Robert Tracinski - The Case Against Democracy

Speaker 0 00:00:00 Uh, we are gonna go ahead and get started. Thank you for joining us today. I'm Scott Schiff with the Atlas society's senior fellow, Rob Tru. Zinsky discussing the case against democracy. Uh, I'd ask everyone to share the room and to raise your hand. If you wanna join the conversation, I'll bring you up. Uh, I also wanna note that Rob and our other scholars will be speaking during the day at our gala in Malibu, October 6th, then Rob will be speaking about objectiveism and technological trends. I think, uh, Rob, thanks for being here. It's a sign of objectivity to take either side of this issue. So, uh, you did the case for democracy and, uh, what's the case against democracy. Speaker 1 00:00:43 Well, okay, so it's not so much I'm taking either side of the issue, but that democracy is an equivocal term. It can mean different things. So I'm in favor of it in one sense and against it in another sense. So that's what I wanted to untangle today. So yeah, last week I did the case, the objectives case for democracy. And it was now mention, that was partly about the case for the word democracy, right? So I have not changed my views over the years on whether representative government and the United States constitution are a good idea. I've changed my views as to, you know, is the term to democracy. So misleading. It shouldn't be used. And here's today. I'm gonna talk about why it is that I resisted it so long. Why it is that has misleading implications because there's history and there's a, a, a bad or a wrong way that the term has been used. Speaker 1 00:01:36 I, I don't think necessarily think it's wrong epistemologically but wrong morally, uh, a, a, a version of democracy, a version of, of the word democracy and the concept of democracy that is fundamentally opposed to an individualist outlook, fundamentally opposed to the, of individual rights that becomes mob rule. So the text that I began, the text I sort of took as my theme, uh, last week is a, um, I'll line from social scientist, a Judis Judas, sorry, Judith. I, I have a little trouble putting those, all those consonants together, uh, who said that, uh, liberalism is, uh, mono faithfully. Monogamously AB permanently married to democracy, but it's a marriage of convenience, right? And so I like that quote, although last week I tried to find the love in that relationship, tried to find the love, the common values that would keep that marriage of representative government of democracy in the sense of representative government, keep that marriage between that and liberalism in the sense of individual rights and a free society, the common values that would bring those two things together. Speaker 1 00:02:52 So I, I discussed that at length last week. I'm not gonna summarize the whole thing, but what I wanna ask here today basically is what she said is that liberalism is monogamously and faithfully married to democracy, but she didn't say it about democracy being a monogamous with liberalism. So I wanna ask, is democracy a cheater in this relationship, right? Is it, is democracy something that can be opposed to liberalism or can be an enemy of liberalism? And again, I'm using liberalism here, not in that sort of loose approximate 20th century sense to where we used it to mean, you know, somebody advocating the welfare state, I'm using liberalism in the original sense, which is advocacy of a free society advocacy of a society with individual rights and with protection for the freedom of the individual. All right. So if we ask, has, is democracy potentially incompatible with that? Speaker 1 00:03:50 Well, there's a whole history there, as I said, and I'm gonna go over the dark side of the history of democracy. So the term democracy originated in ancient Greece, uh, demos, Santos, power to the people, uh, or ruled by the people. It originated in ancient Greece, where, what they practiced under the name of democracy. You, they had several different forms of government that were common in the ancient Greece city states. And it it's interesting how ancient Greece was a sort of, um, laboratory almost where you had different people trying out different experi, uh, experiments. So over here we'd have a monarchy. And over here we'd have, uh, a tyranny, an a tyranny was different from a monarchy. It was, you know, a tyrant, a single ruler, a dictator essentially, uh, uh, all power in hands of one person. Who's not a hereditary Monarch, you know, hem did by custom and tradition, but a guy who just simply wields all the power and then over, you hear you'd have an oligarchy where the rule is put in the hands of a small group or a restricted class of people who would make decisions for everybody else. Speaker 1 00:04:52 And then the last of them was democracy. Well, what they had is democracy was what we call direct democracy. And it was the idea that simply on any given day decisions would be made by a majority vote of whoever showed up at the ARA, uh, to, uh, to, to, to listen to the debates and to take the votes. There's actually a, uh, uh, the pins, which is a, uh, a special sort of round, uh, uh, um, there's very little remains of it today, but a special sort of round pit sort of, uh, with a roster in the center where, you know, all it could hold a couple thousand people gathering together, and that's where the speakers would, Harang the crowds. And, uh, they would have a vote and whatever carried the, the vote on that day, whatever carry the majority on that day, that was the will of the people. Speaker 1 00:05:44 Now you can see the problem with demo direct democracy practice in this form. One of the problems is that it's not really democracy. It's not really rule, it's not democracy in the sense of rule by all the people. Now, if you take, you know, leaving aside, the fact that Athens, you know, was ancient, Greek societies, mostly had, had practiced slavery. So you had a whole group of slaves, a large percentage of the population who were not allowed to vote. Uh, even then, if you have this thing where you have everybody, all the citizens gather physically together in one space to have the debates and make the decisions you clearly, the decisions aren't being made by all the people they're being made by whoever is able to show up every day. And if you've ever been in local government and, you know, uh, gone to a school board meeting or something like that, you know, that very few people could show up every day to, to be there and to express their opinion and have their voices heard, uh, in, in the day to day decisions of government. Speaker 1 00:06:47 And so it athe, it tended to, to create the sort of rule by people who were well off enough to have the leisure time to not have to be at work every day as to be able to show up and, and argue politics, uh, in thera, it'd be a little bit like, I mean, there's a little bit of element of like, you know, would you want all the decisions in a, in a society made by whoever spends the most time on Twitter? And that I think you look at the tumultuous