You are right and I was in error regarding the execution of generals. I had misremembered an observation from Hanson’s A War Like No Other where he does not say that the Athenians executed all their generals. What he noted was
I’m not sure what your point is regarding the Founders. They had, historically, a single example of democracy to view and it had become a self-devouring monster as portrayed by Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, and any number of other commentators. If you assert that they wanted nothing to do with democracy and that they feared it. I agree with you. If you think they had some odd personal reasons for conspiring to prevent democracy, you will need to demonstrate that point more effectivly than by trying to pretend that the general historical view of national democracy at the end of the 18th century in Western Europe and North America was not purely negative.
(Your observation regarding Socrates would bolster my position–that the historical record gave the U.S. founders no reason to trust democracy.)
= = =
(BTW, since Nicias was executed by his foes on Sicily, I would not have included him in a list of victims of the Athenian voters–other than that they placed him at the head of an expedition that he had already protested would fail.)
Yes, they could have concluded that direct democracy was a perilous form of government. So were the other forms of government that had been tried.
They could also have considered the possibility that the fault might have been found in procedural weaknesses resulting from a restricted citizen class that could both develop and direct policy. With the Athenian system that occasionally proved to be impractical with the large number of participants who attended the peoples’ assembly.
Rather than identifying those weaknesses and trying to develop a workable system that would provide the people with genuine power, they preferred to develop a system that resulted in the people having, in reality, only the appearance of power.
Prior to about 1998 I used to encounter these quotes only very occasionally. At the time I also assumed, without giving it much thought, that it was probably a reference to ancient Athens.
It’s not as if the republics already familiar to people of that time provided good examples to emulate. Thomas Jefferson in a letter to J. Taylor in 1816 refers to some examples such as Holland, Switzerland, Genoa, Venice, Poland, but he did not try to make any great claims that they were brilliant successes.
With the spread of the internet it’s easy to find dozens of US sites that worshipfully gather up the quotes I listed in the OP, and many more. I found the phenomenon to be quite baffling. Why this venomous hatred directed towards ‘democracy’ and not to the numerous failed ‘republics’ of history that would also have been equally as well known to the people of two centuries ago.
The one that really gave me a WTF moment was the Gouverneur Morris outburst which I partly quoted in the last paragraph of the OP and the thread title:
Just look at it. That man was totally unhinged.
I make no claim that this provides any kind of definitive proof that those who railed against ‘democracy’ did so with the simple objective of setting up a system of government in which the common man was provided with imaginary rather than real power.
I am not an American so I was not indoctrinated with any belief that the persons responsible for making those quotes were a cut above the standard political operator found in the elite political class of any country, polity and era.
The extreme language they used against ‘democracy’ can only have had as its primary motive an urge to make sure that someone as dumb as the common man must be kept as far away as possible from genuine power. In order to achieve this ignoble objective they deliberately used the most extremist and scaremongering language possible to carry out their deception.
As I mentioned before, this is not definitive proof but indicative. I believe it is the most reasonable opinion that can be inferred from the available evidence.
Wait, wait, wait, wait…! Where are you getting this operating assumption that such weaknesses had not been previously identified (or presently, as can be seen in the examples you provided as well) and had not been worked on to develop some kind of workable system? Particularly given the historical context? Furthermore, where are you getting the assumption that there is any other practical result than the position that democracy is a perilous form of government?
If you’re going to posit that, then I welcome a description of a result that doesn’t end in despair for the governed. Surely, you’d be the first person I’d ever heard of who introduced a workable, practical “pure” democratic system in the centuries old debate about democracy.
If you eliminate the weaknesses in a pure democratic system, then it seems that the system would necessarily move further and further away from a pure democratic system. In essence, our modern Republic seems an obvious derivative of moving step-by-step away from the obvious weaknesses of democracy. And isn’t that what you’re suggesting that they should have done?
And I think you’re wrong. The most reasonable opinion is that these people you’ve been quoting were possibly both rationally and irrationally afraid of mob-rule destroying a fledgling nation. There’s little reason to draw from your quote that he meant “dumb” people. Educated people are every bit as prone to greed, malice, etc.
Reasonably, he wasn’t afraid of “dumb” people running the country specifically (although I’m sure that is one very poignant and prudent fear), but that direct democracies in general lend themselves to the unsavory condition of decisions by popular vote. As you’ve undoubtedly heard a hundred times before, just because something is popular does not mean that it is right.
