece where they lived and
based their ideas, bears little resemblance to our current national government
and republic. Only white male citizens were permitted to vote, women, children,
and slaves were not. Also, governments existed in other cities in Greece for
centuries before Plato and Aristotle formulated their ideas, so they learned
from others. Writings, from historians and philosopher like Heraclitus about
other societies and their government, would have been known to Plato and
Aristotle even though they no longer exist for our review and study. They used
their own observations in addition to what they read to formulate their
thoughts on what constituted a good government.
To compare and contrast societies, we need to
understand the types of government and economic systems. There are six types of
government, Democracy, Republic, Monarchy, Aristocracy, Dictatorship, and
Democratic Republic, http://depts.alverno.edu/dgp/GEC/Types%20of%20Government.html
.
If you consider their definition of Democracy, “The word "democracy" literally means "rule by
the people." In a democracy, the people govern,” then you realize that in
the United States, we do not have a direct democracy and this was what Plato
and Aristotle referred to. Both were privy to the declining fortunes of Athens
culminating in Phillip of Macedon’s defeat of Athens. Clearly this was
reflected in Plato’s view of the type of government that had been responsible
for Athens demise. According to Herman, Plato’s disgust for democracy related
to the corruption of officials, “the sordid behind-the-scenes dealing making
and clubhouse politics that permeate every democracy,” and the ignorance of the
majority. His idealized society consisted of three groups: laborers, soldiers,
and rulers. Only the rulers would decide what was in the best interest of
society. They would insure fairness and justice for all based on their
education and training. Aristotle lived in the same environment as Plato, but
believed that the ideal form of government would recognize the individual as
the source from which the government derived its powers. “Aristotle reveals
that the essential building block of every political community must be the
individual household, consisting of the citizen and his family (including
household slaves).” (Herman, 71). Aristotle arrived at this conclusion after
studying the constitutions of many Grecian cities. James Madison prior to the
Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia prepared the same way by studying the
constitutions of many countries. Herman states that “Like Plato, Aristotle
accepts that the goal of politics is to make the members of the community
good,” they just differed on how to accomplish that.
According to Peter J. Boettke, associate Professor of
Economics at George Mason University, “history has produced but three such
kinds of economic systems: those based on the principle of tradition, those
centrally planned and organized according to command, and the rather small
number, historically speaking, in which the central organizing form is the market.”
In Encyclopædia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/economic-system (2016). According to Lardis, et al.,
ancient Greece did not have an aggregate market economy but had individual
markets for agricultural products. The market system would have a profound
effect on our current republic.
[PPT]Classical Greece
www.unc.edu/.../Group3_Classical_Greece...
Classical Greece is considered to be the civilization that was around between the 4th and 5th centuries BC
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Plato and Aristotle would not have
been able to evaluate the impact of a market system on a government, but then
neither would many of their followers until the 18th century with
the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. This is important because while
some elements of human behavior regarding political behavior have not changed
since Plato’s time, like corruption, bribery, behind the door dealings,
lobbyists, and influence of money, our U.S. Constitution has created a
government that goes a long way to ensuring the necessary checks and balances
on each of the three branches of government: Executive, Legislative, and
Judicial and it has given protections to individuals by respecting their
freedoms and rights. Ironically, it met some of both Plato’s and Aristotle’s
criteria for a government where the members of the community are good.
Christopher
Collier in Decision in Philadelphia: The
Constitutional Convention of 1787 referred to George Washington, “But there
was a second Washington, one he created himself. To understand how he came to
do this, we have to take note of a concept widely prevalent in the eighteenth
century. This was what was called fame. Today the word is applied to anybody
who gets his name in the newspapers regularly, (or on TV in 2016) but in
Washington’s day the term had an entirely different connotation—something
closer to what we would call honor. Late-eighteenth-century Americans were
deeply in love with the classical societies and their statesmen, generals,
historians. College students did not read English literature. They read instead
Caesar’s Commentaries, the Orations of Cicero, the Politics of Aristotle; and they
constantly referred to what Polybius or Plato thought on a given subject.”
