Ethics of Democracy
Part 6,
Democratic Government
Chap. 1, Self-Government
Government
of the people, by the people, for the people,
shall not perish from the earth.
- Speech at
Gettysburg; by Abraham Lincoln
Many politicians
of our time are in the habit of laying it down as a
self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are
fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old
story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learnt to swim.
- Essay on Milton by
Macaulay
I will have never
a noble,
No lineage counted
great;
Fishers and
choppers and ploughmen
Shall constitute a
state.
"Boston Hymn," by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
So long
as a single one amongst your brothers has no vote to represent
him in the development of the national life, so long as there is one
left to vegetate in ignorance where others are educated, so long as a
single man, able and willing to work, languishes in poverty through
want of work to do, you have no country in the sense in which country
ought to exist - the country of all and for all.
- On the Duties
of Man by Mazzini
I charge thee, Love, set not my aim too low;
If through the cycling ages I have been
A partner in thy ignorance and sin,
So through the centuries that ebb and flow
I must, with thee, God's secrets seek to know.
Whate'er the conflict, I will help to win
Our conquest over foes without - within -
And where thou goest, beloved, I will go.
Set no dividing line between the twain
Whose aim and end are manifestly one;
Whate'er my loss, it cannot be thy gain
Wedded the light and heat that make Life's sun.
Not thine the glory and not mine the shame.
We build the world together in one Name.
'The New Eve to the
Old Adam," by - Annie L. Muzzey, in Harper's Magazine
O blood of the
people! changeless tide, through century, creed and race!
Still one as the
sweet salt sea is one, though tempered by sun and
place;
The same in the
ocean currents, and the same in the sheltered
seas;
Forever the
fountain of common hopes and kindly sympathies;
Indian and Negro,
Saxon and Celt, Teuton and Latin and Gaul-
Mere surface
shadow and sunshine; while the sounding unifies all!
One love, one
hope, one duty theirs! No matter the time or ken,
There never was
separate heart-beat in all the races of men!
But alien is one -
of class, not race - he has drawn the line for himself;
His roots drink
life from inhuman soil, from garbage of pomp and pelf;
His heart beats
not with the common beat, he has changed his
life-stream's hue;
He deems his flesh
to be finer flesh, he boasts that his blood is blue:
Patrician,
aristocrat, tory - whatever his age or name,
To the people's
rights and liberties, a traitor ever the same.
The natural crowd
is a mob to him, their prayer a vulgar rhyme;
The freeman's
speech is sedition, and the patriot's deed a crime.
Wherever the race,
the law, the land, - whatever the time, or throne,
The tory is always
a traitor to every class but his own.
Thank God for a
land where pride is clipped, where arrogance stalks
apart;
Where law and song
and loathing of wrong are words of the common
heart;
Where the masses
honor straightforward strength, and know, when veins
are bled,
That the bluest
blood is putrid blood - that the people's blood is red.
- "Crispus Attucks,"
by John Boyle O'Reilley
Patricians
and plebeians, aristocrats and democrats, have alike stained
their hands with blood in the working out of the problem of politics.
But impartial history declares also that the crimes of the popular
party have in all ages been the lighter in degree, while in themselves
they have more to excuse them; and if the violent acts of
revolutionists have been held up more conspicuously for condemnation,
it has been only because the fate of noblemen and gentlemen has been
more impressive to the imagination than the fate of the peasant or the
artisan.
- Froude's Caesar,
Ch. VIII.
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Saving Communities
Bringing
prosperity through freedom, equality, local
autonomy and respect for the commons.
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The Ethics of Democracy
by Louis F. Post
Part 6,
Democratic Government
Chapter 1, Self-Government
WHEN the American colonies had determined to secede from Great Britain,
and, as they expressed it, "to assume among the nations of the earth
the separate and equal station to which the laws of Nature and of
Nature's God" entitled them, they formally stated the causes that
impelled them to the separation; and in justification of their
revolutionary purpose, they proclaimed certain principles which they
held to be self-evident truths. The document in which they did this is
known to every American school boy as the Declaration of Independence.