Furthermore, there is nothing unhinged at all about being afraid of these matters. Nor is it “crazy” to detest the idea of the uneducated making decisions of national importance. Do you really trust the general population of a state, especially a state with no formal education at the time, to make those kinds of decisions? Would you want them to? To draw a mild analogy, would you trust a roomful of random strangers to vote appropriately on which surgery to pick for your ailment? Of course not, it’s patently absurd. You want a surgeon to do that.
Aquila Be, I am rather confused. So far you have adopted a position, dismissed all contrary evidence, then cut the knees out from under yourself by admitting all the flaws of democracy and the validity of the evidence you previously dismissed. I am confused as to your overall position here.
Aside from which, your assertion that American government at any time presented only the “appearance” that the public had power is unfounded, unsupported, and offensive. The government is intentionally a Republic, with checks and balances upon the government itself to prevent it from running roughshod over the people. It initially had property requirements, but these were not difficult to meet in America and voting was widespread. The nation also become vastly more democratic within a short span of time, as we learned and experimented with ways of doing things.
As near as I can tell, you seem pissed that the Founding Fathers accurately saw the flaws of democracy and did not magically summon a perfect solution instantaneously. C’mon: they only got it almost exactly right. Isn’t being a collection of some of the most brilliant legal, phislosophical, moral, and scientific minds sufficient? Must they be perfect as well?
You probably need to sit down and read both the Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist papers (along with a smattering of other political commentary of the period).
No teacher of composition has ever used any of those works as examples of understatement. All the tracts were intended as exhortations, not as deliberative discussions of weighty topics in the spirit of John Stuart Mill. In fact, many of them were intended to be proclaimed aloud to the very people you think the Founders were calling “dumb” for the purpose of persuading sufficient numbers of them to influence their legislators to vote in a particular way.
None of the weaknesses claimed to be typical in the system they demonised as ‘democracy’, which was never, ever ‘pure’ anywhere, was absent in the so called ‘republican’ model that had also been tried and found wanting. They were as prone to go off the rails and collapse as any system of government.
I do not advocate anything approaching a ‘pure’ democracy.
What would be nice to have, as a minimum, would be a system under which those who rule the general population do not have the power to place themselves above the law, as tends to happen everywhere.
It doesn’t matter how many pixy words, like ‘checks and balances’ or ‘due process’ a constitution has. If the politically powerful have enough political friends and allies within a political machine then they are usually in a position to safeguard themselves from prosecution and there is nothing, short of an insurrection, that the people can do about it.
Possibly a system of oversight based on sortition where representatives so chosen would have the power to order action when political or judicial outrages are committed might go some way towards alleviating this kind of corruption, but a system of sortition tends to cut across the erroneous, if commonly held belief, that a politician possesses some kind of special ‘expertise’ that is beyond the common herd.
Successful politicians are expert in only one important thing. Gaming the system to remain in power.
A few politicians might also have an understanding of business and finance, management and economics, but that is not essential to their success in politics.
I don’t advocate discussion groups involving thousands. That is not practical.
I see nothing wrong with sensible sized committees chosen by a system of sortition from the population with at least the power to approve or veto proposals developed by career politicians and the power to rectify, prevent or nullify egregious abuses of power committed by politicians, judicial officers and bureaucrats.
None of the many ‘anti democracy’ people I quoted even considered this as a possibility, yet all of them must have known about the sortition system used in ancient Athens.
Secondly, even if I hadn’t, in real life, met several dozen state level politicians in conferences, meetings and briefings, I would never have made the mistake of equating their kind of skill level with that of surgeons.
Most politicians are not rocket surgeons. They’re glorified clerks with a weakness for surrounding themselves with yes men and yes women. They’re usually above average intelligence, but most of them possess only the most basic management skills.
I don’t know why you find it offensive. I would apply these same criticisms to the government under which I live. It’s no better. Where I live people are just as powerless once the dust has settled after an election. The winners take all and make sure the loyal boys and girls receive well paid jobs.
After that, it’s down to the business of ‘governing’ without having to worry too much about the people at large for a few years.
