Jason Stanley governed by stupidity

 Should stupid and ignorant people 'govern' what is said or done by smarter and more knowledgeable people? 

Sure. If they pay their salaries. 

But how extensive and intrusive should that 'governing' be?

Perhaps it is enough if one can sack them when they screw up or shout loudly at them when they appear to be slacking off. 

The question is why anyone would want to go much further than that. Why not let smart people do smart things we benefit from? Make them compete with other smart people and the outcome may be even better.

What would be foolish would be to listen to somebody even stupider than ourselves who proposes 'rules' for such 'governance'

This is what Jason Stanley does when he suggests that- 

 in a liberal democracy, the normative ideals governing public political speech are political ideals.

A person of some ideal type may incarnate a 'normative ideal'. Should a person of this type govern public political speech in a liberal democracy? No. That which is 'governed' isn't free. Where freedom is lacking liberalism does not obtain. 

It may be objected that Legislatures have Speakers. But the Speaker acts like an umpire. She does not govern anything but merely ensures the rules are followed and the purpose of the Assembly is served.

Why is Jason making such an absurd suggestion? He  says it

 is essential to identifying the structure propaganda takes in a liberal democracy, since propaganda is presented as embodying one or another normative ideal of political speech.

But this simply isn't the case! Where in the world will we find propaganda cast in the mold of the Gettysburg Address? 

Propaganda isn't very different from marketing. ISIS does not need to change its propaganda very much to recruit in the West nor does Coca Cola have to change its marketing in some profound manner to gain customers in foreign countries with different cultures and political systems.

 In his late essay “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited,” John Rawls attempts to characterize this realm by defining the notion of a public political forum: the discourse of judges in their decisions,

but a court is not a political forum 

and especially of the judges of a supreme court; the discourse of government officials,

which is not political save by express stipulation or where the official is elected or nominated for purely political reasons

especially chief executives

Governors of American States? Sure, that's political. 

and legislators; and finally, the discourse of candidates for public office and their campaign managers, especially in their public oratory, party platforms, and political statements.

 The discourse of Judges and some Professional Experts is likely to be protocol bound and restricted with respect to Legislative or Executive privilege or else by issues of jurisdiction, justiciability, materiality etc. 

It is foolish to clump protocol bound discourse together with freewheeling public reasoning which is by no means confined to the class Rawls suggests. 

Rawls’s essay concerns in part the ideal of public reason, by which he means the standard that ought to guide debate in public political forums in a liberal democracy.

Yet a liberal democracy rejects the actual existence of any such guide or governor. Why? A normative link to action would be missing. It is one thing to come to a free agreement to do something and then do it. It is another thing entirely to be guided to some agreement and then be expected to do it without any further being guided to want to do it and then being guided to want to do it in such a manner that you actually think about doing it and then being guided to etc. etc. 

If guidance is so wonderful, let it do everything itself. Its not that I'm against normative ideals- indeed some are good friends of mine- but what I say is normative ideals have got to start paying taxes like the rest of us poor working stiffs. 

But the ideals of public reason should not just guide formal forums of the sort Rawls discusses.

It should also re-educate them in concentration camps. 

Citizens gather to speak about politics in all sorts of informal settings. These informal settings guide us in our political choices.

OMG! We iz being guided in informal settings! How about when we poop? Are we being guided there too? Are normative ideals watching us poop?  

The ideals of public reason therefore should apply equally to these informal settings.

Not to mention, toilet settings where we poop. 

In Senate debate in September 2013, Senator John McCain called on his Republican colleagues to abandon their strategy of trying to shut down the US government to halt the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. McCain said: “We fought as hard as we could in a fair and honest manner and we lost. One of the reasons was because we were in the minority, and in democracies, almost always the majority governs and passes legislation.”

Was McCain saying 'be governed by normative ideas' ? Or was he saying 'guys, if we continue to fight Obamacare we could lose the House. Voters think we are the bad guys here' ?

McCain’s point was that democratic citizenship requires taking yourself to be subject to the laws that emerge from a “fair and honest” process of deliberating among one’s fellow politicians and the public, even when those laws are not the ones that you yourself support.

