Aikin & Talisse on why Democracy entails Cannibalism.

Democracy is a word which means that the majority of people in a country get to decide who rules it and how it is ruled. This majority may want to get rid of minorities or to force them to change their ways. It may bind itself to the Rule of Law such that minorities have considerable freedom in their private lives. But, it may change its mind.

This is the common sense view. It is not that of Aikin & Talisse. They write in 3 Quarks.

Democracy is many things: a form of constitutional republic, a system of government, a procedure for collective decision, a method for electing public officials, a collection of processes by which conflicts among competing preferences are domesticated, a means for creating social stability, and so on.

Democracy is not a thing. It is a word which may be associated, by pedagogues or polemicists, with certain things of the sort Aikin & Talisse enumerates. But then, it may also be associated with regimes like that of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Aikin & Talisse appear to be blissfully ignorant of this historical fact. They write-

But underneath all of these common ways of understanding democracy lies a commitment to the distinctively moral ideal of collective self-government among political equals.

This is nonsense. There is no commitment of this sort on display in Aikin & Talisse's own country, nor in any country they have any knowledge about.

Instead, there is inter-elite competition which is resolved by seeing who can get the most votes by fair means or foul. It is entirely false to suggest that the elites consider the masses to be 'political equals' as opposed to ignorant and prejudiced fools who can be manipulated in a crude manner.

And this commitment to the political equality of citizens is what explains the familiar mechanisms of democratic government.

Nonsense! The 'familiar mechanisms' of democratic government operate in an occult manner such that 'political equality' is revealed to be mere window dressing.

Our elections, representative bodies, constitution, and system of law and rights of redress are intended to preserve individual political equality in the midst of large-scale government.

No. They are intended to protect the Elite from internecine conflicts getting out of hand and thus becoming utterly destructive to themselves as a class. Checks and Balances operate so as to safeguard the Person and the Property of the defeated rival and to prevent a scorched earth policy being implemented by an incumbent fearful of being voted out of office.

Absent the presumption of political equality, much of what goes on in a democracy would be difficult to explain.

On the contrary, what goes on in a democracy would be wholly impossible to explain if we cling to the belief that the power elite is committed to political equality. Once we understand that democracy enables a benign circulation of elites, such that the property and persons of those involved are protected, its apparent dysfunctions can be appreciated as the outcome of deliberate design.

Why else would we bother with the institutional inefficiency, the collective irrationality, and the noise of democracy, but for the commitment to the idea that government must be of, for, and by the People, understood as political equals?

We don't bother with the 'institutional inefficiency and collective irrationality and the noise of democracy' in order to secure our livelihoods and guard against most types of risk. Instead, we rely upon the market for tradable goods and services and upon a network of private or segmentary relationships for almost everything else. There are some 'club goods' which, historically, governments provide and we use our votes to try to ensure that Elite competition can't dissipate rents beyond the point where the provision of a basic level of club goods is crowded out. This does not always work. There are plenty of failed States where Democracy couldn't curtail excessive rent dissipation by rivalrous Elites.

To be clear, the democrat’s commitment to the political equality of the citizens does not amount to the idea that all citizens are the same, or equally good and admirable, or equal in every respect. Political equality is the commitment to the idea that in politics, no one is another’s subordinate.

This is why President Trump is not the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. No General is subordinate to him. Nor is any private subordinate to a General. If a police man, or an F.B.I agent, points a gun at you and tells you to assume the position, you don't have to do so. You won't get shot if you refuse to comply. Really, you won't- even if you are Black. Aikin & Talisse say so, thus it must be true.

Put differently, among political equals, all political power is accountable to those over whom it is exercised.

Rubbish! The Executive may be accountable in different ways to the Legislature and the Judiciary. It is true that Legislators need our votes to get re-elected but they need money from lobbyists even more. As for the Judiciary- it is not accountable to us at all.

Accordingly, although in a democracy there are laws and rules of other kinds that all citizens are obligated to obey, no one is ever reduced to being a mere subject of legislation.

Everyone in Britain is a mere subject of the Crown in Parliament. Every US citizen is a mere subject of a Presidential Executive Order.

