Is Statesmanship Possible in Contemporary Democracy? September 23, 2009
Posted by Daniel Downs in American history, democracy, moral relativism, politics.1 comment so far
Everyone complains of the lack of leadership in Israel, but no one to my knowledge goes to the root of the problem, namely, the senility of contemporary democracy. Let me explain.
In the youth of democracy, when democracy had just overcome monarchy, liberty took precedence over equality. Alas, in the old age of democracy in which we live, equality takes precedence over liberty. In its youth, democracy was “normative,” still influenced by religious and aristocratic values. In its senility, democracy is “normless,” preoccupied with security. The individual’s right to the “pursuit” of happiness has metamorphosed into a right to happiness—now prescribed by government standards or entitlements—a far throw from Jeffersonian democracy.
Jeffersonian democracy was based on self-government. What made self-government possible for Jefferson is the primacy of reason linked to man’s moral sense. What prevails today is the primacy of the emotions, so evident in modern psychology which obscures the difference between noble and base emotions along with the moral sense. Divorced from reason and the moral sense, all lifestyles become equal. Moral preferences are merely matters of taste, like one’s preference for this or that flavor of ice cream. Hence there is no place for honor and deference; all is dissolved to moral equivalence, and this is why statesmanship is not possible in contemporary or normless democracy.
I define statesmanship as the application of philosophy to action. But philosophy in normless democracy has become a household term. There are now competing philosophies of dieting, dating, and interior decorating. What Socrates died for — the love of wisdom — has become the possession of every Jill, Jane, and Jodi. True, universities still boast of “professors of philosophy,” but one should not confuse a professor of philosophy with a philosopher. At a national convention of philosophers I attended there were about one thousand present. The number amazed me. The highlight of the event was a resolution condemning the Vietnam War.
If wisdom means knowledge of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful, the quest for such knowledge is short-circuited in a normless democratic era when every college student “knows” that “everything is relative.” Relativism so permeates the mentality of this era that one person’s opinion regarding the True, the Good, and the Beautiful is now deemed as valid as another’s. Since opinion has replaced wisdom, politicians consult opinion polls and manipulators of public opinion.
Actually, opinion polls hardly reach the level of opinion. They record people’s offhand responses — typically a “yes” or a “no” — to simplistic questions concerning complex public issues. Poll are often used by adversarial groups to generate public opinion via the media. The influence of the media has propelled democracy into a post-democratic era. Even the etymological meaning of democracy as the rule of the people is obsolete. To speak of democracy as the rule of the people via their elected representatives no longer fits reality.
Democracy has succumbed to “mediacracy.” The spin doctors of the media, facilitated by enormous fundraising campaigns, recently made an unknown person of dubious background president of the United States. The dominant and most expensive medium is of course television. One no longer needs to be even the shadow a statesman to achieve the highest office.
Television fosters showmanship, not statesmanship, which, to repeat, is the application of philosophy to action. Political philosophers in the past made moral judgments. TV journalists pose as morally neutral. In the old age of democracy, however, moral neutrality has degenerated undergone into moral reversal. This requires a psychological analysis of egalitarianism.
The primacy of egalitarianism in normless democracy is actually a manifestation of resentment against noble values. As this resentment develops, it turns into moral reversal: evil becomes good, and good becomes evil. This development leads to stupidity. Here’s an example.
Caroline Glick of The Jerusalem Post addressed some 150 political science students at Tel Aviv University, where she spoke of her experience as an embedded reporter with the U.S. Army’s Third Infantry Division during the Iraq war. Any mind uncorrupted by relativism would favor the U.S. over the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. Yet the general attitude of her audience was expressed by a student who asked, “Who are you to make moral judgments?” Now ponder this exchange between Glick and a student who spoke with a heavy Russian accent:
Student: “How can you say that democracy is better than dictatorial rule?”
Glick: “Because it is better to be free than to be a slave.”
Student: “How can you support America when the U.S. is a totalitarian state?”
Glick: “Did you learn that in Russia?”
Student: “No, here.”
Glick: “Here at Tel Aviv University?”
Student: “Yes, that is what my professors say.”
Ms. Glick spoke at five liberal Israeli universities. She learned that all are dominated by moral relativists. Their relativism, if consistent, would render them neutral in the war waged by Arabs against Israel. But some academics identify with Israel’s enemy. This is a manifestation of moral reversal. How should statesmen deal with this phenomenon? None denounce academics for moral reversal—which is really moral treason. Thus, in the specious name of academic freedom, professors are free to corrupt youth and undermine their own freedom while their country is confronted by the sworn enemies of freedom.