history of Athenian democracy, excuse me. I think that might be a good analogy, that it was a little bit like having decisions to be made by the political obsessives who spent all day posting on Twitter rather than by an actual cross section of, uh, uh, of, of all the people. Uh, so you can imagine the difference between that and representative government, like we have now in our, in, in, in the modern world where you show up once a year or once every two years, or once every four years, and you cast a vote and you can get participation from a much larger group of people, because most people can make time. Speaker 1 00:07:54 And, you know, they can make enough time in between to stay roughly informed about events, not as important as we would like them to be. And then they can show up once every two years or once every four years, uh, in, in Virginia, we show up once a year, cuz we have, um, uh, the state elections state level elections are on the, uh, uh, uh, odd numbered years. So once a year you show up, you have to, you know, put in an hour to go to the polls and, and come back. And, and it's not that big, a commitment so that you can get broad representative representation from all the people. Now, the other thing that was a problem with Athenian direct democracy, which is also makes it a lot like Twitter, is that when you got people together in a big group, uh, and you had, you know, a speaker harassing them and, and aching them on and coming up with some argument, they would get carried away by the madness of crowds. Speaker 1 00:08:47 And they would make decisions in an impetuous and often they'd make a decision and then reverse it the next day. And, uh, they would get pushed around by, by, I mean they gave the Greece, gave us the word democracy. They also gave us the word demagogue, which basically means a leader or teacher of the people. But it really, it came to have a pejorative term from how the demagogues actually acted, which is it's a speaker who is cap being convincing, capable of working on the emotions of a crowd and swaying them over to whatever his idea is. Whether or not it's a good idea or not. So a demagogue as somebody who basically exploits his, uh, rhetorical skill to get the people, to do things that don't necessarily make sense, but serve the interest of his faction or serves his need for power. And of course there were no limits on what the people could vote for either. Speaker 1 00:09:40 So one of the things that happened, one of the aspects of Athenian democracy is they had a weird court system where basically anybody could Sue anybody for anything. And the decision would be made by a jury. And the juries weren't, you know, 12 people randomly selected. They were like on 100% juries or 500% juries, they were sort of like de facto many legislatures that were convened to render the will of the people on this one particular case. And it was at one of those trials, for example, that Socrates was tried for, uh, corrupting the youth of Athens and the greatest thinker of in Greece and his time was put to death by the vote of this jury. So you have a, you know, a mob or Rav, a mini legislature that's gathered together to be the jury in this case. And there's no limit to what they can do. Speaker 1 00:10:30 They could put somebody to death, to death just for, uh, advocating new and uncomfortable ideas, or actually in, in so's cases, just for advocating that we think about new and uncomfortable ideas, right? And another famous example of this from ancient Athens is that I think there was a case of 10, 10 generals. This is during the, during the pian war, there were 10 generals who were in charge of a Naval battle and they won this great victory that was hugely important for the Athenian side, but when they returned the demagogues whipped, the people up against them on a claim that these generals had left, the bodies of, of, um, of, uh, of dead sailors had left the bodies in the water, had not taken proper efforts to collect them. And therefore they were, you know, they should be put to death and they put them on trial and convicted them. Speaker 1 00:11:19 And this is a case where you, these guys had just won a crucial battle in a war in, in a, in a, in a, uh, uh, in a war that was, you know, very evenly matched with Sparta. These guys should be getting a heroes welcome. Instead, you have the demagogues who punished them for having won the BA I in fact, have punished them for having one, because you have this system that allows somebody to, to whip up the people into a frenzy, uh, sort of like, you know, a bit like Twitter, a bit like, um, cable TV, whip people up into a frenzy over in order to promote themselves and promote their own, um, their own profile. All right. So the other checkered aspect of the history of democracy, the other big one is the French revolution and the, you know, the, the system created by the French, after their revolution. Speaker 1 00:12:10 Uh, and they had a, an assembly, a, a general assembly that a legislature that became this very Athenian style, direct democracy sort of free floating, uh, uh, um, uh, assembly that, you know, this, this mob that met basically met every day. Now, it had elected had representatives that were elected to it, but they were this large number. And they were this sort of mob that met every day and were swayed back and forth by demagogue speakers and were whipped into frenzy of paranoia about the attempt by the old regime to reestablish itself and were convinced to find enemies everywhere and to send a whole bunch of people to the guillotine during the reign of terror and behind that sort of anarchy and chaos of the, the French assembly. Uh, uh, during the, after the French revolution behind that, there was a theory that came behind that where, uh, there was the first theory of democracy. Speaker 1 00:13:13 It's a theory of democracy that took it seriously off the rails. And this is the theory that comes John Jacque Russo, this idea of a social contract, his version of a social contract, and in his version, the will of the majority, the majority vote represents the quote general will of society. So what's the general will, well, it's the will of society as a whole taken as a signal entity, you know, apart from, and over and above the will of any actual particular individual in that society. And so it's, it's really, it's taking what we in modern terms call collectivism and making that the theory behind democracy. So democracy becomes an expression of collectivism. It becomes an expression of the superiority of the collective or the group over the individual, and the idea that the collective can dispose of the life and the freedom of the individual, however, he feels, uh, however it feels, excuse me, and that's the practice and that the practice of that was of course how the, the, those, the reign of terror and what's lived on from Russo's version is in Marxism. Speaker 1 00:14:22 And in, in, in, on the modern left, or at least on the 20th century left, you don't hear about this as much anymore because you know, the left, the, the