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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   44940 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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Yeah the liberal democratic political formula really unravels once you start to seriously ask yourself how all the rubes turn into informed thoughtful statemen through the mystical power of the ballot box. Especially when those invoking the wisdom of crowds are quick to guard against populism whenever things go out of their control.

Mosca is right, in practice you don't elect politicians, politicians have themselves elected by you.

But it's a well worn road at this point, modern criticisms of democracy are plentiful, Hoppe is probably the most popular on the right but the left has no shortages of noticers that public opinion is a massive sham (presumably orchestrated by the liberal bourgeoisie, which was at least originally accurate).

No the real mystery here is what to do about this. Because any attempt to replace the formula drawn up so far ends up looking wacky as fuck, impractical to the extreme or straight up tyrannical. I guess it's to be expected when one proposes political alternatives. Republicanism must have felt wacky in it's time.

But the question remains. Once you know democracy is a bunch of bullshit that masks an oligarchy because the voters so obviously don't decide what's going on, what is there even to do about it?

Yeah the liberal democratic political formula really unravels once you start to seriously ask yourself how all the rubes turn into informed thoughtful statemen through the mystical power of the ballot box.

Liberal democracy has a solution for this: checks by experts and judges. The senate wasn't supposed to be elected.

The problem is that, if you drive this too far, you can actually encourage the very enervation of the democratic energies of the average voter.

Why care if judges and bureaucrats will decide everything? Why care if there's no fundamental belief that a citizen must maintain a good understanding of their polis but instead is free to do whatever they like and pursue happiness however?

Seems like the whole ideology is trapped on the horns of a dilemma.

The whole point of democracy is that the rubes and idiots do have a vote, because they're still our fellow citizens (even if we don't like the idea). I support the disenfranchisement of felons, but by the God who made me, I'd change that to giving guys still in jail for selling meth to six year olds not alone the vote, but five votes sooner than go to 'let's drop the pretence and just rule by oligarchy'.

We take away the vote from felons because, by breaking the laws of society and causing harm to their fellow-citizens, they have deprived themselves of the right to be part of the polis. Now you want to take away the right to vote from citizens merely for not being as smart as you are? To give up the governance to an elite?

G.K. Chesterton has an essay about choosing juries, and while he pokes some mild fun at the process, he comes down in the end of the side of yes, the ordinary man-in-the-street:

The trend of our epoch up to this time has been consistently towards socialism and professionalism. We tend to have trained soldiers because they fight better, trained singers because they sing better, trained dancers because they dance better, specially instructed laughers because they laugh better, and so on and so on. The principle has been applied to law and politics by innumerable modern writers. Many Fabians have insisted that a greater part of our political work should be performed by experts. Many legalists have declared that the untrained jury should be altogether supplanted by the trained Judge.

Now, if this world of ours were really what is called reasonable, I do not know that there would be any fault to find with this. ...The Fabian argument of the expert, that the man who is trained should be the man who is trusted, would be absolutely unanswerable if it were really true that a man who studied a thing and practiced it every day went on seeing more and more of its significance. But he does not. He goes on seeing less and less of its significance. In the same way, alas! we all go on every day, unless we are continually goading ourselves into gratitude and humility, seeing less and less of the significance of the sky or the stones.

...And the horrible thing about all legal officials, even the best, about all judges, magistrates, barristers, detectives, and policemen, is not that they are wicked (some of them are good), not that they are stupid (several of them are quite intelligent), it is simply that they have got used to it.

Strictly they do not see the prisoner in the dock; all they see is the usual man in the usual place. They do not see the awful court of judgment; they only see their own workshop. Therefore, the instinct of Christian civilisation has most wisely declared that into their judgments there shall upon every occasion be infused fresh blood and fresh thoughts from the streets. Men shall come in who can see the court and the crowd, and coarse faces of the policemen and the professional criminals, the wasted faces of the wastrels, the unreal faces of the gesticulating counsel, and see it all as one sees a new picture or a ballet hitherto unvisited.

Our civilisation has decided, and very justly decided, that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men. It wishes for light upon that awful matter, it asks men who know no more law than I know, but who can feel the things that I felt in the jury box. When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.

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