Universities, citadels of reason, now include towers of stupidity. Academic freedom has become a license for professors to sacrifice their intellects. This is Normless Democracy, where nihilism renders statesmanship impossible.
Let’s come back to the surface of politics. Television has a way of thwarting statesmanship. “Live” television compels national leaders to react immediately to international crises or risk public disapproval. A president has little time to reflect, to consult and consider alternatives. While the public is being inundated by live TV coverage of some crisis, he must respond to the importunities of reporters. This encourages spin, really mendacity. Spin diminishes the rationality associated with Jeffersonian democracy.
To appreciate the power of the mediacracy, the mere fact that its mandarins can select which events shall be televised and which shall be ignored determines what people deem “newsworthy” or important. Since the notion of importance implies that some things are more important than other things, the media’s selection of events cannot but shape people’s political and moral attitudes, which in turn will influence the agenda of politicians.
Moreover, how any crisis is portrayed by the media, and who their reporters interview about a crisis, is indicative that we are living in a post-democratic era in which TV mandarins, politically unaccountable to the people, play a decisive role in opinion-making, hence in policy-making. Under such conditions statesmanship is more ardently to be wished for than expected.
Another obstacle to statesmanship in Normless Democracy is hedonism. The democratic preoccupation with immediate gratification hinders statesmanship. Alexis de Tocqueville goes to the heart of problem in his classic Democracy in America. He attributes modern hedonism to democracy’s equality of conditions, which makes it possible for everyone to strive for physical comfort: “The effort to satisfy even the least wants of the body and to provide the little conveniences of life is uppermost in every mind.” This “passion for physical comforts,” he writes, “is essentially a passion of the middle classes; with those classes it grows and spreads … From them it mounts into the higher orders of society and descends into the mass of the people.”
Countering this desire for immediate gratification is religion. “Religions,” he says, “give men a general habit of conducting themselves with a view to eternity.” What thrives in democracy, however, is not religion but skepticism. Hence Tocqueville, actually a friend of democracy, warns its partisans: “In skeptical ages it is always to be feared … that men may perpetually give way to their daily casual desires, and that, wholly renouncing whatever cannot be acquired without protracted effort, they may establish nothing great, permanent, and calm…. [Accordingly], in those countries in which, unhappily, irreligion and democracy coexist, philosophers and those in power ought to be always striving to place the objects of human actions far beyond man’s immediate range.” Unfortunately, Tocqueville’s “philosophers” have disappeared, and the mortals in power are not statesmen.
Now, if statesmanship is virtually impossible in a Normless Democracy or in a post-democratic era, may this not also be said of Jewish statesmanship?
From an August 31, 2009 emailed transcript of the Eidelberg Report aired on Israel National Radio. Prof. Paul Eidelberg is also co-founder and President of the Foundation for Constitutional Democracy.
America’s Aristocratic Founding Fathers August 31, 2009
Posted by Daniel Downs in American history, Declaration of Independence, equality, politics.add a comment
It is widely believed that the American republic is ultimately based on the principle that all men are created equal. Contrary to universal opinion, however, this principle, far from being wholly democratic, is a precondition for any genuine aristocracy! Needless to say, so shocking or paradoxical an assertion requires supportive argument, for which purpose consider the argument of my book On the Silence of the Declaration of Independence.
The statement of the Declaration that all men are created equal was intended to inform mankind in general, and the British government in particular, that Americans belong to the same species as Englishmen, hence that they are endowed by nature with certain unalienable rights peculiar to homo sapiens.
Since man did not create his own nature, he did not create the rights he possesses by virtue of his nature. Hence, he cannot be justly divested of those rights so long as he does not violate his nature or that which distinguishes man and beasts. Of the qualities that distinguish men from beasts, suffice to mention philosophical reason and moral sensibility or the sense of shame. Thus, only because man is homo rationalis et civilis does he possess (or can he seriously claim) the unalienable rights to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
Notice that while the statesmen of the Declaration claimed that Americans possess these rights as species, they were being prevented from fully exercising those rights as individuals. This implicit distinction between the possession and exercise of rights is of profound significance. For nothing in the Declaration suggests that all men as individuals are entitled to the actual exercise of their rights without qualification.
In proof of this, it is sufficient to point out that the Declaration of Independence was incorporated into most of the state constitutions, many of which prescribed property and other qualifications for voting and for office. An implicit distinction was therefore made between men’s rights and privileges. Whereas the rights men possess as species are defined by nature, the privileges they exercise as individuals are defined by law, whether written or customary.