In so far as that document states the causes that impelled the colonies
to throw off a foreign yoke, it is to us of this generation only a
historical monument. However oppressive, however arrogant, however
tyrannical the policy of George III may have been towards the British
colonies in America, that policy is to this generation of Americans of
no vital concern. It belongs with the dead and buried past. But in so
far as the Declaration of Independence enunciates what its signers
characterized as self-evident truths, it is more than a mere landmark
of history. In that respect it is the pole star of our national career,
the chart by which our ship of state must steer or be pounded on the
rocks, the breath of national life which God breathed into the nostrils
of our republic. Those truths are indeed self-evident, and they are as
vital now as ever. Incontestable inferences from the all-embracing
principle of the universal Fatherhood of God and the consequent
brotherhood of man, and therefore denied only by avowed or virtual
atheists, they make the Declaration of Independence immortal, and place
this nation, to the degree that it faithfully holds to them, in the van
of human progress.
First among the self-evident truths which the founders of our nation
thus proclaimed is the equality of all men. This is the tap root of
democracy. It always has been and always must be. It is the antithesis
of the doctrine of the "divine right of kings." Not that all are
created equal in size, or strength, or intellect, or will. That is not
the implication. But that all are endowed equally by their Creator, as
the Declaration of Independence goes on to explain, "with certain
unalienable rights," among which "are life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness." It is equality of natural rights, therefore, and not
uniformity of personal characteristics, with which all men are held by
democracy to be endowed.
Proceeding from this primary truth, the Declaration of Independence
next proclaims the rightful origin and scope of government. By what
right do we place any part of man's conduct under governmental control?
and whence comes authority to govern? The answer of the Declaration of
Independence is plain. Government is for the protection of the rights
to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, already asserted; and it
originates with the people themselves. "To secure these rights," says
the Declaration, "governments are instituted among men, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the governed." Just powers of
government, then, are derived from the consent of the governed;
governmental powers not so derived are unjust. This fundamental
proposition is also an indispensable corollary of the primary principle
that "all men are created equal"; for if all are created equal, none
can have been born to govern the rest.
Self-government is the only natural government. It is the only kind of
government that all were intended for. This is well enough proved by
the fact that no one has ever come into the world with a divine
commission, not a legible one at any rate, to govern others. All claims
of natural right to govern others without their consent have rested
upon might instead of right, and have turned out in the end to be only
claims to misgovern.
The autocratic plea that some peoples are unfit for selfgovernment was
riddled by Macaulay when he said: "There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired freedom
produces; and that cure is freedom. When a prisoner first leaves his
cell he cannot bear the light of day; he is unable to discriminate
colors or recognize faces. But the remedy is not to remand him into his
dungeon, but to accustom him to the rays of the sun. The blaze of truth
and liberty may at first dazzle and bewilder nations which have become
half blind in the house of bondage. But let them gaze on, and they will
soon be able to bear it."
The democratic doctrine of self-government is the lifegiving principle
of the American polity. Not only is it proclaimed by the Declaration of
Independence, but it is woven into our national history. True, we have
not been strictly faithful to it. Manhood suffrage did not begin with
the Declaration of Independence, and woman suffrage has not begun yet
except in some of our more progressive States. These faults, however,
like the continued recognition of the slave trade, the persistent
protection of chattel slavery for three-quarters of a century, and the
perpetuation, of land monopoly even to this day, are to be accounted
for rather as short-comings than as evidence of national hostility to
national ideals. They were not deliberately adopted in defiance of the
Declaration of Independence; they merely survived the regime which it
abolished, and lapped over into the better one which it instituted.
Inconsistencies of that sort are but as the wriggling of the snake's
tail after the snake is killed.*
Fundamentally, government is of two kinds - government by all the
governed, and government by superior force. And government by force is
not government by right. The plausibility of the theory that power to
govern implies right to govern, may be conceded. But the theory is
plausible only; it is really without validity. Nothing could be more
repugnant to moral principle than this idea that might makes right.