In a democracy, even when a law has been produced by impeccably democratic processes, citizens who nonetheless oppose it may still enact various forms of protest, critique, and resistance.

All of which may be punishable. The Judiciary, on the other hand, can review and strike down such Executive Orders or Statues of the Legislature. However, they may choose not to do so. There is no mechanism whereby a citizen can force the hand of the Judiciary in such matters nor is there some Citizen's Ombudsman who has the power to review the decisions of the Supreme Court.

Under certain conditions, citizens may also be permitted to engage in civil disobedience.

Civil disobedience is not permitted. What Aikin & Talisse mean is that under certain conditions civil disobedience may not be punished.

Once again, the democratic thought is that where citizens have rights to object, oppose, and criticize exercises of political power under conditions where government is accountable to its citizens, they retain their status as political equals even while being subject to the law.

This is sheer mystification. One might as well say- taking the Book of Job as one's text- that man is equal to God because, on one occasion, God gave an account- not a satisfactory one by any means- to a particular subject who had been subjected to terrible trials and tribulations. If Theodicy is part of Theology, we could argue that, in precisely the same sense that Aikin & Talisse maintain that ordinary people like you and me are the equals of Trump & Macron, we truly are, as it is written in John 10:34, 'Gods'.

In this way, democracy is commonly thought to be the only viable response to the moral problem of reconciling the political power with the fundamental equality of those over whom power is exercised.

This is sheer nonsense. The King or Pope or Grand Commissar may say that he is the servant of the People and wholly accountable to them in some occult way, and- moreover- that all are equal in the eyes of the Creator and Final Judge- but that changes nothing. What matters is if there are regular elections which cause some change in the Executive and which reflect the preferences of the majority. If this obtains, we say- this is a Democracy.

Notice, however, that democracy is built on the premise that conflicts and disputes over how political power should be deployed will be ongoing among democratic citizens.

So is every other form of Government. If Political Power exists, there will be conflicts about how it should be used. Why say- 'Democracy is built on the same premise as Aristocracy or Gerontocracy or Bureaucracy or Kakistocracy?' What is the point?

In fact, as many conceptions of democracy explicitly call for citizens to be perpetually engaged in the processes of self-government, ongoing political disputation is not merely tolerated in a democracy; it is celebrated as a duty of citizenship.

Nonsense! Representative Democracy means only a very small number of citizens have to be 'perpetually engaged' in political processes. Voting once every couple of years is celebrated as a duty of citizenship- but it only takes an hour or so.

This is why democracy holds frequent elections, referenda, and various other forums where citizens can confront and instruct a government that is accountable to them. And yet this condition of enduring political contention presents a difficulty of its own. To wit: according to the democrat, political power is legitimated by the fact that democracy provides a range of channels by which equal citizens can hold those who wield power accountable. But we have also seen that in a democracy one should expect the citizens themselves to disagree about political power should be employed.
The difficulty that emerges is evident. Democracy depends on the capacity of citizens to sustain their commitment to the political equality of even those who they regard as their most benighted, vicious, and depraved political opponents. That is, in a democracy, citizens must regard each other as political equals, even when they disagree bitterly about things that matter most. They must sustain a commitment to recognizing one another as entitled to an equal say in directing politics, even when they are vehemently opposed on political issues.

Utter crap! Democracy is about not having to talk to nutjobs who don't get that only the majority matters. The Judiciary may grant their weird beliefs an equal status and may challenge, in the short run, the constitutional validity of Executive orders or Legislative statutes which punish such minorities, but- in the medium to long term- the majority prevails. The minority either conforms or is runs away.

At work, I may have to put up with other people on the basis of our human equality. But, politically, I can oppress them as much as I, and the majority I belong to, considers salutary. This is because there is no political equality at all under democracy.  In the short run, there may be judicial equality- but Laws can change and Constitutions can be amended.

Aikin & Talisse are saying American Christians must give an equal say to Islamist nutjobs even though only a very small number of such people are American citizens.  This is sheer madness.