Accordingly, the equality spoken of in the Declaration does not extend to privileges. Nevertheless, and strange as it may seem, the notion of privilege is a logical consequence of the Declaration’s principle of equality! For the principle that all men are created equal should be understood as a moral prohibition against any and all privileges based on race, nationality, class, or parentage. The only moral title to any privilege which society may confer must be based on individual merit.
In other words, what the equality of the Declaration requires is that no person be precluded by law from earning any established privilege on the basis of factors extrinsic to human nature or to those intellectual and moral qualities that distinguish the human from the sub-human. Examined in this light, the principle that all men are created equal—which does not mean they are born equal in their intellectual, moral, and physical endowments—may be regarded as the precondition of a genuine aristocracy!
As Jefferson wrote to John Adams: “I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents. . . . The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society.” It thus appears that the American polity had its origin in a synthesis of democratic and aristocratic principles. This synthesis is consistent with the notion of government based on the consent of the governed, provided the governed consist of an enlightened and public-spirited body of citizens—citizens who possess the capacity to discern, select, and defer to men of merit.
This democratic-aristocratic synthesis underlies The Federalist Papers and is most clearly evident in its recurring theme of deference to merit. In Federalist 36, Alexander Hamilton declares: “There are strong minds in every walk of life that will rise superior to the disadvantages of situation, and will command the tribute due to their merit, not only from the classes to which they particularly belong, but from society in general. The door ought to be equally open to all.”
To be sure, James Madison admits (the obvious) in Federalist 10 that “Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.” Nevertheless he expects that the popularly elected members of the House of Representatives will more often than not be of such caliber as “to refine and enlarge the public views,” representatives “whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations.”
As for the (original) Senate, inasmuch as the “State legislatures who appoint the senators, will in general be composed of the most enlightened and respectable citizens, there is reason to presume, says John Jay in Federalist 64, “that their attention and their votes will be directed to those men only who have become the most distinguished by their abilities and virtue, and in whom the people perceive just grounds for confidence.”
Finally, in Federalist 68, after analyzing the advantages of the electoral college method of choosing a President, Hamilton concludes: “It will not be too strong to say, that there will be a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters preeminent for abilities and virtue.”
Thus, even in this brief sketch (developed at great length in my Philosophy of the American Constitution) we see that the government established by America’s Founding Fathers exemplifies a synthesis of democratic and aristocratic principles. This will be made even more apparent in my forthcoming book Toward a Renaissance of Israel and America in which I develop a Judaic understanding of how America’s great founders combined the protection of economic interests and the cultivation of virtue.
By Prof. Paul Eidelberg
Wisdom from America’s Founding Fathers August 24, 2009
Posted by Daniel Downs in American history, civilization, government, moral relativism, morality, multiculturalism, politics, religion.Tags: George Washington, national unity, rule of law
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In a previous article on Washington’s Farewell Address, I pointed out that its primary theme was national unity.
Accordingly, the wise founder-statesman will not design a system of government that multiplies political parties, a phenomenon that cannot but undermine the development of national character. He will not design a government that fosters frequent changes of government, which inevitably leads to frequent changes in laws and thereby undermine stability and the rule of law. Without stability and the rule of law nothing great and lasting can be accomplished.
In the final analysis, however, national unity ultimately depends on religion and morality. Here is what Washington says in the Farewell Address:
Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great Pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the destinies of Men and citizens. . . . Let it simply be asked where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in Courts of Justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
Religion (the root meaning of which is to tie, fasten, or bind) and morality (which means to act out of a motive larger than self-interest) obviously blend well with the theme of national unity. Religion and morality—and Washington had primarily in mind the Judeo-Christian principles—emphasize the brotherhood of man under one God. The Judeo-Christian ethos restrains the divisive passions of men: it teaches moderation and concern for the well-being of others. It conduces to self-government on the one hand, and respect for authority on the other. By so doing it conduces to the growth of a more perfect union.
By teaching the people some of the fundamental principles of American government, Washington facilitates the exercise of presidential leadership. Only if the people understand those principles can they be a people at once free and united. Accordingly, Washington urges statesmen to “Promote … as an object of primary importance, Institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened”.
In his last State of the Union Message, Washington urged the establishment of a national university. His rationale is worth recalling:
Among the motives to such an Institution, the assimilation of principles, opinions and manners of our Countrymen, by the common education of a portion of our Youth from every quarter, well deserves attention. The more homogeneous our Citizens can be made in particulars, the greater will be our prospect of permanent Union; and a primary object of such a National Institution should be the education of our Youth in the science of Government. . . . [W]hat duty [is] more pressing on its Legislature, than to patronize a plan for communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of their country?
