Cass Sunstein writes-
Most people know that the Constitution’s First Amendment provides the rights to freedom of speech and to the free exercise of religion.
No. It prohibits Congress from restricting freedom of speech, press, religion, assembly, and petition. This was to appease anti-Federalist sentiment. Only from 1925 onward was this principle extended to the States ('incorporation'). Even in the 1960's some States had discriminatory, religion based, practices- e.g. tax funding for Protestant but not Catholic Congregations or only permitting public officials of one particular sect.
But in the first Congress some people seriously proposed that the First Amendment should contain another right: the right on the part of constituents ‘’to instruct’‘ their representatives how to vote.
This right did exist with respect to Senators till the 17th Amendment (1913). Some state legislatures, which elected U.S. Senators, often "instructed" them on how to vote. Once Senators were directly elected, they were free to vote as they pleased.
The first Congress ultimately rejected the proposal. Roger Sherman
who wanted the US to be a parliamentary democracy- i.e. the President has to have the confidence of the House.
made the central argument against it.
Arguments didn't matter. There was dual sovereignty with States being more powerful than the Union. If a State wanted to 'instruct' its Senators it did so. It might also chuck the fellow in the river if he annoyed them in any particular.
In Sherman’s view, representatives had a ‘’duty to meet others from the different parts of the Union, and consult. . . . If they were to be guided by instructions, there would be no use in deliberation.’‘ A right to instruct would destroy the object of the meeting.’‘
The Connecticut compromise was that the directly elected House of Representatives wasn't bound by 'instructions', whereas Senators might be bound in this manner if that's what their own State legislature wanted.
By rejecting the right to instruct,
in the House, not the Senate
the first Congress
achieved a pragmatic compromise between the big and small states.
affirmed a distinctive concept of politics.
No. There was a compromise. Slave states could get more representation in the lower house by counting a slave as 60 percent of a free man. That was pretty fucking distinctive.
It favored what might be called a deliberative democracy,
State legislatures did the deliberation and, if they chose, instructed their Senators who were seen as their 'Ambassadors'. Incidentally, all types of polity feature deliberation. The Tzars had a 'Collegia' which was replaced, in 1802, with a Committee of Ministers. There was deliberative despotism and deliberative theocracy and deliberative cannibalism.
in which representatives would be accountable to the people but also operate as part of a process that prized discussion and reflection about potential courses of action.
In other words, Americans talked to each other just like the Chinese & the Rooskis & the fucking Cannibals. Even if Democracies decide things by holding referendums, nobody can prevent voters from deliberating over the issue.
Jurgen Habermas is one of the most important political philosophers of the 20th century;
he was stupid & ignorant.
he has been preoccupied for much of his life with the problem of political legitimacy.
This exists either de jure or de facto. In the former case it is a matter for lawyers. In the latter case, it is an empirical matter for political analysts. Nothing philosophical is involved. One might ask 'given ideology X, is such and such Political arrangement compatible with it?' Thus if you are a crazy Communist, you might side with Browder and admit that Commie nutters can take power through the ballot box. If you are anti-Browder, you think this is illegitimate. You should wade through a sea of blood to seize power. This is a question of ideological consistency not legitimacy. One might ask- as people in the FDR did in the Sixties- whether parties which aim to put an end to Democracy (Nazis or Commies) should be banned. However, ever since 'Sovietization' tanked the East German economy in 1952, there was no real danger that voters would turn against the system which had delivered Wirtschaftswunder- an economic miracle.
Under what circumstances is it legitimate for political authorities, mere human beings, to exercise power over other human beings?
Lawyers can present arguments & Judges can decide what those circumstances are. Legitimacy has to do with what is legal. It has nothing to do with Philosophy. One might say 'my 'philosophy' of life affirms the existence of shape shifting lizards who hold all positions of authority. Is it right for me- given my 'philosophy'- to suck off sailors rather than swear at my jailors?
