{"id":8196,"date":"2015-02-08T06:47:50","date_gmt":"2015-02-08T14:47:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=8196"},"modified":"2015-02-06T08:50:45","modified_gmt":"2015-02-06T16:50:45","slug":"are-we-smart-enough-for-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/are-we-smart-enough-for-democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"Are We Smart Enough for Democracy?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo
Photo credit: peacemartin33<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ Defining Ideas<\/a><\/p>\n

In December, MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber, one of the architects of the Affordable Care Act, had to explain to Congress several remarks he had made about the \u201cstupidity of the American voter,\u201d as he put it in one speech. Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh frequently uses the more diplomatic phrase \u201clow-information voter\u201d to explain why bad policies or incompetent politicians succeed. And numerous polls of respondents\u2019 knowledge of history and current events repeatedly imply the same conclusion\u2013\u2013that the American people are not informed or smart enough for democracy.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This bipartisan disdain for the masses has been a constant theme of political philosophy for over 2,500 years. From the beginnings of popular rule in ancient Athens, the competence of the average person to manage the state has been called into question by critics of democracy. Lacking the innate intelligence or the acquired learning necessary for dispassionately judging policy, the masses instead are driven by their passions or private short-term interests.<\/p>\n

The earliest critic of democracy, an Athenian known as the Old Oligarch, wrote that \u201camong the common people are the greatest ignorance, ill-discipline, and depravity.\u201d Aristotle argued that the need to make a living prevents most people from acquiring the education and developing the virtues necessary for running the state. He said the \u201cbest form of state will not admit them to citizenship.\u201d And Socrates famously sneered at the notion that any \u201ctinker, cobbler, sailor, passenger; rich and poor, high and low\u201d could be consulted on \u201can affair of state.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the time of the Constitutional convention in 1787, this distrust of the masses had long been a staple of political philosophy. Roger Sherman, a lawyer and future Senator from Massachusetts, who opposed letting the people directly elect members of the House of Representatives, typified the antidemocratic sentiment of many delegates. He argued that the people \u201cshould have as little to do as may be about the government,\u201d for \u201cthey want information and are constantly liable to be misled.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most of the delegates in Philadelphia were not quite as wary as Sherman of giving the people too much direct power, but in the end they allowed them to elect directly only the House of Representatives. Such sentiments were also frequently heard in the state conventions that ratified the Constitution, where the antifederalists\u2019 charge of a \u201cdemocracy deficit\u201d in the Constitution were met with protestations that the document was designed to protect, as John Dickinson of Delaware put it, \u201cthe worthy against the licentious,\u201d the men of position, education, and property against the volatile, ignorant masses.<\/p>\n

Unlike earlier antidemocrats, however, the framers of the Constitution did not believe that a Platonic elite superior by birth, wealth, or learning could be trusted with unlimited political power, since human frailty and depravity were universal, and power was of \u201can encroaching nature,\u201d as George Washington said, prone to expansion and corruption. Hence the Constitution dispersed power among the three branches of government, so that each could check and balance the other. For as Alexander Hamilton said, \u201cGive all power to the many, they will oppress the few. Give all power to the few they will oppress the many. Both therefore ought to have power, that each may defend itself against the other.\u201d<\/p>\n

A century later, for all its talk of expanding democracy, the Progressive movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries promoted a form of rule by elites, dismissing the fear of concentrated power that motivated the founders. The Progressives argued that government by experts was made necessary by industrial capitalism and new transportation and communication technologies, and that the new \u201csciences\u201d of psychology and sociology were providing knowledge that could guide these technocrats in creating social and economic progress.<\/p>\n

Future Progressive president Woodrow Wilson in 1887 argued for this expansion and centralization of federal power in order to form a cadre of administrative elites who, armed with new scientific knowledge about human behavior, could address the novel \u201ccares and responsibilities which will require not a little wisdom, knowledge, and experience,\u201d as he wrote in his essay \u201cThe Study of Administration.\u201d This administrative power, Wilson went on, should be insulated from politics, just as other technical knowledge like engineering or medicine was not accountable to the approval of voters. Thus Wilson envisioned federal bureaucracies \u201cof skilled, economical administration\u201d comprising the \u201chundred who are wise\u201d empowered to guide the \u201cthousands\u201d who are \u201cselfish, ignorant, timid, stubborn, or foolish.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like the antidemocrats going back to ancient Athens, Wilson\u2019s ideas reflected contempt for the people who lack this specialized knowledge and so cannot be trusted with the power to run their own lives. Today\u2019s progressives, as Jonathan Gruber\u2019s remarks show, share the same distrust of the masses and the preference for what French political philosopher Chantal Delsol calls \u201ctechno-politics,\u201d rule by technocrats.<\/p>\n