Maintaining this stance is not easy. After all, in a democracy the stakes often are high. Citizens recognize that everyday political struggles over taxation, privacy, immigration, military spending, and healthcare invoke deeper commitments concerning the most fundamental values of justice, liberty, autonomy, and dignity.

Everyday struggles concern fundamental values, precisely because fundamental values are involved in quotidian activities. Why? Because the stakes are very high all the time in daily life. Crossing the road involves fundamental values. If you don't do it at the appointed place and in a proper manner, you may be hit by a bus. This may cause you to shit your pants- which injures your dignity. The bus-driver may laugh at you but still not get convicted of negligence because the Court may decide that you acted negligently. You may feel this very unjust. Furthermore, you may die because of your injuries- thus suffering a loss of liberty and autonomy and the right to sing 'O Paddy dear' in an accent highly offensive to people from Ulster.

How is it that we can go about our daily lives- often crossing many busy roads on our way to work or school or the pub- while maintaining a commitment to fundamental values without biting each other or pushing sticks of asparagus up each others' nostrils?

Is the answer that we all share a deep commitment to whatever shite Aikin & Talisse are blathering on about? No. Don't be silly. We know how to go about our daily lives in relative safety because since infancy we have imitated the actions of the majority. Perhaps this is because of 'mirror neurons' in the brain. I don't know. However, I am certain that only mimetics matter, deep commitments can go hang. They are worthless. Believing otherwise causes people to say stupid things like-

Hence we cannot help but regard at least some of those with whom we disagree about political policy as ipso facto committed to derelict conceptions of the values that matter most. Indeed, in certain cases, we are bound to take some of our political rivals are positively committed to injustice, oppression, and the degradation of persons.

This only happens if we believe there is some link between 'deep commitments' and policy choices. It is silly to do so. The thing is purely economic. So long as the majority votes according to their economic interest- even if they are wrong about how it is to be realised- the nutjobs cancel each other out as noise. All that is left is Mechanism Design- and that is purely empirical so there can be overlapping consensus about it.

Pedants & Polemicists may get off by pretending that anyone who wants to pay less in tax and get more in public goods, is a Nazi or a Communist or a Race Traitor or a Satanist or what have you, but that is why we all think pedants and polemicists are sick little puppies.

They are ignorant and stupid and write shite like this-

Hence one might wonder whether it is even possible to sustain a commitment to the political equality of citizens when we are inclined to take so grim a view of those with whom we most severely disagree. One might ask: In virtue of what are those who are committed to what I am bound to regard as injustice nonetheless my political equals?  

The answer is 'in virtue of the fact that you got shit for brains'.

What entitles them to an equal say when they are so consistently wrong?

The answer is 'coz they too got shit for brains'.

The difficulty just identified hence takes on the character of a vulnerability to which democracy is subject.

The Law of Large numbers, or Condorcet Jury theorem, explains that shitheads cancel each other out. So long as the majority vote their economic interest- a proper signal is received for preference aggregation. Mechanism Design has something to work with.

Democracy is the solution to the moral problem of rendering political power consistent with political equality.

Rubbish! The moral problem of political power is the same as the moral problem of any sort of power- viz. it impedes information aggregation or distorts the operation of Decision mechanisms.  Democracy does not solve anything. Rather it is a Mechanism whose Design must be improved by its own workings. The first step for this to happen is to disintermediate shithead pedagogues or polemicists like Aikin & Talisse who say stupid things like-

In order to establish the envisioned consistency, democracy appeals to the ability of citizens to hold political power accountable, and thus to play a role in directing it.

Nonsense! What matters is that some citizens should specialise in Mechanism Design with the backing of other citizens and that there is a purely empirical competitive process which is efficiently evaluated by voting procedures.

But when the citizens themselves disagree sharply about how power should be directed in the cases that matter most, they will come to regard one another as obstacles and obstructions rather than as fellow citizens who are entitled to an equal political say. The result is civic enmity – a condition where one acknowledges that one’s political rivals have an equal say, but can no longer understand why they are entitled to it.