Heartland of the left is a much of college educated, uh, um, white collar workers. But back in the 20th century, we heard a lot about what was called industrial democracy. What was industrial democracy? Well, industrial democracy was that industry was to be run by more majority vote by the will of the majority. So all the business activity in the country, all the productive activity in the country was to should be controlled by the collective, by a vote. And that was called industrial democracy. So, you know, they say, uh, uh, you know, the, the wrap against democracy as its, its uh, two wolves and a sheep voting, what to have for dinner, uh, industrial democracy is fire. Speaker 1 00:15:15 And one owner voting on where the profits should go and, you know, let's go hands. It's going to be put into the hands of, uh, uh, of, of the collective of the workers. And of course in practice, this ends up leading rapidly. Uh, every time this has actually this, something like this has actually been implemented, it leads to disaster because, you know, the workers do what's, you know, what's good for their immediate interests of, oh, well, we raise our pay and give us less work to do. And the business rapidly, uh, goes downhill. All right. So, but again, it's a, a reflection of this sort of, uh, collective version of democracy that democracy is not about, uh, uh, democracy is about the primacy of the group over the individual and making sure gets its way and that the individual, the rights of the individual audio barrier to whatever the group was now, the last sense of democracy I wanna cover here. Speaker 1 00:16:20 And one that I think if you, if you look at iron Rand's approach to democracy, one thing I think viewpoint as well is democracy ideal. And this was something I think had read and commented on at some point a, uh, a book called the revolt. And this was something that, that troubled a lot of thinkers in the early 20th century. I think it's, it emerges as a bit of a, a theme in the fountain head, her first novel. And that is this idea of democracy as a cultural ideal, meaning <inaudible>, it's cultural populism, it's whatever, the largest number of people like, whatever, the, whatever the mass is like, that's the center of culture and that's what we should be focused on and not, uh, and you know, high brow culture or culture that, that, that, uh, and, and there's a lot of concern at that time that you had this sort of, you know, the, the high brow, uh, the serious intellectuals, the people of refined tastes were worried that the mass culture, uh, of demo of a democratic society was going to sort of overwhelm and destroy high culture. Speaker 1 00:17:31 And I think, you know, I think it did. I don't think it's because of democracy. I think that did largely happen, but so on the left, this sort of cultural populism, this, this is, I finally figured out if years ago, this is the light bulb went in my head. And I figured out if I put together some pieces, this is why all the hippies sang folk songs, right? Because the whole point of a folk song is that they were written, there were songs that were written by the people, not some high brow, uh, uh, lone individual, like a Moza or a Beethoven sitting by himself in, in a room thinking these great thoughts. The folk songs were written by the common people themselves autonomously and collect the left loved folk songs, um, as for cultural populism today. I think the biggest expression of that to some extent is I, I wanna, I don't wanna say it's Trumpism, but it's associated closely with Trumpism. Speaker 1 00:18:23 It's this sort of, you know, you see these sort of, you know, the, the, the, oh, cult, the culture of the Heartland of this, of the, of the, the, the quote, real America out in the Heartland that votes for this one particular party, that's the real culture and you elites and the coast, and you enemy that cultural populism has become a, a center point of our, of our politics and our culture war. And I think it has the same problem with any other, every other form of democracy we've talked about here now. So the common thread is, uh, is the problem comes with problem with democracy. The case against democracy in this sense is that the problem comes when majority rule becomes the goal and not the means of politics. That is when the, when the purpose of people voting is not well. We think if we let the people vote, be able to learn to control governments and it'll protect freedom, right? Speaker 1 00:19:22 So if voting is, uh, if you know, the proper approach, and I say voting is a, a goal is a means to the end of preserving Liberty, but when rule by the majority, the majority gets whatever it wants when that becomes, uh, the, the goal of having voting that's when you have the problem that, you know, the majority does whatever it wants, and they end up doing all sorts of terrible things and, and, um, violating the rights of individuals and creating an unfree society. And usually in the process end up eventually collapsing that society. So my attack on democracy here is not an attack on representative government, but it's attack on democracy in that unlimited sense where the purpose of it is to give total power to the collective and specifically to give the collective power to, uh, to, to, to remove all impediments, to having the collective, being able to violate the rights of the individual. Speaker 1 00:20:22 You know, when I advocate democracy, reluctantly accepting the word, what I'm advocating is was we, you know, the, the general phrase you see say says liberal democracy, liberal democracy, meaning democracy limited by protections for freedom and individual rights. And I would also add one other qualification that I'd like to put on there, which is I'm an advocate of constitutional democracy. And this is the idea that, you know, it's not just the rule of the majority. It's the rule of the majority limited by certain set procedures and, uh, structures of government that are let that, that make the rule of the majority indirect that make it go through a process that provide it with checks and balances that counterweight different impulses coming up from the people against one another. So one thing happens in the house, and another thing happens to the Senate. One thing happens at the states and another thing at the federal level. Speaker 1 00:21:18 And so you have safeguards and guard rails put in there by that constitutional system in order to prevent, did democracy from becoming despotic and collectivist. And I think simply you have constitutional the idea that there are rules and there are procedures, and it's not just, you know, you, the, the majority at this particular moment gets to do it effort once, but that you have to always go through rules and a process. And there are objective, um, uh, procedures that are required. That itself puts a basic limit on, uh, on what the, what the majority can do. So that's the big overview, and I wanna open it up for questions, comments, disagreements, et cetera. Speaker 0 00:22:01 Great. Thanks