It is unsurprising that a German philosopher - in his teens during the Nazi period and a witness to countless other atrocities since
atrocities by the Allies? There weren't many of them.
- should direct his attention to this question.
What is surprising is that the cunt didn't get that Hitler didn't need to get rid of the Weimar constitution. Stupid professors like Hugo Preuss & Max Weber had made sure that it could be turned into a totalitarian dictatorship without any loss of legitimacy. That's why the regime didn't need the spoiled Catholic Carl Schmitt.
Mr. Habermas thinks that the question is especially urgent in an era that is ‘’postmetaphysical,’‘ in the sense that it has lost the sense that we have wholly external foundations by which to ground our judgments and choices.
That would be 'post-economic'- i.e. after scarcity has ended. Till then, our judgments & choices are founded on the wholly external foundation that is the fitness landscape.
Suppose Kant had found a way to ground metaphysics in physics, then there would be nothing 'beyond physics'. That's 'post-metaphysical'. Habermas was as stupid as shit.
Whether or not we believe that God exists, it seems clear that as citizens in a heterogeneous society we must proceed on the understanding that our choices are our own.
No. We are welcome to delegate them or just use 'Tardean mimetics'- imitate the superior or, more commonly, follow the herd. Because of Knightian Uncertainty, choice should be 'regret minimizing'. Ceteris paribus, this means doing less 'deliberation' & more 'discovery'.
But even as he insists on this point, Mr. Habermas draws a line against modern irrationalists, many of them - like Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida - influential within the modern academy.
The totally shit part of it.
Mr. Habermas says, tellingly, that those who oppose reason and the Enlightenment
have prevailed. That's why Europe isn't ruled by people with names like 'Fredrick the Great' or 'Catherine the totes Fabulous'. Instead you have boring blokes in suits- except in Italy. Meloni is as cute as a button.
can give no account of the basis for their own rhetoric,
sure they can. True, it would be a shitty account but only shitheads go in for this shite.
which seems inspired by the Enlightenment commitment to human liberation.
There was no such commitment. There were some Evangelical Christians who were Abolitionists. But this was because keeping slaves is a one way ticket to Hell. Christ doesn't want that for you. Accept him as your Lord God & Saviour & stop being such a fucking asshole.
In his influential past work, Mr. Habermas offered a ‘’theory of communicative action’‘
No. He merely ascribed some magical property to a type of ideal communication which doesn't fucking exist. Communication is strategic. Game theory is the way to go. Schelling got a Nobel Prize. Habermas stuck his thumb up his ass.
whose centerpiece is the ‘’ideal speech situation.’‘ In the ideal speech situation,
i-languages don't exist. Chomsky was a useless tosser.
all participants have equal power, attempt to reach understanding, do not act manipulatively or strategically, and understand their obligation to offer reasons. In this situation, outcomes depend on what he calls ‘’the unforced force of the better argument.’‘
There are three problems here
1) As John Maynard Smith showed, 'uncorrelated asymmetries' support eusocial 'bourgeois strategy'. Once people grasp this, they see that accepting the better argument could be socially suboptimal. this relates to
2) Aumann agreement. Even if two people share the same Bayesian priors they should not agree if there are uncorrelated asymmetries or preference & endowment diversity doesn't meet a Goldilocks condition or there are higher returns to 'discovery' than 'deliberation'- which is likely to be the case under Knightian Uncertainty. In other words, regret minimizations precludes Aumann agreement. Aumann himself showed that there is a Talmudic rule against unanimity.
3) Dimensionality & McKelvey Chaos. When the policy space becomes 'multi-dimensional', there is a struggle for 'agenda control' such that hysteresis effects arise & successive iterations become increasingly sub-optimal- if not actively mischievous.
One might say 'The US Constitution was a compromise of a good enough sort.' But, the truth is, it really wasn't. The Civil War killed about 2.5 percent of the population. It was the deadliest conflict in US history.