Democratic citizenship does not require running for office. McCain was speaking to a class of people empowered by democracy to pursue their own conception of what was 'fair and honest' without reference to any higher normative ideal. However, if the voters turned against them, they would return to the status of ordinary citizens. The sanction here was in the hands of the voter. Thus the 'governing', at the end of the day, was in the hands not of abstract ideals but peeps wot poop and sweat and swear and aren't ideal at all.  

The ideals of public reason are central to democratic political philosophy,

but such philosophy is peripheral to democracy. By contrast, Chinese kids must learn 'the thought of Chairman Xi' and must pretended to be guided by the 'normative ideals' he has set down. 

because it is through debate that is “fair and honest” that the democratic legitimacy of a policy emerges.

Quite false. Democratic legitimacy emerges not from the nature of debate- which may be unfair and ignorant- but from expectations regarding election outcomes. Voters change their minds as circumstances alter. What is 'democratically legitimate' today may be highly illegitimate tomorrow. 

Democracy is a system of government that, minimally, preserves the liberty of its citizens by ensuring that they are not subject to arbitrary restrictions.

No. That is Liberalism which may be oligarchic, or elitist, rather than democratic.  

If a polity agrees to laws governing all of its citizens, the rules must be fairly decided upon by the entire public, with the full participation of all the citizens, for the rules to not illegitimately restrict the liberty of some of the citizens.

That's why you don't need to obey any law decided upon without your full participation. What's that? You could end up in jail if you don't obey such laws? Oh. Well in that case, Liberal Democracies illegitimately restrict the liberty the vast majority of its citizens coz they don't fully participate in the drafting of laws.  

Suppose you are part of a group jointly deliberating about a policy the group intends to adopt. Perhaps it is a town hall meeting about whether to allow fracking in exchange for the building of a school or some jobs. Suppose you are in the group, and the policy runs counter to your own self-interest. For example, perhaps your house has a well fed by a spring that is likely to be poisoned by the fracking. You are initially therefore opposed. However, the main advocate of the policy produces an argument that the policy is best for all, and convinces the majority to adopt the policy. Suppose that you later find out that the main advocate was lying, or otherwise employing deceit. Furthermore, the reason that the main advocate pushed for that policy is that she was paid to do so. In such a situation, you would feel tricked. You would feel that the decision to adopt that policy was not legitimate. You would feel that the group’s demand that you adhere to the policy was also not a legitimate demand. If they forced you to adhere to the policy, you have legitimate grounds to feel coerced.

The situation is analogous to what happens in commercial contexts. Shareholders may feel they have been lied to. There may be legal redress. However, there is nothing distinctively political about this situation. No purely political ideal applies in the case of the deliberations of the Town Hall but not deliberations in a Share Holder's meeting.

In contrast, suppose that you are part of a group deliberating about a policy that the group is contemplating adopting. The main advocate of the policy gives persuasive arguments that it is in the overall best interest of the community to adopt the policy. The policy runs counter to your own self-interest, but you see that the arguments are correct, and that the policy is in fact best for the community as a whole. The advocate is honest, and her arguments are good. You vote against it, but you lose. In this case, you don’t really feel that you have a complaint. The policy was arrived at via fair deliberation. If the group demands that you adhere to the policy, you don’t have legitimate grounds to feel coerced.

You may do. The law may provide you a Hohfeldian immunity. The thing voted on may be legally un-enforceable. Suppose the Student's Union votes to ban a particular Tabloid newspaper. This only means the Union stops subscribing to it. You may have voted for this ban or you may have voted against it. But you have a right to read the thing after buying it with your own money. You are illegitimately coerced if the Union demands you stop reading that tabloid.

There may be cults of various sorts where the group gets to tyrannize over members on this sort of basis. But that has nothing to do with a Liberal Democracy under the Rule of Law.  

The first case we discussed, decision to allow fracking, was one in which an unfair process led to a policy that was bad for the community at large. The second case we discussed involved a fair process that led to a policy that was good for the community at large. These are what one might think of as pure cases. The deliberation and policy were both unfair and bad, or fair and good, respectively. What about the impure cases? That is, what about a fair deliberative process that leads, because of  false beliefs due to a flawed ideology, for example, to a policy that is bad for the community? Or what about an unfair deliberative process that bypasses some of the community’s unreasonable and irrational members to arrive at a policy that is good for the community?

