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Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Populism and Republicanism

(I’ve come, only momentarily, out of blog retirement to share this essay.  It is something I felt needed to be said, and with it said, I shall return to the quiet obscurity of my blog retirement, wanting no praise, “Atta Boys!,” criticism, or discussion in comments.)

Populism and Republicanism

During the recent months I’ve cringed a lot.  I cringe when I hear the latest talking points from the White House, when I hear Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid discuss, well, anything, and when in the President’s State of the Union Address, so little time is spent giving the state of our union and a report on our national security health.  We often forget that the State of the Union is not a stump speech, but a process—a constitutionally-mandated process, where the President of the United States is supposed to apprise Congress of our national and international health.  It is not a campaign speech of regurgitated failed ideas. 

Mr. President, is our Union sound?

That’s the question we ask of our Executive, which we ask annually, to be presented to Congress.  It doesn’t have to be a speech.  It could just as easily be given in writing, as previous Presidents have done. 

We didn’t get an answer to that question, which is the one Congress asks of the Executive, on our behalf.  If President Obama had answered that question honestly, the answer would have been “No.”

No, Mr. President, our Union is not sound.  That’s what many of us wanted to hear you admit, and what you were going to do to fix it.

There exists a great divide among the citizens: divides between the Right and Left, the North and South, between free market types and socialists, and between what the citizens in our Union want and what their elected representatives propose.  There are great swaths of people unable to find work, to pay their bills, or to meet their obligations.  There are also great swaths of people who are angry—angry at what their elected officials have been doing with their tax dollars, and with their freedoms.  We are in a battle for our lives against terrorists, and the need to work with our allies against our enemies becoming nuclear powers who will then be able to blackmail the world to achieve their goals.  Our nation, the entire world, is not sound.

The things that divide us aren’t only ideologies, but how those ideologies are given teeth in Bills such as Cap and Trade, Health Care Reform, and the presentation of our nation’s accomplishments with our enemies and allies.  We do not agree if terrorists should be miranidized or that other terrorists should be brought to American soil to be tried in our civilian courts for committing acts of war against us.  These are not quibbles among friends.  These are huge ideological divides, where one side argues that the perception of fairness makes right, and the other argues that the Constitution makes right, perception and popularity aside. 

As I said, I cringe a lot.  I sometimes cringed during George Bush’s presidency, too, especially when his administration’s efforts were thwarted by Congress, with a Democrat majority.  I supported George Bush, but that doesn’t mean I agreed with him all the time.  It is not possible to agree with anyone all the time, so I don’t expect that, or make it my litmus test for supporting any candidate.

But that isn’t what I want to talk about.  What I want to talk about is a wrinkle on all of that and is something much more sinister and much more dangerous.  What I want to talk about is Populism.

Most of the time when we hear the word populism, we think of it as it applies to popular culture—to things like TV shows, music, or movies that are bought, viewed, or listened to by great majorities of audiences.  We know that things like American Idol and People Magazine are popular, among the most popular TV shows watched and magazines read.  What we also know, especially with those examples, is that popular is not inherently synonymous with quality. Great majorities of people can be caught up, or swept away, by a popular message—caught up in the moment we’ll say, or carried away by feverous applause.

At one time the Germans were caught up in a movement, as were the Russians, and now Islamic Radicals.  They were caught up, just as revolutionaries were carried away with the radical ideas of freedom which gave birth to the greatest and most prosperous society the world has ever known. 

Popular isn’t synonymous with quality, nor is it morally righteous, Constitutional, beneficial in the long term, or good.  It may be, but it isn’t a given.  There is nothing that popular is except a numeric outcome, an appraisal of its popularity among a group.  Only history determines if it was good or bad.  We can learn from that history, and decide which side to cheer for, and which side to fight against.

This confusion with popular and populist ideas becomes more complicated when we realize that we live in a Constitutional Republic, where we elect our representatives, including our President, by democratic elections—where the majority, the most popular candidate, wins.  Reconciling popular, and all of its iniquities, with democratic majorities is complicated.

We hear all the time the mantras of We, The People, and what We, The People want.  We hear the chants of referendums or mandates applied to candidates’ proposals, especially to the Presidency, when the victories are large. 

Majorities aren’t always a good thing, even if we can painfully contort ourselves into the acceptance of majority rule as the best way to decide elections.  It may be the best way, but it is the best way, given all the other worst ways.  We, The People have to be given a voice, a voice in who represents us, but sometimes that voice is shrill, off-key, or loud.  It can be pure, sweet, and quiet.  It can be all those things, but its majority or minority status says nothing about its quality.  It is simply, the majority—the popular will, expressed in an electoral process that decides which candidate represents us.