This is abstract stuff, and for many years Americans, Germans and many others have been interested in the real-world implications of Mr. Habermas’s work.
The implication was that 'Political Philosophy' was stupid shit. Mathematical Politics was okay. But the big bucks are pulled in political analysts & consultants who can get shitty candidates elected or who can form PACs which bypass Party structures.
For example: Can we derive a set of rights from those ideas?
Shitheads can derive any old shit from shite.
Real-world politics is far from the ideal speech situation; might that notion bear on the obligations of the mass media, on issues of race and sex, on campaign finance law?
Lizard people occupy all high offices of state. Media should expose these facts. Incidentally, I am actually a blonde teenaged Vampire Slayer born & bred in sunny California. Lizard people are using 'mind control rays' to make it appear that I am a fat, elderly, Tamil man.
My point is, if you hold an absurd belief, you also think the 'mass media' has all sorts of crazy obligations- e.g. casting me in the Buffy reboot.
Mr. Habermas’s new book, ‘’Between Facts and Norms,’‘
there are action guiding heuristics with an empirical component- e.g. rules of professional practice.
is both the culmination of a lifetime of thought about political legitimacy and his effort to bring his argument closer down to earth by developing new understandings of law, democracy and the relationship between them.
In a Sovereign Democracy, all law is positive even if itself speaks of 'natural' or 'moral' law. Why? Because that's how Sovereignty works. Even if a right is deemed 'imprescriptible', the issue of jurisdiction & enforceability arises.
Much of Mr. Habermas’s analysis turns on an exploration of two accounts of democracy,
given at a time when the thing didn't exist anywhere. This is like my account of my distant descendant who becomes the Empress of the Andromeda galaxy. It has no probative value.
which he labels ‘’liberal’‘ and ‘’civic republican.’‘ Under the liberal account, rooted in the work of Thomas Hobbes, politics is a process of bargaining, a matter of aggregating private interests.
Politics is a matter of solving 'collective action problems'. You can aggregate shite all you like but you need money & muscle to actually change anything. Hobbes wasn't utterly stupid- unlike those who have to teach
Liberals define citizens as holders of negative rights against the state.
Pedants may do so. Liberals don't. Citizenship is a legal concept.
In the liberal view, politics is a struggle among interest groups for position and power.
That could be said of Society hostesses competing to hold the best salon or kids fighting over who gets the remote control. I want to watch Buffy. The baby prefers Telly-tubbies. He beats the shit out of me & gets to choose the channel. But this doesn't greatly matter. Society is about having a good social life. Family life is about good family life. Politics is about solving collective action problems. Which hostess has the most glittering salon, or which kid has the remote control or which monkey in a suit has climbed atop the greasy pole doesn't greatly matter.
Sayre's Third Law of Politics states: "In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake." Transgender bathrooms don't matter. Defence policy does. By all means, invoke Habermas in the former context. Nobody in their right mind would mention him in the latter case.
The civic republican account, rooted in Aristotle and Rousseau, is very different: politics is not a mere matter of protecting our selfish interests but instead an effort to choose and implement our shared ideals.
Like not getting invaded & enslaved or suffering hyperinflation or a market meltdown.
Civic republicans see rights not as negative constraints on government, but as promoting participation in political practices through which citizens become authors of their own community.
Moreover, they take responsibility for their own orgasms & can proactively follow their own bliss in an inclusive, diverse & totes gay manner.
Consider the right to free speech and the right to vote.
Will a remedy be provided for violations of those rights? That's what matters. On the other hand, if you can provide it for yourself- i.e. beat anybody who tries to stop you- then, you are golden.
For civic republicans, politics is a matter of discussion and self-legislation, in which people participate not in bargaining and compromise but in forms of reflection and talk.
Only if they couldn't get on the Cheerleading squad & had to settle for the Debate team. Full disclosure. I myself was a Mathlete till my boobs came out. Then my Watcher appeared & told me I was the Chosen One.