Though might and right may often coincide, yet might is no more right
than weakness is, which also often coincides with right. Might never
coincides with right except by accident. Mere force cannot possibly
give a moral right to govern. We must, therefore, either exclude
government wholly from the domain of morals, or else conclude that it
rests fundamentally not upon force but upon the consent and
participation of the governed.
This conclusion is in accord with the natural law of morals. For
harmonious moral adjustment in the social sphere implies equilibrium of
rights and duties. The duty of every one not to steal or murder,
springs from and is balanced by the right of everyone else not to be
murdered or stolen from. In these respects the rights of each correlate
with corresponding duties of the others. And so with all other rights
and their correlative duties, among which is the right of each to be
free within the limitations of like freedom to all - limitations which
are defined by the corresponding duty of all to respect the freedom of
each. As to rights and duties, therefore, all persons are naturally
equal. And where all are naturally equal, none can coerce by force as
matter of natural right.
In this view of the moral law, government by superior force has no
warrant. Such government as may exist at all by natural right, must be
government in which the governed participate.
The same conclusion follows from the more definite premise that rights
to life and liberty are natural. No moral philosophy worthy the name
would deny the natural quality of these rights. Nor does any political
philosophy which defends government at all deny that its primary
function is to protect them. Yet government by is the only kind of
government that essentially recognizes the natural right of all to life
and liberty.
There is no intention here to ignore the atheistic objection to the
idea of natural rights. Many learned men deny natural moral law. They
contend that questions of righteousness are questions of expediency;
and that in nature, including human nature, there is no such thing as a
right to be claimed or a duty to be performed. They profess to
recognize no absolute moral standards, holding only that to be right
which from experience appears to them to be wise. Such men are
atheists. Though they preach from pulpits or teach in the class rooms
of pious universities, they are atheists nevertheless. To deny the
eternal sway of invariable moral law is to deny God. It is impossible,
consistently with sincere recognition of a Supreme Ruler of the moral
as well as material universe, to regard problems of right and wrong as
mere questions of expediency. Though moral laws may be discovered by
experience, it is not out of experience that they take their rise, nor
do they vary with its variations. Just as the physical laws of
gravitation existed and operated with unvarying constancy during all
the time before Newton's experiments, so the moral law must have
existed before it was discovered by experience or formulated by
philosophy. It must be coeval with that personification of infinite
justice which men call God, and be as immutable. It was as truly a
violation of moral law to steal before Moses promulgated the eighth
commandment as after some social experimenter discovered that honesty
is the best policy.
But it is not to atheists, either of the pious or the impious sort,
that these considerations regarding self-goverment are addressed. Those
of them who do not believe in natural rights at all, are in no mental
condition to reflect upon an argument for natural principles of
government. Let us revert, then, to the main point. Which kind of
government is natural - government by the governed, or government by
superior force?
Under an absolute monarchy, when life or liberty is at stake the only
appeal is to the individual generosity of the monarch. His beneficent
acts are not dictated by any recognition of another's right; they are
prompted solely by his own grace. If he recognizes rights and duties at
all, it is only as rights and duties between master and slave are
recognized - the monarch has rights and the subject owes duties. The
great fundamental natural rights to life and liberty are not
guaranteed, either in fact or theory, by absolute monarchy. The
conception is wholly foreign to that system. Absolute monarchies,
therefore, are not natural.
Of oligarchies the same thing is true. Though oligarchies, like
monarchies, might give security to life and liberty, it would be as
matter of grace and not in recognition of a natural right.
No less comprehensive a system than government by all can secure those
rights as natural rights. That is the only system which essentially
recognizes them as natural, and under which every person is armed with
the best weapon of peace yet known for protecting them. Where all are
accorded an equal voice in government as matter of right, no one is
likely in practice to be denied equal consideration with reference to
his life or his liberty; and no one can be denied it consistently with
the principles of such a government.
The question of self-government would be very much simplified, if a
clear distinction were drawn with reference to the legitimate functions
of government. No form of government has any right to coerce an
individual regarding his individual concerns. Coercion of individuals
in individual concerns is an invasion, an aggression; and it does not
cease to be such because the invader and aggressor is a government
instead of another individual or a mob. This is as true of government
by all as of government by one.