Rob. Speaker 1 00:22:02 If there any monarchists here I really wanna hear from you <laugh>, Speaker 0 00:22:05 You were cutting out just a little bit. Um, I think mark, Stein's a moniker, but, um, <laugh>, Speaker 1 00:22:12 You know, is Mark Stein monarchist that, I mean, he's, he's British. I don't think you could is the, is the British Royal family, um, um, firing enough these days to anyway? Speaker 0 00:22:24 Well, they're an example of the aristocracy adopting, uh, liberal ideas, Speaker 1 00:22:31 Britain, Britain very long is an example of the aristocracy need to adopt liberal liberal democratic system. Speaker 0 00:22:49 I mean, uh, you know, I think what part of what you're saying is that these pure democracies didn't last very long, maybe even akin to like, you know, I associated almost the type of anarchy with revolutionary France, and then kind of usurper came out of that. Is that Speaker 1 00:23:08 What well, that there's a pattern there now. I don't wanna ever overemphasize that pattern because the, the Romans had a Republic, which was a form of democracy. He was dealing with similar, somewhat similar to the Greek, but with more limitations, there was more power for the Senate in the Roman system. So it was a little bit more, you know, you had the Patricias and the, the senators, the sort of upper class of the Roman soci Roman Republic had a lot more power and influence and were something of a moderating effect. Although there were constant battles between heads and expert on this stuff. So I've, I've been seeped in it. Um, you know, there were the two parties in ancient Roman Republic were the, uh, populars and the ops, the, the people's men and the best men. It was basically the aristocratic party and the, the populist party, the one that wanted more representation and more, uh, uh, more power and more consideration for the, you know, the, the large, the, the, the, uh, the lower classes, the ERs, the IANS, uh, but on the other hand, you know, the, the, uh, Roman Republic had lots of problems. Speaker 1 00:24:19 It lasted for close to 500 years, right. From, from which is from when they got rid of king Tarquin to, uh, to win ju to Julius Caesar and the, uh, the, you know, the Augustus then making himself emperor, there was nearly 500 years. So it was a very long lasting democracy in that sense, although it was constantly, you know, there was constant strife there, and that strife just as they became bigger, as they spread over more territory, as they took at a greater population, all the contradictions in their system were basically amplified until the, until the whole system broke apart. So there have been systems where you've had a democracy in that sense that has lasted much longer. I think the, oh, another example, the oldest parliaments in the world is the Icelandic all thing, which is stays from like 1300 and something it's, you know, it's like six, 700 years old. So the thing, you know, you can have these that last, but there is a very common pattern that you were pointing out of a democracy when it becomes, uh, too much sort of under the sway of the momentary passions of the people eventually tearing itself apart. And then you get a Napoleon or a, um, you get a strong man, a dictator, a demagogue who comes along and asserts his control and brings order, you know, reigns in the insanity and offers the alleged stability of the, of strong man rule. Speaker 0 00:25:54 Right. Ex exactly that, I don't know if you cut out. Speaker 1 00:25:59 No, I, I, I ended with strong man rule. Do you hear that? Speaker 0 00:26:01 Okay, good. Good. Yeah. Uh, yes, I did. Thank you, Lauren. Speaker 1 00:26:04 Welcome. I trying to get more infl and, you know, doing radio like this, I try to give more inflection to my voice so you can tell when I'm, I'm, I'm done making the point, but, uh, I Speaker 0 00:26:13 It's just cuz you cut out a little earlier. No, I, I, I that's fair Lawrence. Thank you for joining us. You have a question for Rob. Speaker 2 00:26:22 Yes, I do. Uh, I'm not a Marist, so I'm not gonna try to defend that point. Although that has been an interesting position that I thought I'd never hear, um, before online of Monarch actually being the best way to preserve Liberty. But my, uh, my question for you is to that point that you just spoke of when it comes to how, you know, the public got too big in Rome, too many people, and it sort of was collapsing in its own weight. And this comes up to, you know, in America we had, you know, the Federalist and the anti-federalists and their concerns over, uh, representation of versus a large, uh, you know, region. And I'm curious, do you, do you think that representative government is feasible on a much larger scale, like on a scope of like United States or is it far more stable in smaller, uh, regions where things are maybe a bit more homogenous? Speaker 1 00:27:15 Okay. That's, that's a great, that's an old debate that goes back to the having fathers. Uh, you'll find, Madison's answer to that in the Federalist number 10. And I just go there read, read the Federalist number 10, Madison answers that. And he basically argues, and it's, it's a, it's one of the most brilliant things ever, ever written in the, in political science. Um, and he argues that actually it's the other way around that if you have a small, because this is, this goes back to the ancient, I mean, you know, did you go back to Plato in Aristotle? They were talking about this that is considered a small homogenous society was best for having, uh, uh, a democratic system because everybody pretty much agrees with each other and has the same sentiments. And therefore there'll be very little conflict. Well, the that's can be kind that can free speech, precisely the problem with a small homogenous society as everybody agrees with each other. Speaker 1 00:28:05 And they all, if they all go off the cliff, they all go off the cliff together. I mean, ideally I guess the modern day example of a small homogenous society that has a very, you know, not very turbulent political system would be something like Sweden or, or Norway. You know, these countries have five or 10 million people where they are culture, generally a culturally homogenous society. There's a very narrow realm of, for the most part, a very narrow realm of disagreement on the issues. And so you get a, a less contentious politics in most of the cases than we have here. Um, but Madison argues the problem with a small homogenous society is precisely the fact that they could all go over the, off the cliff together. Or, uh, if, if all the people that society had a certain interest that was, they could pursue at the expense of a small minority within that society, they would go do that. Speaker 1 00:29:02 And that the, there would no protection whatsoever for the rights of that minority so that, you know, it's very be very easy for that society to become despotic or tyrannical. And of course, I don't know if he didn't point this out and may not have thought of this as what he, this may not have been, he was thinking about, but of