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The American Conservative: If Your Side Wins, Do You Care How the Winner Was Selected? (www.theamericanconservative.com)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The great constitutionalists, from Aristotle to Montesquieu to Madison, believed that the populace should have a voice, but they also thought, with Cicero, that the well-being of the people was the highest law. Survival and flourishing is most important, not pandering to popular passions.

Any small “r” republican knows that a good society divides up power among authorities, repositories, and mysteries, such that all are checked and balanced; neither the bounder nor the mobile vulgus can become tyrannical. Pluralist theory seeks both safety and stability in multiplicity. The wisdom of crowds—and brokering institutions.

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[–] [email protected] -4 points 8 months ago

This article supports this odd mindset and is unhelpful to maintaining a healthy democracy.

This is it exactly! I think the author of this article honestly believes that a healthy American democracy, the kind that we've had for a couple hundred years now, is gone and won't come back. So yeah, it's not trying to help maintain that version of democracy. An odd mindset indeed.

But, they say:

Some will ask: Is this symmetrical entrenchment bad for democracy? The answer is, it depends on how we define democracy. The ancient Greeks gave us the very word, and yet the Athenians expressed people-power through sortition, drawing by lot and ruling through councils. Athens did not have political parties and election campaigns. That doesn’t make them bad democrats, it makes them a different kind of democrat. And maybe their past is our future.

American democracy isn't the only framework of democracy available. He's arguing that our version of democracy looks more like the old Roman version, so why not just do that?

So, I agree with you partially, this article doesn't help get us back to where we were. Frankly, I'm inclined to agree with him. But, I think there's an interesting idea here nonetheless. I'm not keen on the implication that America is the modern-day Rome, but is voting really the only process that legitimates the democratic ideal? If not, then why can't we implement these different processes so that people are more effectively able to participate in governing?

As a matter of fact, Morris Fiorina, a conservative political scientist I'm tangentially aware of, wrote an interesting paper titled "Extreme Voices: A Dark Side of Civic Engagement". He argues that the increase in civic engagement over the past century or so is directly and ironically responsible for our dissatisfaction with the political process. Basically, special interests are inclined to participate and regular people aren't, despite the ease with which both might participate. But since special interests actually participate, it's their views that are most often represented. Fiorina's solution to the problem as he identified it? Encourage more civic engagement. Go all in on democracy.

At least, that's how I'm looking at this. It's why I prefer the blue solution over the red one, even if they are opposites sides of the same American democratic coin.