Another point of disagreement here could be that democratic decision-making is an element of liberalism. Paul Cartledge's recent book on the political history of democracy makes the point cogently that this attempt to graft on democracy as a term to liberalism is a recent rhetorical flourish that doesn't really make sense either etymolog…
Another point of disagreement here could be that democratic decision-making is an element of liberalism. Paul Cartledge's recent book on the political history of democracy makes the point cogently that this attempt to graft on democracy as a term to liberalism is a recent rhetorical flourish that doesn't really make sense either etymologically of philosophically. Democracy is a Greek word that means, essentially, the grasp of power (kratos) by the people (demos). In Athens, the people exercised power through the assembly (what we would call a direct democracy today), through juries (their jury system was different from the Anglo-Nordic-Germanic system but same basic concept) and by the assignment of important offices through lottery.
J.S. Mill's On Liberty is inflected with the classical critique of democracy; quoting Cartledge on p. 303: "Mill . . . greatly feared what he envisaged as the tyranny of the unenlightened, ignorant, fickle majority, and he was therefore, like Grote, much keener on representative than direct democracy." In the context of Athenian democratic political institutions, it doesn't really make sense to call representative government "democracy" at all: that's one of the overarching points in Cartledge's book.
My point here is just that political writers should take seriously Cartledge's points about word choice. He argues in his book that contemporary authors tend to use "democracy" as a term to disguise how kratos actually operates in our system as it actually functions. Kratos does not mean a mere consultation; rather it means that when the jury votes to kill Socrates, Socrates will be executed. So when authors like Rausch try to make the point that liberalism prizes the kratos of the demos, it's a straw man argument, but perhaps one that the supposed lions of liberalism have invited by shabby vice of promoting a pretense of popular control of the state.
Just want to complement you guys on a great discussion here.
If I were to reformulate an argument for liberalism for a modern (somewhat ignorant audience) I would tie the modern sense of "democracy" to the original classical liberal notion of freedom.
That is, the classical liberal notion of a democratic republic was one with a representative government (indirect Demos) wielded strictly limited powers (Kratos). Freedom came from the strict limitations upon Kratos, which led the individual to remain sovereign over most matters of life.
If you want to explain this to a modern audience, ask them whether it's "democratic" to overturn the constitutional right to abortion. In the mechanical sense, it certainly is. What was once off limits (and a matter of individual choice) is now a matter of literal democratic voting.
But most folks, especially those who prefer abortion rights will immediately grasp that something "democratic" has been lost. Certainly, democracy is misused and has too many competing meanings in the modern use, but perhaps there is still a consistent meaning to be found where:
The ability to act based on individual choice > the ability to participate in collective decision-making (Kratos) > the imposition of non-participatory collective decision-making.
In the modern sense, a liberal democracy is one in which every individual is, as much as possible, a democracy of one. Literally, an autocrat over their own lives.
Using "liberal democracy" to mean representative government is like saying "non-democracy democracy." If the people are not exercising power directly with no intermediaries, it's confusing to use the term. This is perhaps one of the biggest reasons why the people are losing faith in liberalism, which is the issue that Rauch is complaining about. I have other disagreements with what Rauch wrote (I don't agree that the founders, Locke, and Kant are all really part of the same strain of the liberal tradition), but I wanted to advance this point and promote Cartledge's book as an antidote.
Liberalism is not a democratic ideology. There's been an unfortunate ~2 century trend of liberals trying to cloak this inherently elitist ideology with democratic legitimation. This unfortunately leads to a lot of confusion and disappointment. The people understandably become upset when they press the "kratos" button and nothing happens while oligarchs (using the term in its original, non-pejorative sense) rule the political system. When people are told they will get something and then they do not get it they leave the political equivalent of a 1 star review.
I think also that taking Cartledge's point of view seriously would be helpful to liberal reformers who want to find an appropriate venue for the people to exercise power. Judge Rakoff, as a left-wing example, has advanced arguments about why plea bargaining should be curtailed as unconstitutional. If hypothetically liberal elites stopped promising the people that voting is a real way for them to wield power, but return the power of life and death back to them within real trials in their community, you would be increasing the amount of real democracy in the country without having negative effects on larger policies that should not really be the business of the people.