course, slavery in, you know, 18th century America in America at the time of the revolution was a perfect example of that, that you had all these states in the south where if you asked, you know, all the, all the people who were allowed to vote, you know, <laugh>, uh, if you asked what they thought about slavery, theyve thought, oh, it's perfect. It's, it's, it's good. It's essential, it's necessary. And, you know, there was, uh, there was a large majority because everybody was tied up and had an interest in it, but you had them all, you know, there's no dissenting voices there to tell them, you know, this is actually a horrible system and you, you, you, you shouldn't be allowed to do this. Speaker 1 00:29:54 Um, so what Madison argued is you fear a large, the sphere is the phrase use that if you, you have a large society, you can bring a whole, a much greater diversity, uh, different viewpoints and different interests and different perspectives and different, you know, regional interests that would be evolved. And in that society, it would be harder for any one group to get this sort of dominant majority. And, and to be able to get their way, it would be harder for these factions to find themselves and combined together, uh, to, to ride rush shot over the rights of, of minority of, of individuals or minorities. And I think that's held up relatively well in the actual functioning of the American system that a larger ver a larger society, a larger nation with a great diversity of interest does produce better outcomes. Um, and you can see that, I think in sometimes on the state or local level, you know, there's, uh, the, the Charlottesville city council does stuff all the time. Speaker 1 00:30:54 That makes me smack my forehead because they've got, you know, it's 80%, um, university town lefties, and, and, and, and they get their way on everything. And, you know, whatever the latest leftist craze is, they do all sorts to complain about is they do all sorts of things to make it extremely expensive after having made this impossible. Um, and so, uh, you know, whatever lefty fad is, they follow it. And the only thing that limits that is that while the city of Charlottesville is kind of small, you can move out to Almar county, you can move to a, one of the other surrounding counties and you can get away from that. Uh, there, you know, there they're, they follow the fads, but there reach isn't very far, or you can look, there's a number of states that are, you know, like Chicago has a wonderful record of, uh, I think what was it, all the LA all the, all every single it might be. Speaker 1 00:31:58 I dunno if it's every single one, but sort of three quarter, this three quarters of the state's former living, former governors, uh, have, have served time in prison, uh, because the, the, the, the state government is so flagrantly corrupt. So there's an example where you get away with stuff on the state level that you couldn't get away with nationally, because there's too much of a dominant majority from one party, uh, or in Illinois, they call it the combine. It's sort of a, a bipartisan, um, machine, uh, and on the state level. And, you know, it's so dominant that there's nobody from outside of it who can call them, bring them to account, uh, except for federal pride. So that, that's my, my general answer to that. I don't think you have a limited size of how you make a Republic. I think it's more about how you structure the Republic that you have to make sure you're structuring it in a way that keeps that, that Lee, um, majority will, uh, controls it, redirects it and makes it so it can't easily, uh, follow the, uh, ill considered impulses of the moment or the, the, um, the interests of a faction or party. Speaker 0 00:33:16 Thanks. Uh, you're still cutting out just a little bit, but, um, I just, just to follow up with that before we get to JP, you know, it seems like what happened here was they kind of set up objective rules, but over time, people learn to work around the rules that have been in place for, for long enough, whether it's, you know, cross party establishment, like you're talking about that are know how to get the votes their own way, or, I mean, Reagan was able to, you know, negotiate with individuals of the other party, but that, that doesn't exist today. Speaker 1 00:33:51 Well, I, you know, interesting enough, uh, there's a great, you go, if you Google secret Congress, I think you'll find it now, you know, to me secret Congress sounds like a, a particularly, uh, revolved, uh, romance novel, but, uh, it's actually, this it's an idea. Uh, so, um, Matt Laz wrote a really, actually very good article about this, uh, in the last year. It it's the idea that there is a Congress that actually goes out there, you know, a part of the us Congress that goes out and routinely get stuff done and achieve total bipartisan consensus and moves, moves, important legislation through, and actually solves problems. The thing that makes it possible is progress and, and achieve this legislation on issues when nobody's paying attention. Right? So the minute something gets on the cable news, it becomes a partisan football, you know, argu with people arguing back and forth about it. Speaker 1 00:34:53 Um, then suddenly the, the part, the, the forces of partisan here, and it becomes a big fight. You can't do anything because suddenly, you know, the, the, the, the, the highly engaged political partisans, the people, the kind of people who show up on Twitter, or who in, you know, 2000 years ago, the type of people who would've shown up at the ARA every day of politics, those people get involved and that's suddenly you can't do anything. So I would look up that article it's, uh, Matt lazia, uh, uh, writing about secret Congress and how <laugh>, there's actually a lot of bipartisan stuff that gets done, but it gets done, but nobody's paying attention any attention to it, and it gets done because nobody's paying any attention to it. Um, but I do think that yes, that your overall point, uh, Scott, I think is really valid, which is any system is gonna have this happen around long enough people figure out how to game the system, you know, their own goals and to promote themselves and, and, uh, and what have you. Speaker 1 00:35:55 So I think that's, you know, that's something that the founders did anticipate in the sense that I think it was Jefferson who said the price of freedom. So I think we should be open to tructure things. And we certainly should be a lot more vigilant about making sure that, uh, uh, that, that Congress, that, that, that the, the partisans and the factionalism and the people who are trying to pursue their own, uh, little goals at the expense of the rights of everybody else, that more scrutiny is placed on them. And more opposition is raised to them. Speaker 3 00:36:33 I hope that happens, JP. Speaker 1 00:36:35 Thanks for your patience. Speaker 3 00:36:37 Thank you, Scott. And thank you, Rob, um, from the, from, from your last room on the, on the, on the case for democracy, I remember that one of the consensus