James Madison also formally proposed the establishment of a national university when he became President. Like Washington, he recommended that the university be located in the nation’s capital, the better to promote not only the science of government, but “those national feelings, those liberal sentiments, and those congenial manners which contribute cement to our Union and strength to the great political fabric of which that is the foundation.”
Again and again we behold the theme of national unity. Today, American national unity is being undermined by atheism and moral relativism. Indeed, multiculturalism is a prominent theme of a myriad of universities. Anti-patriotic internationalism has become a pastime of countless academics. The abandonment of America’s founding principles, enunciated in Washington’s Farewell Address, could hardly be more striking.
Washington emphasized that the success of the American’s people’s experiment in republican government “will acquire to them the glory of recommending it to the applause, the affection, and adoption of every nation which is yet a stranger to it.” But that success depended on national unity, whose achievement necessitated the civilizing influence of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
By Prof. Paul Eidelberg
To Jerusalem with Love and Loyalty, An American Civil War Sermon June 16, 2009
Posted by Daniel Downs in American history, Christian nation, Constitution, Declaration of Independence, God, Jerusalem.add a comment
It was on April 30, 1863, in the midst of the American Civil War, that Dr. Stephen H. Tyng, pastor of one of the most influential churches in the city of New York, delivered a sermon entitled “Christian Loyalty.” He based this sermon on a passage from Psalms, a passage, he said “expressive of the loyalty and love of the Hebrew people for their institutions and nationality.” And so he began with these words of Psalm 137:
“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea, we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. ‘If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.’
“This is the patriot’s devotion to his country. It is a living spirit in his heart. It clings to his own land and people in their lowest depression as truly as in their highest prosperity. It is living and active within him, to whatever contumely and reproach it may expose him.
“My loyalty to Jerusalem is my love of her people. I am loyal to my nation. I will never give my consent to its dismemberment or its separation. I cling to the one Federal American people—not to a confederacy of States, but to a consolidated nation. I desire not to live to see a disunion of them for any reasons or upon any terms.… My loyalty is to the United States of America, that great federal nation, which, wherever scattered or however collected, have dwelt together under one glorious government, as one perpetual, indivisible people…. Be one people; be one nation.… Let Jerusalem be still a city at unity in itself, encircled with the walls of a common defense from foes abroad and bound together for a united subjugation of traitors at home.
“My loyalty to Jerusalem is my love for her territory. I love my country; I love it with an intense affection. Every part of it is equally mine, and equally dear to me. I am a citizen of the United States. I will acknowledge no Northern rights nor Southern rights. I have a simple, indisputable right in every portion of this soil, from sea to sea, as a citizen of this nation. I will never consent to give it up. I am a citizen of the whole. I have a right to a domicile, a protected home, throughout the whole, which I will never yield. To separate this glorious hard-earned land, to divide it, to disintegrate it, cut it up, parcel it out to a set of wild conflicting provinces, farm it out to the ambition of petty contending satraps, gaining in blood a short-lived triumph, is a degradation and a social atrocity to which I will never consent. … Let the land of your fathers, the sacred revered abode of a nation of freemen, be transmitted, unbroken, solid, entire, untarnished, to the children who succeed you. Die for it, if it must be so, but never give it up.
“My loyalty to Jerusalem is my love for the freedom which she has established. Men may call the testimonies of her Declaration of Independence a tissue of glittering generalities,” when they have no affinity with the liberty which it proclaims and no sympathy with the grandly humanizing influence which it is designed and destined to exercise. To my mind, it stands on the highest platform of unrevealed testimonies. In it the noblest emotions, aspirations, sentiments, and principles of the heart of man speak out in golden, crystal sounds:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
“What nobler testimony for human freedom or human exaltation was ever given? When did the representative mind of progressive, rising humanity ever announce its convictions and its purposes in a loftier strain or in a grander formula?…Never yield this priceless inheritance of human liberty; never sacrifice by any compromise the unrestricted, universal freedom of your nation; never consent to any arrangement in which you may not look back upon your fathers’ line and home, and still triumphant say, ‘Jerusalem, the mother of us all, is free.’
“My loyalty to Jerusalem is my love for her Constitution. Jerusalem had her glorious constitution from the Divine gift—a book in the hands of every one, to be read at home, to be studied by children, to be talked of by the way. America has received her Constitution from the gracious providence of God—the grand result of ages of human experience and observation—the admired shape and cast of man’s wisdom among the nations of the earth.
“Never was there a more majestic exhibition of sovereign power; never was there a more honorable display of mutual concession and self-restraint. Such is the American Constitution—a beautiful machinery of intellectual conception and of moral influence, working with its powers and restraints, its checks and balances, its provisions and prohibitions, in a thoroughly adjusted harmony, and in remarkable order and grandeur of operation.… Never give up this contest for the Constitution. Compel this rebellion to submit to its authority. And, if you must perish, perish nobly maintaining the peerless cause of liberty, government, and order.