In an essay, Isaiah’s Job, written in 1936, by Albert Jay Nock, Mr. Nock presents the ideas of populism, contrasted with what is good or right.  He defines the great masses of people differently from how we normally think of them.  He separates them by quality, not by quantity, and refers to the citizens of good character, perseverance, forbearance, and fortitude as The Remnant. Mr. Nock writes:

“As the word masses is commonly used, it suggests agglomerations of poor and underprivileged people, laboring people, proletarians, and it means nothing like that; it means simply the majority. The mass-man is one who has neither the force of intellect to apprehend the principles issuing in what we know as the humane life, nor the force of character to adhere to those principles steadily and strictly as laws of conduct; and because such people make up the great and overwhelming majority of mankind, they are called collectively the masses. The line of differentiation between the masses and the Remnant is set invariably by quality, not by circumstance. The Remnant are those who by force of intellect are able to apprehend these principles, and by force of character are able, at least measurably, to cleave to them. The masses are those who are unable to do either.”

Mr. Nock presents the masses, the majority, in an unfavorable light, making it much more difficult for us to reconcile what we’ve been taught about the inherent rightness of majorities of people.  If Mr. Nock was correct, that the great majority of people are not the brave, wise and selfless individuals they’ve been made out to be in our patriotic slogans, that portrait makes it much more difficult to be happy with democratic rule as the method for determining who should represent us. If the great masses of people are not the portrait of rugged, responsible individuals they’ve been portrayed to be, how can we feel good about elections, decided by them, as a method of government?

Some years ago, my husband and I embarked on a mission.  The mission was a simple one, not a new idea really, but an old idea applied in a new way.  It was to return our society to a Nation of Rifleman, where all people, men and women, would be armed—armed to fulfill their patriotic responsibilities, and to be able to protect themselves against any enemy, foreign or domestic.  The twist was that this mission was to be accomplished one citizen at a time.  We weren’t asking for a government subsidized program to achieve our goal, with TV commercials explaining the concept, and gaggles of social workers receiving training seminars on how to assist the citizenry with fulfilling their responsibilities.  We’re all familiar with these types of programs, from Just Say No to the latest incarnation on the War on Obesity.

No, we needed no handouts, training programs, or government grants.  We just had a message, and asked those who agreed with the idea to spend a little time, from their spare time, to help another person learn to shoot.  That’s all it was:  a volunteer activity where one person shared their skills and knowledge with another person. 

Now, I will admit, that we stumbled a bit, at times caught up in the popularity of the idea among my husband’s readers of his popular blog.  They wanted a leader—a leader of this new movement that would take this message to the masses, in much the same way that Mr. Nock describes in his essay:

“One evening last autumn, I sat long hours with a European acquaintance while he expounded a political-economic doctrine which seemed sound as a nut and in which I could find no defect. At the end, he said with great earnestness: ‘I have a mission to the masses. I feel that I am called to get the ear of the people. I shall devote the rest of my life to spreading my doctrine far and wide among the population. What do you think?’”

Despite all our experience and trepidation with taking ideas to the masses, we began to organize it, with my husband as the great leader of this idea.  We wrote up business plans, to secure donations, and to solicit benefactors, grants, or pledges.  We discussed how it might be organized into tier structures, with state chapters, badges, officers, and official seals of approval.  We did all of that, caught up in the moment, swept away by the popular support and popular appeal.

And then we stopped, abruptly, and refused to discuss the matter at all.  This disappointed those who had been supportive of the plans and schemes, and made us appear wobbly.  We stopped because of how the message would have to be bastardized, just as Mr. Nock described in responding to the will of the masses:

“The main trouble with all this is its reaction upon the mission itself. It necessitates an opportunist sophistication of one’s doctrine, which profoundly alters its character and reduces it to a mere placebo.”

We stopped because we remembered ourselves.

In order to adapt the goal of restoring our nation to a Nation of Riflemen, we would have to abandon the idea of “one citizen at time.” We would have to organize great events, with many citizens hearing the canned, sanctioned, and approved message from an official state-chapterhead.  We’d have to produce training literature, write rules, get liability insurance, prepare non-discrimination policy statements, and follow all the guidelines of an official, non-profit corporation.  The mission, once of a single citizen deciding to share some of their free time helping another citizen learn to shoot, would be replaced by dozens and dozens of people attending official events, requiring seminar registration, keynote speakers, prizes, and all the things that make an event, and an organization, appeal to the masses of people.