of the room at one point was that, um, democracy is up for redesign and that we should, uh, reli revisit, uh, things like citizenship and, and the age of voting and, and things like that. I would say that, uh, that also applies to, uh, any form of Mo government, including, uh, Republic and monarchy, even if, uh, if it were the case that monarchy would be the best system for preserving Liberty. And I have been toying for a long time, also with, uh, those ideas and, and try to follow some of the thinkers in the, in the area of political science, in designing better systems, systems of governance. I participate in a startup city in south, or that was going to be, uh, one until the new communist government, uh, uh, changed the law, the constitution. Speaker 3 00:37:53 And, and now it's not possible. So, but the thing is I always to it with the idea of the Greek Oracle, believe it or not in, and a role of such an institution in, in, in, in the form of government, in a body of, uh, individuals that are selected on virtue and resign, uh, private property, and they are consulted, but they're, uh, their decisions are not binding. Uh, but they, the governments, uh, are judged by the, uh, consequences of, uh, ADing or not to the recommendations of an Oracle. How do you, how do you see this? Speaker 1 00:38:35 Well, I, I, we had that system, it was called justice Kennedy. <laugh> okay. That's a, that's a joke that the hardcore political obsesses were good. Uh, Anthony Kennedy used to sort of, he sort of played that role in the Supreme court for a long time where he didn't really have really distinct, um, he and tended to be, he was the swing vote between the conservatives and the liberals, and he tended to swing back and forth, basically, depending on how he personally felt about the issue without a really distinct or, or well developed judicial philosophy that was behind that. And so he said, when you're talking about the role of the Oracle sort of reminded me, um, I think the, now the, uh, the, I like that, uh, if I recall correctly, it's they called the tow feature. I I'm probably mispronouncing it cuz it's GA, but you know, that's an interesting idea. Speaker 1 00:39:28 It seems a little, especially something as nonbinding. Well probably nonbinding things is that they're non-binding right. So <laugh>, what'll happen is everybody say, listen very politely and then they'll completely ignore what the person said. I would like to see there be a greater role for sort of elder statesmen, people who, you know, previously served an office who served with distinction, who can then come forward. And, you know, we do that occasionally, uh, or we used to do that more often than we do it. Now we do it occasionally where we'd have like a commission that would be formed to study some issue and you get some, you know, older, retired, uh, well-respected former senators or congressmen or cabinet secretaries, and they would go together and they would get on a, and they'd be chosen to be, you know, a certain number from one party, you know, a certain number from the other party. Speaker 1 00:40:16 So it's a bipartisan thing and they would go out and form this commission and they come back with a recommendation. That's something that, that used to be done. It probably could still be done. That has sort of that character of we're gonna pick somebody who's outside of the partisan battle, somebody who's respected, uh, uh, uh, and, and, you know, considered experience and wise and trustworthy. And we're gonna give them the job of, of producing a recommendation that will then carry the weight of that sort of moral, moral and intellectual authority. Um, I can't see people doing that right now at the current moment. I could see people doing that 10 years from now. We'll see how it goes. But the one thing I would say is that if we're talking about reforming democracy, the one most interesting thing I've seen, that's actually being used. It actually being tried is something called ranked choice voting. Speaker 1 00:41:04 Now this came up recently and I'm gonna have to learn all about it now because there was a, um, a special election for congressional seat in Alaska. And it was one by a Democrat, which is very unusual for Alaska these days. And it was one because they did ranked choice voting. So there were like five different candidates. And there were, you know, several Republican candidates, Sarah Palin was one of them. And, uh, what the ranked choice voting is basically you say, I have a first choice, a second choice and a third choice. And if there aren't, if there isn't aren't enough votes to, uh, um, to support the most votes, basically for first choice, then they can pick up vote votes for the second choice. So it's, it's, it's also called an instant runoff, cuz it's similar to a runoff election, right? Where you'd have, let's say you had fun and you'd have an, and you'd, you'd hold a first round of vote and you'd say, okay, the top two vote getters. Speaker 1 00:42:03 Those are the candidates that we have a second round of voting. And we, you choose between them ranked choice. Voting is basically a single a one day instant version of the runoff election. But it's, it's interesting and that, you know, the case for, uh, rank's choice voting is it can actually produce better results where you're not just, you know, the two major parties nominated as a find and you're stuck with those. It gives you a better chance for the people to say, no, we don't like any of these two jokers you got, we're gonna pick somebody else. Uh, it, it, it has the potential to open things up. I'm not sure if it will make a big difference if the one sort of new idea and this new restructuring of how we do elections and how we do voting that I've heard of that seems to have a chance of actually doing something. Speaker 1 00:42:50 Um, so I think we should be open for, you know, nibbling on the edges. Like I said, I've, but I think I've said before, I'm very of the idea constitutional convention are some massive changes to the constitution because those changes the same people who are messing everything up right now, they're gonna be made in the same atmosphere and environment of, um, of partisanship and specifically of partisanship between two illiberal factions. Uh, and I, I, I shutter to think what, what they would come up with if you left them loose to just rewrite the constitution. So I think we should, we should do it carefully and incrementally. And that's the one example I've heard of that. That sounds interesting to me. Speaker 3 00:43:29 Thank you. That that was, that was, uh, mind blowing idea. Thank you. Yeah. Speaker 0 00:43:36 Thank you. Yeah. We talked about rank choice voting earlier today. David, go ahead. Speaker 5 00:43:44 Uh, Scott, are you talking to me? Speaker 0 00:43:48 Did you wanna say something? Speaker 5 00:43:50 Yeah, thank you. I I'd like to jump into her. First of all, I, you know, Rob, thank you for the deeply, historically informed, um, information about the, the perils of democracy. Um, here's my question. Um, you know, I