Douglass Adair in an article, “That Politics May Be Reduced to a Science”:
David Hume, James Madison, and the Tenth Federalist cited General
Washington as saying, “The foundation of our Empire was not laid in the gloomy
age of Ignorance and Superstition, but at an Epocha when the rights of mankind
better understood and more clearly defined, than at any former period; the
researches of the human mind after social happiness, have been carried to a
great extent, the treasures of knowledge, acquired by the labours of
Philosophers, Sages, and Legislators, through a long succession of years, are
laid open for our use, and their collected wisdom may be happily applied in the
Establishment of our forms of Government…” Adair indicated the “Legislators”
were Scottish philosophers, “Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Adam Smith, Thomas
Reid, Lord Kames, and Adam Ferguson.”
David Hume had a special connection
to James Madison. According to Adair, “It was David Hume’s speculations on the
‘Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth,’ first published in 1752, that most stimulated
James Madison’s thoughts on factions.” Later in his essay, “two sentences that
must have electrified Madison as he read them: ‘In a large government, which is
modelled with masterly skill, there is a compass and room enough to refine the
democracy, from the lower people, who may be admitted into the first elections
or first concoction of the commonwealth, to the higher magistrates, who direct
all movement.’” This countered the argument that giving the poor the right to
vote would threaten the rich by taking away their wealth.
We already know how Thomas
Jefferson felt about Plato’s writings, “I laid it down often to ask myself how
it could have been that the world should have so long consented to give
reputation to such nonsense as this.” (Herman, 364). “In fact, the only Greek
philosopher Jefferson mentions as an influence on his Declaration of
Independence is Aristotle.”(Herman, 364).
Our
Constitution was “modelled with masterly skill” to “refine our democracy”. Is our democracy perfect? Is it in a crisis? I
agree with Wolfgang Merkel, director of research at the Social Science Research
Centre Berlin who would say “No” to both questions. In his article, Is There a Crisis of Democracy, he
stated that “According to expert indices and polls, the message is: ”there is
no crisis of democracy. However, the partial analysis on participation,
representation, and effective power to govern reveal unresolved democratic
challenges, such as increasing level of exclusion of the lower third of the
demos from participation, an inferior representation of their interests, and a
loss of democratic sovereignty in policy making.”
I am
confident that the “foundation” on what our country is built is sound and will survive
and thrive regardless of who is elected this November. There will always be
hiccups and a few loud belches, but we will move forward. So how do we as
citizens address some of those “unresolved democratic challenges”? This will be
my focus in part two of my report.
Don, your optimism is a continuing inspiration. So is your verbal fecundity, you're already over 2,300 words. Far more important than their quantity, though, is their quality. Good words, encouraging words: what the world needs most, except for good and encouraging deeds.
ReplyDeleteAny other year I'd agree without reservation, that we'll flourish "regardless of who is elected." I do hope you're right.
I don't suppose, though, there's any point in fretting about that. This is a time for a double dose of stoicism and pragmatism, isn't it?
I'm so pleased that you mention David Hume's unsung influence on our polity. There are still books to be written about that.
BTW, the late Christopher Hitchens assembled a reading list for a little 8-year old girl who attended one of his last public lectures and asked what she should read. His list included Hume. Some wiseacre tweeted that it's abusive to make an 8-year old read Hume. Could be worse.
Democracy in todays time vs. historically is much different. The Republican party and Democratic party used to be switched. I enjoyed you mentioned that students would read cicero, politics and other classics instead of contemporary works in todays societies. I wonder what the students of Alexandria studied. I would fascinated with the process of discovering the way in which society has progressed from ancient times, politically and educationally. The books does describe this a lot.
ReplyDeleteOnce again I've stumbled into another topic that I am no expert on; however, I enjoyed reading your post Dean. I also agree that we don't have a direct democracy and to begin the understandings of this it is good to being with Plato and Aristotle.
ReplyDeleteWhat would Plato & Aristole say about race and democracy in today's current climate?
ReplyDeleteDon I just wanted to say that I remember when this class started and I was dead set against voting and politics in general. However, your upbeat posts and informed opinions in class have made me reevaluate how I view my role in civic society.
ReplyDelete