The organizing theme of the book is Mr. Habermas’s rejection of both views and his effort to defend instead what he calls ‘’deliberative politics’‘ or deliberative democracy.’‘ This is emphatically a procedural ideal.
It is schoolgirl naivete. My bff Monica became an intern in the White House coz she thought she'd get to hear a lot of deliberation. Instead, POTUS got her to stick a cigar up her hoo-ha.
It is intended to give form to the notion of an ideal speech situation.
i.e. one where communication serves no purpose beyond itself- e.g. when learning a new language. It doesn't matter what you say or what others say. What matters is you are using the new language & gaining familiarity with understanding and responding to what is said in it.
Like civic republicans, deliberative democrats place a high premium on reason-giving in the public domain.
Officials may be obliged to give an account of their actions or urge reasons of a particular sort for their policy recommendations. But this is also the case with lawyers or accountants acting in a profession capacity in a private matter.
But like liberals, they favor a firm boundary between the state and the society,
If you act for the State you get paid by the State or gain some perquisite thereby.
and they insist on a robust set of constraints on what the government can do.
Save under exigent circumstances. The problem is that the State may not itself have any incentive to constrain the actions of its agents.
Mr. Habermas sees majority rule not as a mere statistical affair, an effort to tally up votes, but instead as a large social process by which people discuss matters, understand one another, try to persuade each other and modify their views to meet counterarguments. In this way we form our beliefs and even our desires.
Anyone can see anything as any other thing. The truth, however, is that persuasion & deliberation play little role in belief or desire formation. Mimetics & delegation predominate. In some particular fields there may be a debate between experts on certain matters. Indeed, this may be a professional requirement. But in many other cases, there is automatic belief or desire revision on the basis of exogenous signals.
The deliberative conception of democracy anchors Mr. Habermas’s theory of political legitimacy.
There can be a deliberative conception of theocracy or despotism of any type. Moreover, deliberative decision making is more salient where there is no sovereignty or rule of law- i.e. where no form of governance exists.
For him, democracy does not exist to secure rights with which we have been endowed by our Creator; nor is it simply a way to allow us to throw the rascals out; nor is it a mechanism for processes of accommodation, compromise and the exercise of power.
He didn't know what the thing was. It had been imposed on West Germany by the Allies. Once their economy took off, they made some stupid but appreciative noises. That is all that can be said.
Democracy, ideally conceived, is a process by which people do not implement their preferences but consult and deliberate about what values and what options are best.
This could be said of any type of Government or none at all.
Mr. Habermas’s argument sees constitutional law as institutionalizing the presuppositions of a system of discussion by which legitimate lawmaking is made possible.
Laws create legitimacy. Legitimate lawmaking is made possible by lawmaking by a legally authorised body- which could be itself. This is a circular definition & has nothing to do with 'presuppositions' of any kind.
Thus his account of fundamental rights includes the right to ‘’equal opportunities to participate in processes of opinion- and will-formation in which citizens exercise their political autonomy and through which they generate legitimate law.’‘
There has never been any such right. Loyalists weren't allowed to participate in the drafting of the American constitution. Communists were not consulted in the drafting of the German 'Basic Law'. In law, there is such a thing as 'mere puffery'. A despot may issue a Constitution in which he is described as the 'Obedient Slave' of the People.
Mr. Habermas thinks that the principal goal of a court, interpreting a constitution, should be to protect the procedural preconditions for deliberative democracy.
You can't protect what doesn't and can't exist.
The point suggests an especially aggressive role for courts when democratic processes do not fit with the aspirations to deliberation and democracy - for example, when people are excluded from politics,
e.g. felons not being allowed to vote or stand for office?
or when outcomes reflect power and pressure rather than reason.
This could be said of any and all outcomes.
This is how Mr. Habermas tries to reconcile the tension between law and democracy, seeing them not as opposed but instead as mutually supportive.