The first consideration in this connection is the self-evident
proposition that in human society there are two classes of rights those
pertaining to the individual, and those pertaining to the community. Of
course these rights have their corresponding duties. Duties and rights
are reciprocal. There can be no right without a correlative duty, nor
any duty without a correlative right. In human society, therefore,
there are rights and duties which attach to the individual as an
individual, and other rights and duties which attach to him as a member
of the community. For convenience these rights and duties may be
distinguished, the one class as "individual" and the other as
"communal."
Individual rights and duties are to be considered as if there were no
community. They inhere and are complete in the individual. Every man
has, for instance, a right to live. It is a right, to be sure, that he
may forfeit. If he threatens another's equal right to live, the other
may in self-defense deprive him of his own right; and what the
threatened individual may rightfully do, other individuals, or the
community as a whole, may assist him in doing. Hence one individual may
forfeit his own right to live by menacing the equal right to life of
any other. But primarily, he has a right to live. And as a corollary of
that right it is the duty of all others to let him live, as it is his
duty to let them live. This right is not subject to the will of a
majority of the community. It would be as despotic for a majority in a
republic arbitrarily to vote away the life of a fellow, as for one
person upon a throne to decree the death of a subject. Majorities may
vote away lives, as monarchs decree them away; but in either case the
act is one of brute force and not of right. Over the lives of
individuals not forfeited by their aggressions upon the rights of
others, the community, whether through the force of unlimited monarchy
or of popular majorities, has no just jurisdiction. The right to live
is an individual right. It is a right that belongs to the individual as
such. He, and of all men he alone, has the right to dispose of it. The
only just limitation upon any man's right to life is that he shall
respect the right to life of every other. And as with the right to
life, so with the right to all other things relating to individuals in
their individual capacity. As every man has the right to life, subject
only to the equal right to life of all other men, so has every man the
right to live his own life in hisown way, subject only to the equal
right of all other men to live their own lives in their own way. His
liberty in this respect is bounded justly only by his duty to allow
equal liberty to everyone else. This class of rights is individual, not
communal. And self-government as to individual rights can only mean the
government of each by himself, free from all meddling interference
whether malevolent or benevolent.
But the other class of rights, those which attach to individuals as
members of communities, are not so absolute. As to them there can be no
individual disposition. They attach not to each person individually,
but to all persons jointly or in common. These common or communal
rights relate to the preservation of the public peace, the regulation
of highways and of land tenures generally, and the administration of
the common income. They are communal, as distinguished from individual,
rights. It is the community as a whole, and not each individual, that
has the right, for example, to determine the locality or character of a
highway, the terms from time to time of land tenure, and the
expenditure of the common income. The individual, therefore, has not
the same right of determination as to such matters that he has as to
rights that are exclusively individual. His rights here are merged in
the rights of his fellows, so as to create a new right that of the
community as a whole. The community must act as to this right in its
corporate capacity.
But how can the community so act? Shall it require a unanimous vote?
Shall it submit to the will of a few who assume to be better qualified
or more deeply interested than the rest? Or shall it listen to all who
offer advice, and act in obedience to the will of the majority? Those
are the three choices, and the last alone commends itself. To require a
unanimous vote, would be to place communal judgment under the veto of
any single individual who chose to exercise it. To submit to the will
of a few, would deprive all the rest of a voice in common affairs. But
by giving a voice to all and acting upon the decision of the majority,
the nearest practicable approach is made to securing the judgment of
the community as a whole. It is here majorities have their proper
place. By means of majorities, communal as distinguished from
individual rights are decided. Self-government as to communal rights,
therefore, requires that all be heard and that the majority determine.
Summarizing the foregoing analysis, we find that self-government implies
that as to individual rights each individual shall govern himself in
his own way, free from all governmental interference, upon the sole
condition that he respect the equal rights of other individuals; and
that as to communal rights, each individual shall have a voice, and the
majority vote shall be taken as the corporate expression.
* Same subject further considered in Part VII, Chapter II, "Patriotic
Ideals."
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