Part II
The Threat
**
THE PEOPLE
§§ Difference is not Division §§
(continued)
{But what if the lowliest of us are the regulators? What if we take it upon ourselves to determine how best, how reasonably and justly, to regulate conflict? A place to start would be to discern why earlier attempts failed.} [end of post 11]
After the Revolution the people of the United States were in the condition of the lowliest becoming the regulators. Having thrown off the nearly thousand-year mantle of monarchy, these former subjects faced anarchy or conquest if they failed to agree on a way to constrain their passions to conform to the dictates of reason and justice.
The Federalist Papers review many historical examples of democracies gone awry for various reasons. A notable commonality, rightly regarded as a weakness, is their contentiousness, which one way or another devolves into breakdown or usurpation or subjugation. The inability of those democracies to control the effects of their contentions largely explains the low opinion for popular government held by many rulers of other forms of governance. (“The instability, injustice, and confusion, introduced into the public councils, have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished; as they continue to be the favorite and fruitful topics from which the adversaries to liberty derive their most specious declamations.” TFP#10) The conclusion self-approvingly presumed by the adversaries is that the people are unable to govern themselves.
The 10th Paper is a long meditation by Madison on the subject of differences among us and their impact on a society’s frame of governance. (“The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity for this dangerous vice [the violence of factions].”) Remember, the great project before the Framers was “whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice.” Good government, in their view, was necessarily a popular government–that is, a government deriving its authority from the people–and one founded upon the vital principles of liberty and the republican form. Reflection and choice by a group of persons require listening to the different viewpoints of all the persons in the group with the purpose of enlarging our own, and then, you know, choosing together.
From the outset their working hypothesis answered the evident differences of opinion and interest with “that fundamental maxim of republican government, which requires that the sense of the majority should prevail.” (#22) To induce a population to accept that premise, of course, requires measures to assuage the fears of the minority that they will be left out in the cold. Their rights and privileges will not be trampled by an overbearing majority, so they need not gird themselves for battle just because they lost a vote. That point of agreement marks the initial negotiation in the process “of establishing good government from reflection and choice.” From that point forward, every step is a replay of that fundamental agreement. Reflection and choice require each party to the decision to understand the views, desires, and fears of all the other parties, so that all might feel “satisfactorily accommodated by [each] act, or [be] induced to accede to it by a deep conviction of the necessity of sacrificing private opinions and partial interests to the public good.” (#37) Failing that, the minority must have, and feel that they have, the privilege and right to on-going debate to persuade the majority to reconsider.
There are two viewpoints from which to consider this matter of reflection and choice in the context of differences among us. The first might be deemed outward facing, the second inward. The first views the government, its formation and its operation, as a mechanism for public policy, to advance and protect “the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” In this view the idea is to bring together individuals of the people and the states to represent their differing opinions, interests, and concerns to each other. This approach endorses the capacity of people to become educated, to “be led out from” their own narrow slice of experience and interest to a wider sense of how issues appear to others. It is a process of deliberation, of weighing factors and implications that need to be considered before reaching a correct judgement as to how policy will promote the general welfare.
The second views the government more jealously as a dangerous necessity, useful for certain categories of national concerns but threatening to local control or standards of behavior or culture. The effect of this attitude is a watchful antagonism or suspicious vigilance against any policy of national government that may alter local or personal authority, position, situation, peace of mind. This does not necessarily imply a disregard for the equal rights of other persons or other regions to their own concerns; it may simply weigh more heavily the fear of losing one’s own.
This second attitude should be encouraged as perfectly appropriate for all citizens of a democratic republic such as the United States. The citizenry are the source of governmental authority. It is the interest of the entire body of the people to secure themselves against usurpation by any encroachment of their rights not ceded to the government, or by any abuse of the authorities granted. Private citizens ought not to lose this habit, even if forgetful of the outward-facing viewpoint. Not all of us are able, or always able, “to take an enlarged view” of community, as Hamilton phrased it. (#1) However, a too highly pitched zeal for self-protection easily blinds one to encroaching upon another’s interests.
By contrast, the first view, while likewise appropriate for the private citizen’s perspective, is the essential and indispensable perspective for public citizens, governmental office-holders. Their job, their duty, their office, after all, is to represent, to serve, and to protect “the real welfare of the great body of the people.” (#45)
The genius of the Framers reveals itself in the ways they built a system that utilized the strengths and weaknesses of human character and nature as obstacles to the weaknesses of human character and nature. The usual miscalculation is to presume that people will do what is right, step up to what is expected of them, fulfill their obligations. Many do most of the time. Most of us do some of the time. None of us is free of weakness and error. So, like Charlie Brown, we too often find ourselves flat on our backs when once again Lucy pulls up the football at the critical moment. “[T[he defect [of inadequate protection] must be supplied, by so contriving the interior structure of the government as that its several constituent parts may, by their mutual relations, be the means of keeping each other in their proper places.” [#51]
The Long Clasp 