“My loyalty to Jerusalem is my love for her government. Her Constitution is the charter of her government, the fixed and final scheme arranged for its construction and its perpetual control…. I love this government. I love it in its origin. I love it in its simplicity. I love it in its supremacy…. It combines for me all the possible freedom of liberty for the many consistent with order and tranquility for the whole …. It seems to me to have gathered the gems from all regions to make this new, last crown of a monarchical people—a ruling nation.
“To my nation, to my country, to the principle of freedom, to the Constitution, to the Government, while I live, will I be faithful; and, however depressed or downcast of desponding may be the incidents and elements of the day, even though in captivity I sit by the rivers of Babylon, I will never forget, dishonor, or deny the Jerusalem I have loved, beneath whose shade I have grown and been refreshed, and with whose sons and daughters I have gone to the house of God and taken sweet delight. Still in prayer for my beloved country will I look up to the King of kings and Lord of lords.”
Thank you Prof. Paul Eidelberg for sharing this treasure.
What Voting Meant to James Wilson, And Why Israel’s Voting System is not Conducive to the Election of Wise and Virtuous Public Officials February 10, 2009
Posted by Daniel Downs in American history, elections, freedom, Israel, moral virtue, politics, voting.add a comment
By Prof. Paul Eidelberg
James Wilson of Pennsylvania was one of six men who signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. His contribution to the deliberations of the Federal Constitutional Convention of 1787 was second only to that of James Madison. He was also the principal draftsman of Pennsylvania’s own constitution of 1790.
Mr. Wilson was one of the original Justices of the Supreme Court as well as one of the first professors of law. He was widely regarded as the profoundest legal scholar of his generation.
More than other framers of the American Constitution, Wilson was a fervent advocate of democracy. His conception of democracy, however, or at least of what it means to vote in elections, differs significantly from that of the present age.
Let me first collate a few passages from his law lectures and speeches:
In a free country, every citizen forms a part of the sovereign power: he possesses a vote, or takes a still more active part in the business of the commonwealth. The right and duty of giving that vote, the right and duty of taking that share, are necessarily attended with the duty of making that business the object of his study and inquiry….
At every election, a number of important appointments must be made. To do this is, indeed, the business of a day. But it ought to be the business of much more than a day to be prepared for doing it well. When a citizen elects to office … he performs an act of the first political consequence. He should be employed, on every convenient occasion, in making researches after the proper persons for filling the different departments of power; in discussing, with his neighbours and fellow citizens, the qualities that should be possessed by those who fill the several offices; and in acquiring information, with the spirit of manly candour, concerning the manners, and history, and characters of those who are likely to be candidates for the publick choice. A habit of conversing and reflecting on these subjects, and of governing his actions by the result of his deliberations, will form, in the mind of the citizen, a uniform, a strong, and a lively sensibility to the interests of his country. The same cause will produce a warm and enlightened attachment [or representational bond] to those [representatives], who are best fitted and best disposed to support and advance those interests.
Wilson goes on to suggest the habit of citizens to candidly acquire information concerning the manners, history, and characters of candidates for public office, tends to raise the level of those elected and to exert a salutary influence on their official conduct if only because they want to be worthy of the honor accorded them by their fellow citizens (to say nothing of their desire to be re-elected).
We see that for Wilson, voting—electing someone to public office, a person whose conduct can affect the welfare of the commonwealth—is a moral act requiring rational inquiry and candid judgment. The right to vote in an election involves the duty of citizens to inquire into the character and experience of the candidates and to make a candid judgment as to which candidate is best qualified to serve the interests of the community.
Nowadays, liberals are ever talking about “rights” and hardly ever about “duties.” Wilson, however, was a classical liberal. He taught that man’s rights ultimately derive from God, hence, that rights are correlative with duties. Accordingly, Wilson said that citizens should understand “that their duties rise in strict proportion to their rights,” and that the most solemn duty of a citizen, before exercising his right to vote for a particular candidate, is to devote “all the time, which he can prudently spare” to learn about that candidate’s character.
This is impossible in Israel, where 30 and more parties compete in an election and citizens are compelled to vote for a party slate of 20 to 60 and even more candidates, almost all of whom are unknown to the voter!
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Professor Eidelberg is the Founder and President of the Foundation for Constitutional Democracy, a Jerusalem-based think tank for improving Israel’s system of governance. He can be reached through the FCD website: www.foundation1.org
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