Thus on coming into office in 2009, President Obama said that on issues like stem-cell research or climate change, he aimed \u201cto develop a strategy for restoring scientific integrity to government decision-making\u201d and to protect them from politics. We hear the same technocratic ideal in one of Hillary Clinton\u2019s favorite talking points, that public policy should be guided by \u201cevidence-based decision making\u201d rather than by principle, fidelity to the Constitution, or virtue. The important question, however, is whether or not political decision-making requires technical knowledge more than the wisdom gleaned from experience, mores, and morals.<\/p>\n

Today, this old problem of citizen ignorance and its political role has been worsened by the expansion of the scale and scope of the federal government and its agencies over the last 75 years. Indeed, the complexity of the policies that federal agencies enforce and manage has made Wilson\u2019s ideas about the necessity for government by technocratic elites a self-fulfilling prophecy. In 1960, economist F. A. Hayek made this point about the Social Security program, noting that \u201cthe ordinary economist or sociologist or lawyer is today nearly as ignorant [as the layman] of the details of that complex and ever changing system.\u201d<\/p>\n

This makes the champions and managers of such programs the \u201cexperts\u201d whom citizens and Congressmen must trust, and these unelected, unaccountable \u201cexperts\u201d are \u201calmost by definition, persons who are in favor of the principles underlying the policy.\u201d This problem has obviously been magnified by the exponential growth of federal agencies and programs since 1960, the workings of which few people, including most Congressmen, understand.<\/p>\n

If we accept, as many do today, that governing is a matter of technical knowledge, then the lack of knowledge among the masses is a problem, given that politicians are accountable to the voters on Election Day. If, however, politics is a question of principle and common sense, the wisdom of daily life necessary for humans to get along and cooperate with one another, then technical knowledge is not as important as those other qualities.<\/p>\n

This is the argument made by an early champion of democracy, the philosopher Protagoras, a contemporary of Socrates. Protagoras defended democracy by pointing out that Zeus gave all<\/em> humans \u201creverence and justice to be the ordering principles of cities and the bonds of friendship and conciliation.\u201d Political communities could not even exist if \u201cvirtues\u201d and \u201cjustice and wisdom\u201d were not the birthright of all people. As such, as James Madison wrote in 1792, \u201cmankind are capable of governing themselves\u201d and of understanding \u201cthe general interest of the community,\u201d and so should not be subjected to elites, whether defined by birth, wealth, or superior knowledge, which have \u201cdebauched themselves into a persuasion that mankind are incapable of governing themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

A big government comprising numerous programs whose workings and structure are obscure to most people has indeed made citizen ignorance a problem. In his detailed analysis of polls taken during the 2012 presidential election, political philosopher Ilya Somin writes in his book Democracy and Political Ignorance<\/em>, \u201cVoters are ignorant not just about specific policy issues but about the structure of government and how it operates,\u201d as well as \u201csuch basic aspects of the U.S. political system as who has the power to declare war, the respective functions of the three branches of government, and who controls monetary policy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though many critics from both political parties complain about this ignorance among the citizenry, solutions generally involve wholesale, and unlikely, transformations of social institutions, like reforming school curricula or correcting the ideological biases of the media.<\/p>\n

As Somin points out, however, the modern problem of citizen ignorance is in fact an argument for a much more important reform\u2013\u2013a return to the limited central government enshrined in the Constitution. State governments should be the highest level of governmental policy except for those responsibilities Constitutionally entrusted to the federal government, such as foreign policy, securing the national borders, and overseeing interstate commerce. On all else, the principle of subsidiarity should apply\u2013\u2013decision-making should devolve to the lowest practical level, as close as possible to those who will be affected by it. The closer to the daily lives and specific social and economic conditions of the voters, the more likely they are to have the knowledge necessary for political deliberation and choice. In this way the cultural, economic, and regional diversity of the country will be respected. And it will be much easier for citizens to acquire the information necessary for deliberating and deciding on issues that impact their lives.<\/p>\n

Shrinking the federal government may sound as utopian as transforming our schools or restoring journalistic integrity. The difference, however, is that the federal government and its entitlement programs need money, and our $18 trillion debt, trillion-dollar deficits, and $130 trillion in unfunded liabilities are unsustainable. Sooner or later the time will come when a smaller federal government will be imposed on us by necessity. Perhaps then we will rediscover the wisdom that the smaller the government, the easier it is for us to have enough knowledge to manage it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ Defining Ideas In December, MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber, one of the architects of the Affordable Care Act, had to explain to Congress several remarks he had made about the \u201cstupidity of the American voter,\u201d as he put it in one speech. Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh frequently uses the more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[978,842,22],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-28c","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6606,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/bruce-thornton-on-secure-freedom-radio-with-frank-gaffney\/","url_meta":{"origin":8196,"position":0},"title":"Bruce Thornton on Secure Freedom Radio with Frank Gaffney","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 10, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Seth Jones, Bruce Thornton, Peter Pham, Diana West October 9th, 2013\u00a0\u00b7\u00a0Comments SETH JONES, Associate Director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the RAND Corporation, joins guest host DAN BONGINO, to help explain the terror threat from and historical background of the terrorist organization al-Shabaab. 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