Only in the sense that the Law & Nazism or Stalinism were mutually supportive.
Law can create the preconditions for democracy,
There are no preconditions. Any polity whatsoever can be democratic- even one filled with Muslims or darkies.
by insuring freedom of speech,
the law can't do so. Only incentive compatible remedies have that power. But they may be available absent any legal framework or vinculum juris.
voting rights, political equality and so forth. Democratic ideals can inform the appropriate content of law.
Any sort of ideal can inform anything whatsoever.
. . .
For those interested in a deliberative approach to democracy,
a brain transplant is recommended.
much future work lies not in abstractions but in more concrete thinking designed to help with concrete problems. American democracy, for example, is far from deliberative, and we might ask how to make it more so.
Insist on public hearings before any federal employee can do anything whatsoever. The postman is trying to deliver a letter to my neighbour. I demand that a public debate be held at the Town Hall regarding whether that letter should or should not be delivered.
Can the mass media - even the Internet - be harnessed to promote political deliberation?
Yes. This is also true of sodomy. Senators can discuss Bills while buggering each other.
How can a deliberative democracy operate when there are huge disparities in both wealth and education?
Sodomy is one way forward. It has a levelling effect. Musk wouldn't be so uppity if he was being fucked in the ass by a large black man.
What sorts of constraints should be imposed on the permissible substance and form of public talk?
Everybody should be referred to only with their preferred pronouns while taking it up the ass.
Should we strengthen local democracy? Mr. Habermas does not much take up these issues.
Nor did he sodomize Rawls. Sad.
But this is a work of political philosophy, dealing with the foundations of democratic theory, and as such it has great value,
to shitheads teaching shite to cretins
above all because of its careful exposition of deliberative democracy and the potential for productive interactions between democracy and law.
Senators should sodomize SCOTUS.
The 20th century is ending at a time when democratic aspirations are proliferating throughout the globe;
It turned out, China had chosen a better path.
Jurgen Habermas has provided one of the best and, I think, most enduring accounts of the values that underlie those aspirations.
He provided an ignorant & vacuous account of the utter uselessness & stupidity of German academic availability cascades in political philosophy & sociology.
After the Second World War, Christian & Conservative parties could flourish in West Germany. Catholic, or 'spoiled Catholic', academics could be rehabilitated. On the Left, the Frankfurt school had American protection & it was under Adorno's & Horkheimer's wing that Habermas got his start. Less prominent, but equally tolerated were Mathsy philosophers- like Grete Hermann- who contributed to the Bad Godesberg program. 'Sociological' nutters like Abendroth- whom Habermas crossed over to- were kept under surveillance but were sexier. After 1951-52, the East German economy had turned to utter shit & so one didn't have to emigrate that if one professed to be a Commie. The Germans are a gemutlich people. They like their beer and sausages.
Habermas's first 'major' work was his 'The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere' published in 1962.
Wikipedia says ' According to Habermas, the notion of the "public sphere" began evolving during the Renaissance in Western Europe.
The Renaissance view of the 'public sphere' was that of Cicero or Pericles. The Teutonic & Nordic peoples had tribal institutions similar to those out of which Greek or Latin Republics evolved. Anglo Saxons made much of this 'convergent evolution'. For Lord Coke, the Druids, who created the Common Law, were fluent in Greek.
Germans had an Imperial Diet (Reichstag) for the Holy Roman Empire (c. 1100–1806). There was a sort of fractal structure to German society with local assemblies, formal or informal ; ecclesiastical, aristocratic or bourgeois- giving expression to or helping to shake 'public opinion'. The Guttenberg revolution & the Reformation & Counter-Reformation were self-enforcing but the devastating effect of the 30 years war rendered Germany relatively backward. The Economic centre of gravity had shifted to the Western European littoral- Portugal, Spain, Holland, France, England- even Scotland.