In other words, a Democracy may face a situation where preference diversity is too great. This means that there is no coordination game of a certain type. Instead there are two separate discoordination games which however can be arbitraged. One method of doing so is spatial 'Tiebout sorting' and greater subsidiarity. Another is a non-spatial consociationality.

However, human beings are highly plastic. It may well be that some coercive 'channelisation' will quickly restore the salience of 'universal' focal points- i.e. a pooling equilibrium re-emerges.

The neat thing about us as a species is that our more or less hard wired mimetic heuristics allow us to spot when this is happening. We may continue to 'hedge' on discoordination games- but this gets dammed up as 'capacitance diversity'. Thus Social processes can be highly robust- provided shitheaded pedagogues & polemicists are named and shamed as such.

Thus the vulnerability: when high-stakes political decisions are the focus of large-scale political participation among citizens who are disposed to regard their opponents as depraved rather than merely mistaken, democracy becomes an engine for producing civic enmity.

So does any sort of regime. Democracy is probably more robust than Theocracy in this matter precisely because pooling equilibria can be restored coercively such that we shoot a few of the noisier shitheads on both sides and kick the pedagogues and the polemicists repeatedly in the goolies.

Those who feel the pull of such enmity also feel the pull of the thought that perhaps political equality is overrated, or at least is an impediment to things that matter more. Democracy thereby threatens its own legitimacy.

Everything threatens its own legitimacy if it goes crazy. Suppose Prince Charles appears on TV saying his Mummy isn't the Queen but rather a large orchid he has in a pot at Highgrove. This revelation would threaten his legitimacy. Parliament may decide to exclude him from the order of succession.

Our democracy has devolved into a brawl among political factions that can no longer discern a basis for the political equality of their opponents.

Nonsense! A certain type of pedagogue feels miffed. But another type feels vindicated. But pedagogues don't matter. What does matter is that American Democracy needs to deliver more for the median voter of today- not the one likely to hold the balance in fifteen or twenty years time. But, that is quite easy to do and so it will be done- Politics, after all, is about paths of least resistance.

The result is a politics driven by the aspiration to humiliate and denigrate those with whom one disagrees in the hope that, once adequately dispirited, they will quietly disengage and simply submit to the power of one’s own faction. Thus democracy is transmogrified into a cold civil war. The trouble is that once we acknowledge that we are now engaged in a cold civil war rather than a program of collective self-government among equals, we must also jettison the idea that political power is being exercised legitimately. Hence there is nothing to prevent our cold civil war from erupting into a hot one.

Yes there is. It's called the Army. Since 1860, its asymmetric power has grown exponentially. So has that of the carceral State.

Are Aikin & Talisse really so ignorant they think a second Civil War is in the offing?

No. They are snowflakes. They fear not bullets but bumper stickers.

Consider a curious phenomenon particularly prevalent among professed conservatives – that of reveling in ‘liberal tears’.  We have the ‘coal rolling‘ phenomenon – that of converting one’s pickup truck so that it can release black exhaust into the windshields of Priuses.  There is the fact that Ross Delingpole of Breitbart wrote a book titled, 365 Ways to Drive a Liberal Crazy. Or the simple animus of a bumper sticker with the invocation of Trump’s re-election being something to cheer for, if only for the sake of causing pain to progressives. It seems the height of civic vice to propose policies or adopt a mode of life for the sake of expressing one’s contempt of another group.  But this is the contempt that the familiarity of political recognition breeds. Indeed, it is the contempt that democratic norms of equality, precisely because of the fact of disagreement and reasonable pluralism, fosters. And the great irony, of course, is that for as anti-democratic as these expressive gestures seem, they are the products of democracy’s call to engagement and recognition.  The problem, of course, is that if we do not have a culture of productive engagement, cold civil war perhaps is the best we can hope for.

So there you have it. Democracy is in peril coz of some guy's bumper sticker. No wonder Trump is making nice to North Korea's dictator. What if the fellow stops making nuclear missiles- which THAAD could shoot down- and starts handing out T-shirts saying 'Liberals be cray-cray'? Aikin & Talisse will experience so much psychic pain, they will simply expire. As will the entire Ivy League bien pensant class. Democracy will crumble. Society will revert to cannibalism.