think from the time of the con, when the, when the founders were creating the constitution, democracy was a risky proposition and, uh, so they built all kinds of, uh, rights and, and, um, enumerated, uh, powers of government to on the basis of individual Liberty and in some ways, but they did, you know, embrace a, a democratic collection of, of, uh, representatives in a representative democracy. So, you know, 200 years, 200, some years later, we democracy is completely taken over Liberty as the key point of American, um, uh, American regime. And, um, you know, I, we want to get, ideally we can get back to the idea that democracy is only a means of choosing from the limited options pertaining to what, how government, the limited powers of government should be used. However, I here's, here's, here's my question. One of the things that's really frustrating to me is to read so many people, including Republicans like George W. Bush, um, saying the contrast is democracy versus I don't know, without charism dictatorship, without charism, uh, uh, Speaker 5 00:45:41 Or it's milder forms, fascism, um, for example, or socialism, whatever that is a, um, apples and orange comparison democracy, as you pointed out, as opposed to it is a question of who gets to decide government policy, uh, and it's contrasted with monarchy, oligarchy and Greek sense or any other, um, particular institutional form, but that's not the question of what government does and that, you know, freedom of it, the proper contrast is freedom versus, uh, you know, control of people by government. And that, it just drives me nuts when I see this contrast, because I think people, people are, they just don't get it. Um, and I'm wondering if there's a way to, um, flag this. Uh, I, I agree entirely, you know, I thank you for your deep analysis, historical and, uh, philosophical, which I agree with, but, um, I'm just wondering if you could have it, um, have, if you have any thoughts about how to highlight the proper distinction and downplay the false distinction between democracy as a measure, as a means of, uh, as a question of how to select what government does and the government rulers versus freedom versus control as the method, as a question of what government does its control over people's lives. Speaker 1 00:47:31 Yeah, I think it's a great point. Um, and especially the way that democracy or rather majority majority rule has, has replaced individual rights or freedom as the goal of government. Um, so I would say the one thing is that I, I like the fact that the term liberal democracy has now become widely used to distinguish this, that we're, you know, we're in favor of liberal democracy and that introduces that element. And that's where I think I've decided that, that, and, and I'm implementing this on my own work that the crucial thing to do is to try to reclaim the word liberalism, right? Cause that the, the worst thing that conservative ever did for the cause of Liberty was to allow the left, to call themselves liberals, right? And you, it frustrates me to no end you get these things. You have people who have, you know, these pollsters who conduct opinion polls and they'll have they break it down by ideological affiliation. Speaker 1 00:48:25 Well, liberals believe this and extreme liberals believe this. And by extreme liberals, they always mean, you know, the Wilster the, the, the, the woke, uh, most illiberal branch of they're choosing the most illiberal, most authoritarian of the left and calling them the quote unquote extreme liberals as having some kind of proper sensible meaning is a major aspect of this. Um, and, and, you know, one of the things I find interesting, I didn't get a chance to mention this earlier is in today's world. You do actually have a, a, an alternative, a new system that, that people are claiming to create called illiberal democracy. So this is what Victor Orban has said that he's doing in, uh, yeah, yeah. In Hungary is illiberal democracy. So the idea is that, well, look, I'll, I'll go out and I'll now he Riggs the system in various ways. So the representation in the Hungarian parliament is rigged so that his party can basically control everything with like 40% of rural voters, you know, 40% of the voters, but they're the rural old fashioned traditionalist types. Speaker 1 00:49:36 And so they always vote for his party and he gets to control everything because of the way he's, he's sort of, it's sort of like, it's sort of like our system where rural, rural the, you know, in the Senate, the rural states get a little extra representation except it's exaggerated there so that you can basically with only the red state voters, uh, in America here. So with only the red state voters, you could have a, a permanent, um, uh, unable two thirds, you know, super majority and do whatever you want. And he does various other things to, to control freedom of the press and sort of have a system where, you know, if you have a business and especially if you have immediate business, you can't really survive. You can't really get along unless you also support the ruling party. So it's just various ways in which you, you maintain an element of voting and an element of popular support, uh, while then rigging the system in your favors so that you can ne you'll never really be, you'll never really have to face a serious challenge to being able to do whatever your faction and party wants to do. Speaker 1 00:50:36 Uh, so I think that having liberal democracy versus a liberal democracy out there creates this opportunity to say, well, wait a minute. You know, then the issue isn't democracy, the issue is liberal versus a liberal, and then, you know, actually fighting for that term liberal. And the great thing about that is nobody seems to want it anymore. You know, the people who used to claim it the far left, they don't, they, you know, if you go to the, the far left people, um, the progressive of those people, the, and the, and the, in the political debate in America now, they hate liberal too. They, you know, now they think said they, when they say liberals, they mean these sort of center left types. So they views view as, you know, squishy, moderates and appeasers, but they hate the liberal too, because they don't want the revolution. And, uh, on the right, you have increasingly you have a nationalist wing that, you know, they they've always that, that, that hates liberals. And they don't just mean, well for state advocates as liberals. They mean anybody who's for a free society. So it's like, nobody else seems to want the term liberal. So I think it's up for grabs to be taken by people who actually mean it. Speaker 5 00:51:44 Yeah, Rob, I, I really love that, uh, years ago when I, I forget which candidate it was back in the early nineties, maybe, um, didn't want to use the L word because that had become too dangerous after Reagan <laugh>. And, um, so I wrote an ESS essay called the joy ride, you know, uh, making an analogy with, you know, they stole are a car <laugh> and we'd like it back out Speaker 1 00:52:10 That I love that it