Accountability? How many private citizens are likely to take the time and effort to seek a writ of mandamus if the governing oligarchy decides not to prosecute a wrongdoer (of the right political persuasion).
As I mentioned before, noble sounding words in a constitution might look pretty but if the governing body can get away with not taking action that it finds inconvenient then it will, more often than not, do nothing.
Action and pressure by the media? Only if it happens to suit the media’s political agenda.
Re the Federalist and Anti Federalist Papers, I’ve previously indicated that I’ve read most of them.
Setting aside the fact that most of the quotes I used did not come from those Papers, so what if extracts from them were read aloud to their fellow political elites.
The elites who already had some power and influence were the class of people they wanted to influence, not the ones they probably considered to be ‘dumb’ and ‘ruled by passions’.
And these local committees you keep mentioning; they’ll be recruited from where? Elected by who and how? And what, precisely, prevents them from becoming as corrupt as any other politician or group with power?
Unless you can be a LOT more specific than these vague statements, I’m not sure that I understand how you could come to the conclusion that the “anti-democratic” forces didn’t even contemplate such a system. Nor can I yet understand how you believe that such an alternate governing system can practically exist.
If you can show us, in your expertise, how this fantastic system of governance might be structured without being vague, it would greatly help us understand your criticism of the democratic republic.
Aquila, I know this might not get through, but you’re not acually making a complaint about democracy. You’re making a complaint about human nature. I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but no government anywhere can possibly guard against all lines of corruption as you see it. The Founders were not trying to guard against all possile human frailties, but to create a system which generally did what the majority wanted but protected minorities to a reasonable degree.
The majority of the quotes were not aoo that intemperate, either. Only Morris’s statement has any over-the-top passion in it. They were also not read to the “elites.” They eighteenth century writings were most often published in papers and often read to town assemblies. (Macaulay’s and the other nineteenth century writers were probably not for widespread dissemination, but none of them are all that emotional and they are clearly accurate descriptions of Athens’s history.)
Rewriting history does not change what happened. My point regarding eighteenth century polemics stands. None of the pieces you quoted were dispassionate discussion; all were intended to make a point. Drawing the conclusion that the authors had a visceral contempt for some group of people (as opposed to the contempt they expressed toward the actions of groups/mobs who are unconstrained) is not justified by what you have posted.
And nothing you have posted demonstrates that their reactions were not based on the histories of Athens and its imperial allies. Every single one of the questions in the OP can be answered by looking at the history of Athens and its allies. Societal suicide? The Pelopennesian War displayed 30 years of effective suicide. Useless wars? The war against Syracuse was utterly foolish and unnecessary; Syracuse even had a democracy similar to that of Athens. All the descriptions matched to the known history of Athens with the single exception of the populace voting themselves largesse. (They might have gotten around to that if they had not beggared themselves in the war. For that matter, much of the war could be so characterized.) Short life? The Roman Republic lasted four hundred years or more. No Greek democracy survived a complete century and even with interruptions none lasted two and a half.
You apparently claim that they must have been inventing a nonexistent “democracy” to demonize, yet nothing they said was not true of Athens at one point or another.
If you wish to make a separate argument that they were wrong-headed for avoiding a pure democracy, you might be able to make the case. However, the case you have made, here, that they were not describing Athens is simply wrong.
I didn’t mean ‘elected’, I meant ‘selected’ through a system of sortition. The ancient Greeks used that system to appoint people to a political office for a set (and relatively brief) term. The people so selected had a lot of legitimacy as far as their fellow citizens were concerned.
I would envisage some good things could come of such a system if it was used primarily in a watch dog role with genuine powers to sack or suspend politicians and bureaucrats who abuse their power against their fellow citizens.
I have not claimed to have developed a ‘fantastic’ system of governance’. I merely suggest a safeguard that would nullify the evils of the existing system where politicians are, for the most part, above the law (provided their political party has control, of course).
Without a safeguard that involves genuine representation by the people a government of laws and not men cannot exist and is deficient in legitimacy.
I have already come to agree that Attica was probably the one they were thinking about (despite Hamilton being the only one who bothered to identify it).
In essence, my claim was that if they were describing ancient Athens then they created a distorted description of that polity.
That would be the main disgreement that remains between us. You believe it was an honest representation and I believe it was deliberate misrepresentation to advance their own political agendas.
