Friends, a friend of mine has written this excellent retrospective on the Boston Tea Party, which occurred 250 years ago today. He argues, in effect, that "mobs", provided they do their business in an orderly fashion (whatever that may mean), have a legitimate place in the democratic process, especially when governments trample on the people's rights. He strains to emphasize the fact that the Boston tea partiers represented the body politic rather than a "faction", although I rather suspect that every mob would claim as much. I personally think the question of the legitimacy of the use of violence in a democratic, or pseudo-democratic, context is an open question. The easy thing is to say "I'm against violence", but the truth is that no one really is -- not in all circumstances. The question is: when does tyranny become onerous enough to trigger righteous (and violent) indignation? Secondarily, when does violence do any good to the cause that the "mob" is trying to advocate -- and when does it backfire? These are tough issues to sort through, but maybe this article will give you a start.
Of course, the real crime of the tea partiers, I think you would agree, was the fact that they dressed like Native Americans. That's cultural appropriation!!! Disgusting. I'm calling HR right now!
Finally, strange as it may seem, our nation's fate, and DJT's as well, may hinge on who manages to get on the presidential ballot in 2024. Trump himself may struggle to do so, in some parts of the country, but lesser candidates, like Kennedy, West, and Stein, certainly will. Their success, or lack thereof, will determine the constellation of choices that the American people have -- unless, of course, significant numbers of people choose to use the write-in process, which is always a lot to ask of the average voter. Pay close attention to the efforts of third-party candidates to gain ballot access -- and to the efforts of Democrats to deny them this right. It's a much bigger story than you might think.
Dr. Waddyfrom Jack:American Constitutional democracy was and is an ongoing experiment. The Founders knew it, Lincoln reaffirmed it at Gettysburg and today it faces yet another revealing test in the rise of a fundamentally antidemocratic doctrine, marxism and its sprigs, to power perhaps leading to its forced totalitarian takeover.We often pay a hard price for the freedom democracy affords us ( and after all, what people having experienced it would relinquish it?). An obvious example is the cynical advantage of our Constitutional rights to due process and protection from arbitrary and fiendish punishment taken by criminals in our perhaps too indiscriminately "tolerant" country. The disgraceful physical danger faced by children and senior citizens, the groups any healthy society protects, shames us before the world! We must painfully and honestly evaluate the unintended yet now proven inevitable negatives generated by an overemphasis on "rights" and too little regard for responsible, positive, constructive personal conduct.A better balance is due! Failure to address this counterintuitive discrediting of our democracy may result in its collapse and replacement by totalitarians all too devoted to the complete abrogation of freedom.
ReplyDelete". . . this and other counterintuitive discrediting. . . "
ReplyDeleteTrue: people will give up almost any right in exchange for basic security...
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, a wide variety of ideologies and value systems compete with "democracy" for our loyalty and support. We believe, as conservatives and liberals and everything in-between, in lots of things, in addition to the vague proposition that "the people" should rule. Even our Constitution enshrines the principle that democracy is an ideal of limited and situational usefulness. And, frankly, any other formulation would risk mob rule, or worse.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: Your first sentence in your reply: Hobbesian perhaps? That the Constitution enshrines a concept of democracy as being of limited and situational usefulness is one I have not perceived before and it makes much sense. I've been doing some reading on Napoleon and I am cleaving more and more to a picture of him as having a momentous and brilliant mind; he had some creditable cautions about democracy fostered by his experience of the French Revolution. Of course he had a kind of democracy close by in Britain but I haven't yet read what he thought of that. My initial impression of his skill as a conquering administrator of other lands might suggest some limited comparison to MacArthur's very enlightened rule of Japan. Eg.He relieved Jews in some German states of some of their disadvantages and advanced a concept of equality before the law which did not theretofore obtain in France and monarchical Europe and even in Elba as its comically temporary sovereign. With many proper misgivings of course we could learn some from his rule.
ReplyDeleteHmm. I agree that Napoleon advanced some progressive policies (for the time) and imposed them on captured regions (out of expedience or conviction, who knows), but I find it hard to imagine him as any kind of "democrat". As far as I know, there was nothing remotely free about any election or plebiscite that occurred under Napoleon. Ergo, I wouldn't take any of his soaring rhetoric about "the people" all that seriously. Of course, he and I share a low opinion of the people, so I'm not knocking him, you understand...
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