right. I love that, Speaker 5 00:52:15 But, um, just a short anecdote now I'll, I'll get off the line, uh, or get off the, um, mute myself. But I happened to be in Hungary four years ago, and I was talking to a professional couple that I met, um, incidentally, and, you know, they'd just been to Chicago. They loved America, they loved the free market system. They came, but they were Hungarian. They came back and said, we like being in Hungary. We like, we like the populous culture. And I just thought that is unimaginable to me. You could come to America and see everything that they saw. And they were pros at professionals, you know, highly educated, you know, working in technology and they, um, but they liked the Hungarian populist togetherness. So whatever, uh, you mentioned Orban, and I just thought mentioned that, but thanks, Rob. I'll I'll, uh, mute myself now. Speaker 1 00:53:20 Okay, great. Do we have time for one more, Scott, do you think? Yeah, I, Speaker 0 00:53:24 Um, just wanted to, uh, ask about, um, you know, world war I America's involvement, uh, Woodrow Wilson said he was trying to make the world safe for democracy. Is that a good interpretation or bad interpretation? Speaker 1 00:53:40 <laugh> oh, well with it, Wilson, it was bad. I mean, that's like, you know, your, your that's the presumption, you should always make Woodrow Wilson. Woodrow also said this, he did that. Was it good or bad? Your presumption should be, it was bad cuz it was Woodrow Wilson. Now he, he, he was the first, he was the first hardcore collectivist president we had. Um, he was the guy who ought to have given the term progressive a permanent bad name, um, because he was very much now he it's interesting. Cuz back then progressives were especially Wilson's case. You know, they were P racist. You know, they were people who believed in, in these theories of racial, uh, superiority. Uh, but they were very much in favor of this idea of, you know, uh, in favor of collectivist ideas and the idea of the nation as a whole, in its interest to take precedence over the individual, he gave one of his inaugural speeches. Speaker 1 00:54:36 I think the second inaugural speech was this whole thing about how we have a, we're going towards a new system where, you know, the good of the nation is gonna come over the take precedence over the, um, O over, over the individual, over the freedom of the individual. I don't know if you could put it quite that boldly, but it was very close to that. And, uh, so that collectivism and he also brought in this idea of, and everything should be run by a managerial elite of, uh, techno crowd who will run everything be much better than the average person would. Uh, but at the same time they Al you know, the, the, the progressives also brought in the, uh, uh, the, in, at about the same time, same, same time period. Things like the, um, uh, the, uh, oh, propositions, the proposition system in California, where you would have, like, once you're gonna take an issue, instead of putting it up to vote to the legislature were to be voted on by your representatives. Speaker 1 00:55:36 We'll put it on the, on the ballot and the people can decide on this and you get also, you know, sometimes you get things that limit government and, and reign back government, but also sometimes you get totally crazy ideas to get put forward, uh, on these ballot things, because, you know, a bunch of people thought, oh, this is a great idea. And then didn't think it through. But all they were asked about it was on a ballot, you know, it was on, it was on the ballot and they just had to vote for it. And they didn't have to think about all the consequences of what would happen. Um, yeah, the, the Woodrow Wilson making the world safe for democracy. I mean, I think what he meant by it was, you know, we're going to get rid of the Kaiser and we're going to, I think he had this idea that somehow by reforming everything we're going, going to make war, cause we were gonna have better political systems in places like Germany. Speaker 1 00:56:27 Obviously he had no real in everything he did to try to try to try to make that happen, failed utterly. And I think it was also because, you know, his, the solutions were collectivist. His solutions were well, let's have a league of nations, which is basically an even more toothless version of the United nation of the UN was a league of nations gathering together countries with all sorts of different political systems and different political never going to, but it's, it was a collective of solution to the problem, right. If we only had a big enough collective, we had a league of all the nations, then we could solve this problem. So anyway, you don't, don't get me started on all the reasons why, uh, Woodrow Olson was a bad guy. Speaker 0 00:57:10 <laugh>, you know, you just reminded me of one thing real quick that, uh, you know, it was probably in 2018 where I started noticing these ballot initiatives were like so difficult to comprehend that you had to study it before you go there to like, make an informed choice and make sure you weren't voting against your own interests. And I think that's weakened democracy. Speaker 1 00:57:30 Yeah. We, we should elect our representatives so they can vote for, yeah. We shouldn't vote for legislation without reading it. We should elect, uh, representatives so they can go to Washington and vote for a legislation without reading it. Speaker 0 00:57:43 Like, Speaker 1 00:57:43 Sorry, that's my Speaker 0 00:57:44 Cy Speaker 1 00:57:45 Take on that, but yes, Speaker 0 00:57:46 Very good. Well, uh, thank you. This has been a great conversation. Um, we've got a big day tomorrow at the Atlas society at 5:00 PM Eastern, the Atlas society asks we'll feature, Jason Isaac of life powered on energy and environmentalism. Uh, then you've got 30 minutes after that to refresh we're back here on clubhouse at 6:30 PM Eastern tomorrow, senior scholar, Steven Hicks will be here for an ask me anything about ethics then. Uh, we've also got our gala coming up October 6th in Malibu honoring Michael sailor. We're gonna have panels with the scholars during the day should be a good time. I'm looking forward to it. Hope to see you at some of those events. Uh, go ahead. Any final thoughts? Oh, Rob, I couldn't tell if you were trying Speaker 1 00:58:38 To see. No, I, I didn't I didn't I've I've got a couple looking ones coming up. Um, it was mentioned the other day that, that the object one hole in the philosophy of objectiveism is we haven't really discovered, discussed the philosophy of the family. So I'm gonna be doing that in a couple weeks. Oh, Speaker 0 00:58:54 Great. Okay. Speaker 1 00:58:55 In my effort to say, well, what does, you know, a philosophy of reason individuals and what does it have to say about the family and the role of the family in a society? And I've got on Speaker 0 00:59:05 That. You're not shying away from the tough topics. Well, that's great. We look forward to seeing you next time. Thanks everyone for joining us. Take care. Speaker 1 00:59:13 Thanks everyone.