And in doing so we would have completely abandoned the mission we set out to achieve:  that of one person talking to another person, in no official capacity, with no secret decoder rings, wearing a baseball caps with an official Nation of Rifleman logo.

Yes, we were temporarily caught up in the popularity of the idea and the ego boost of popular support, and were temporarily willing to suspend the goal, and the mission itself, for the vain attempt of riches and income such an organization could provide to us.

But in doing all of that, despite our desperate need for financial support, we would have alienated the people we were needing to reach:  the Remnant, that forgotten group who want something different from want the masses want of you:

“If a prophet were not too particular about making money out of his mission or getting a dubious sort of notoriety out of it, the foregoing considerations would lead one to say that serving the Remnant looks like a good job. An assignment that you can really put your back into, and do your best without thinking about results, is a real job; whereas serving the masses is at best only half a job, considering the inexorable conditions that the masses impose upon their servants. They ask you to give them what they want, they insist upon it, and will take nothing else; and following their whims, their irrational changes of fancy, their hot and cold fits, is a tedious business, to say nothing of the fact that what they want at any time makes very little call on one’s resources of prophesy. The Remnant, on the other hand, want only the best you have, whatever that may be. Give them that, and they are satisfied; you have nothing more to worry about. The prophet of the American masses must aim consciously at the lowest common denominator of intellect, taste and character among 120,000,000 people; and this is a distressing task.”

We may not reach the masses by falling back on our original method of getting one volunteer to help another, but we wouldn’t achieve our goal in that method either.  The very people who would heed our message, and volunteer their time, would be put off with all the joining required of an official, sanctioned, and approved organization.

Last week, the Tea Party movement had a convention.  It had attendance fees and a paid, keynote speaker.  The movement, which began with a few citizens refusing to take it anymore, tried to become an official movement, with party apparatchiks, chapter chiefs, logos, and printed t-shirts.

It attempted to officially define its mission, train others to spread its officially sanctioned message, and the organizers gained notoriety and prominence.

“Even assuming that there is some social salvage to be screened out of the masses, even assuming that the testimony of history to their social value is a little too sweeping, that it depresses hopelessness a little too far, one must yet perceive, I think, that the masses have prophets enough and to spare.”

As Mr. Nock’s message warned us, the Tea Party convention organizers completely bastardized the concept by having an official Tea Party convention, and altered the message in an attempt to appeal to the masses, and the organizers had (I must say) the audacity to call it a “Tea Party Convention” without bothering to take a vote among Tea Party participants, if they wanted anything of the sort. 

We don’t need another populist movement.  We have popular prophets enough. What we want, and what the Tea Party is, is a completely leaderless conglomeration of unorganized people who are willing to volunteer their time to do whatever it is they believe will improve our nation.  It is one citizen at a time, doing whatever they want, without leaders, printed t-shirts, or official sanction.

Republican government, republicanism (the concept, not the political party) is all about support for our Constitutional Republic, a government where we elect our representatives by popular support, majority rule, but a small and limited government, constrained by charters: the U.S. Constitution and the various state constitutions, that bind up our representatives’ authority to only those things we say they can do.

In my mind, that’s what the Tea Party is all about—about the idea that the country must remember that our elected representatives are not authorized to do anything they damn well please, but only those things we’ve specifically granted them authority to do—those things in our U.S. and State constitutions, regardless of how popular it might be to do other things, or punish people, in ways our government is strictly prohibited from doing.

The Tea Party isn’t a political party.  It is an idea, a concept that our elected representatives are supposed to do what we want, but only in the confines of the Constitution.  It is the latter that gets forgotten in popular appeals to punish the Bankers, regulate and consume whole swaths of industries, or to deliver handouts, bailouts, or any other –outs the government may wish to use to appeal to the masses, and gain popular support.

Some of the folks who were swept up in the movement of the Tea Party have been temporarily seduced by the popular appeal—the pleas among some of the group to take the message to the masses.  That requires an adulteration of the message and puts off those who truly believe in the ideas of the movement.  Some of us who are watching this happening are cringing, worrying that the movement may become something akin to mobs of villagers wanting to burn down the mission.  It could become something evil, sinister, and something completely different from what it started out to be.

I don’t want to cringe anymore… I look forward to a time when I no longer have to watch the news between my fingers, or feel like I’m living in some sort of alternate reality America.  But I don’t want what is right, righteous, and correct to be ruined by those caught up in the populist fervor of destroying the opposition.  That will surely lose.  In trying to appeal the masses, populists will do whatever is necessary to the message, the mission or to throw their members under the bus. 

“The Remnant wants only the best that you have.” Remember that, always, and come November we will be victorious.

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