Brought on partially by merchants' need for accurate information about distant markets
The activity of arbitrageurs suffices for this. You don't need to know who grows the coffee you drink or the copper you use. You just need information re. price & quality & demurrage & discount rate on relevant documentary credits and so forth. Some of this information would be 'open'. Some would not.
as well as by the growth of democracy and individual liberty
like in East Germany?
and popular sovereignty, the public sphere was a place between private individuals and government authorities in which people could meet and have critical debates about public matters.
People everywhere meet each other. Some of them will talk politics. This may get them shot in some places or ignored in others.
Such discussions served as a counterweight to political authority
No. The discussions didn't matter. Killing soldiers & beheading the King did.
and happened physically in face-to-face meetings in coffee houses and cafes and public squares as well as in the media in letters, books, drama, and art.
All these things existed in the Soviet Union. But they didn't in many agricultural American Districts which were far more democratic.
Habermas saw a vibrant public sphere as a positive force keeping authorities within bounds lest their rulings be ridiculed.
Weimar Germany had a vibrant Cabaret tradition. Ridiculing Nazis did no good at all. They simply kicked your head in.
According to the journalist David Randall, "In Habermasian theory, the bourgeois public sphere was preceded by a literary public sphere whose favored genres revealed the interiority of the self and emphasized an audience-oriented subjectivity.'
Everybody has always known that the self is 'interior' and that there is a signalling aspect to subjectivity- which is why you smile when you see something you like and you frown when you smell something you don't like at all.
You can have a bourgeoisie where there is very little in the way of literature & a purely feudal civilization with a rich literary canon. Habermas was telling a particularly stupid 'Just So' story.
The first transition occurred in England, France, the United States, and Germany over the course of 150 years or so from the late seventeenth century.
Cervantes represents the School of Salamanca which is late sixteenth century. Spain & Portugal were ahead of England. That is why Gloriana feared Phillip's Armada- not the other way around. Elizabethan/Jacobean theatre appeared threadbare compared to the Golden Age of Spanish drama.
As for the Dutch, they were plenty bourgeois but excelled in painting (which they did with their 'right hand') not literature (which they dashed off with their left hand).
England led the way in the early eighteenth century,
Their 'Glorious Revolution' did stimulate both commerce & literature. British bonds & books gained in currency because there was a greater incentive to provide value for money.
with Germany following in the late eighteenth century.
It had a large class of under-employed graduates & suffered Gershenkron backwardness. When it comes to 'political philosophy' this is still the case.
Habermas tries to explain the growth and decline of the public sphere by relating political, social, cultural and philosophical developments
which he was too stupid & ignorant to understand
to each other in a multi-disciplinary approach. Initially, there were monarchical and feudal societies which made no distinction between state and society or between public and private,
sure they did. To raise money, monarchs granted 'liberties'.
and which had organized themselves politically around symbolic representation and status.
Fuck that! Money mattered. Kill-rates mattered. Even sex might matter. Symbolic representations didn't matter save in so far as they were 'screening' & 'signalling' devices. Harvard University doesn't really have a Professor of Symbology who cracks the Da Vinci Code while being pursued by an albino monk.
These feudal societies were transformed into a bourgeois liberal constitutional order
Clearly, this didn't happen in Germany. The Kaiser chose the Chancellor. But, under the Weimar Constitution, this was also the case with Hindenburg from 1930 onward. The truth is, Adenauer only got to be Chancellor because the Americans were cool with him.
which distinguished between the public and private realms; further, within the private realm, there was a bourgeois public sphere for rational-critical political debate which formed a new phenomenon called public opinion.
The Bible tells us that Saul spared Agag (the Amalekite king) and the best of the livestock, disobeying God's command to destroy everything, because he was afraid of public opinion. That was 3000 years ago.
Habermas inherited academic availability cascades of an ignorant, parochial & wholly mischievous type. His legacy is to have kept those availability cascades trundling on so credential craving cretins can get tenure to engage in a like exercise in vacuous virtue signalling.