Such deliberative processes occur in commercial, religious, cultural and various scientific and mathematical contexts. There is nothing that ties them to Democratic processes. It is not the case that a Democracy will produce better deliberation just because it is a Democracy. However, the hope is that the self-interest of legislators will cause them to pay more attention to what voters want rather than bother their heads with 'normative ideals'. 

Consider Mochizuki's proof of the abc conjecture. Should the mathematical community accept it or reject it? Is this a topic philosophers can shed any light on? No. They are too ignorant and stupid. The same is true of the problems of democracy. A skilled data analyst with a knack for game theoretic insights might have some very useful things to say. She may be paid big bucks for her help in resolving 'gridlock'. Indeed, she may a part in helping a country take a better political path. Look at Prashant Kishor in India. He is considered a kingmaker. When he talks, people listen whereas when some Jason level retard with a PhD from Princeton writes an op-ed, we laugh at the naive, deracinated, fool. 

Democratic political theory divides over these impure cases. According to pure proceduralists about democracy, such as John Rawls and Joshua Cohen, all that matters is that the procedure that leads to the policy is fair. The process of fair democratic deliberation itself leads to the formation of new preferences; democratic deliberation is an expression of one kind of autonomy, the autonomy that is found in rationally choosing one’s duties. According to the main version of epistemic theories of democracy, of the sort defended by David Estlund and Hélène Landemore, both procedure and outcome matter. The procedure matters insofar as it leads to outcomes that are better for the citizenry at large. Both the older, pure proceduralist view of democracy and the newer, epistemic version defend fair democratic deliberation.

Though both, being foolish, would collapse if subjected to it.  

But according to advocates of the epistemic theory of democracy, fair deliberative procedures only have an instrumental value in leading to better overall policy. For pure procedural conceptions of democratic legitimacy, fair deliberation is valuable in and of itself. Both conceptions agree on the value of fair deliberation. One locates democratic legitimacy itself in such deliberation, connecting it to autonomy, while the other tries to explain the value of fair deliberation in terms of its correct outcomes. We will not need to decide between pure proceduralist conceptions of democracy and epistemic theories of democracy, since both rightly presuppose the value of fair joint deliberation.

But provide no persuasive warrant for so doing. Democracies are free to reject such presuppositions. On the other hand, a traditional society may not have that freedom. No decision can be made till 'fair joint deliberation' occurs following the customary sacrifice of virgins to the Moon God. If they scream about how they were total sluts- not virgins at all- the 'fair joint deliberation' must be put off till the next lunar eclipse. Sorry, thems the rules. Where would savagery be without rules?  

And it is fair joint deliberation that is placed in peril by propaganda.

Nope. Smart peeps can see through propaganda. If they can't, perhaps we need to sacrifice virgins to the Moon God. 

The policies that result from discussion involving deception and trickery are not democratically legitimate. The person who loses out in a discussion subject to devious machinations is analogous to someone who has lost her freedom in an unjust war.

War is not a proper analogy because there is no physical coercion or killing. The correct analogue is someone who loses out in a discussion concerning share-holder value or the planning of the Christmas party or stuff of that sort.  

Governance by the rules that emerge from such a process results in domination, rather than preservation of autonomy.

But people have a counter-vailing power in that they can vote with their feet. If the gals in my reading-circle are being utterly Fascist in forcing me to read Jane Austen rather than Spiderman comics- I can quit and take my box of Chardonnay with me.  

In order for the principles decided upon by a group of autonomous agents to have binding force on each of them, without loss of autonomy, the procedure by which the joint decision is made must lend legitimacy to the result. As we have seen, if there is no constraint that the people who are party to the deliberation not simply mislead and lie and evade in order to further their own interests, the results of the deliberation will not be democratically legitimate.

The reverse is the case. Democracy is about people with vested interests pretending to care only for the common good. If a deal can be made, well and good. If not, we can pride ourselves on the purity of our institutions.

The truth about democratic countries is that there really isn't any other way they can be governed. Non-democracies feature one group cohesive and ruthless enough to put down all opposition. If it weakens there may be a transition to democracy- or chaos.  

Democracy requires that the policies that apply to everyone must be the result of fair deliberation and equal participation.

This simply isn't true. Jason, I suppose, thinks that repeating a stupid lie often enough has persuasive force. That's how Propaganda works- right? The problem is propaganda doesn't work. People become immune to it. It represents a waste of resources.