I think you are generally right, although I think the focus on "democracy" the word as being what is driving the confusion and disappointment is attributing your (our) care for etymology to other people.
It is true we have a republic, not a democracy, and nearly all modern "democratic states" are in fact republican states, or even oligarchies of a sort. However, the real issue is the limited government aspect, I believe. Generally people forget that part, that government isn't supposed to touch our lives daily and rule on every aspect of our behavior. The kratos exerted by the state, whether via representatives or the people directly, is severely curtailed, and in the case of the US Constitution circumscribed to very specific realms. The limits on government power are the focus of the Scottish Enlightenment thinkers when it comes to government policy, but moderns want to see their will be done by force of arms regardless, and as predicted their will is often very bad.
This issue is a big part of the debate between the liberal strains that emphasize liberty and those that emphasize equality of rights, as dramatized by Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn in his book. In the 19th century US up until the overturning of Lochner (the doctrine that prevented governmental interference with contract) and the old interpretation of the Commerce Clause, the US government was firmly on the "liberty" side of the intra-liberal divide.
Most modern day educated people would say that, to reify the principle of equality of rights under the law, the state must intervene in private affairs to guarantee some level of material equality as well ("a chicken in every pot," the right to counsel in criminal cases established by the Gideon case, Social Security, the Great Society, etc.). Unless there is some minimal level of material equality, that equality of rights is just a guarantee on paper.
So right, this kratos by the state you're describing is usually justified as something done for the people by the state, which holds itself out to be by the people and of the people in Lincoln's terms.
As an aside, our education system is very good at creating a false sense among people that the system guarantees true material equality under the law when they become subject to their first civil case. It's typical for college-educated people to be shocked that they must spend a lot of money to actualize their rights to assert certain defenses in court or even to wriggle out of false claims that have been asserted against them. The system creates an impression among people that rights are free floating assertions that you can just shout out like a sovereign citizen and then the judge will say "by god, it's your right" and then you'll be acquitted and all the children will clap.
"If the people are not exercising power directly with no intermediaries, it's confusing to use the term."
Confusing or not, it is common. It is as close to universal as it gets.
"Liberalism is not a democratic ideology. There's been an unfortunate ~2 century trend of liberals trying to cloak this inherently elitist ideology with democratic legitimation."
Maybe I shouldn't add another issue but it sure sounds like you are equating what Rauch calls liberalism to liberals of the Democratic party. I'm pretty sure they are not at all the same thing.
Another point of disagreement here could be that democratic decision-making is an element of liberalism. Paul Cartledge's recent book on the political history of democracy makes the point cogently that this attempt to graft on democracy as a term to liberalism is a recent rhetorical flourish that doesn't really make sense either etymologically of philosophically. Democracy is a Greek word that means, essentially, the grasp of power (kratos) by the people (demos). In Athens, the people exercised power through the assembly (what we would call a direct democracy today), through juries (their jury system was different from the Anglo-Nordic-Germanic system but same basic concept) and by the assignment of important offices through lottery.
J.S. Mill's On Liberty is inflected with the classical critique of democracy; quoting Cartledge on p. 303: "Mill . . . greatly feared what he envisaged as the tyranny of the unenlightened, ignorant, fickle majority, and he was therefore, like Grote, much keener on representative than direct democracy." In the context of Athenian democratic political institutions, it doesn't really make sense to call representative government "democracy" at all: that's one of the overarching points in Cartledge's book.
My point here is just that political writers should take seriously Cartledge's points about word choice. He argues in his book that contemporary authors tend to use "democracy" as a term to disguise how kratos actually operates in our system as it actually functions. Kratos does not mean a mere consultation; rather it means that when the jury votes to kill Socrates, Socrates will be executed. So when authors like Rausch try to make the point that liberalism prizes the kratos of the demos, it's a straw man argument, but perhaps one that the supposed lions of liberalism have invited by shabby vice of promoting a pretense of popular control of the state.
Just want to complement you guys on a great discussion here.
If I were to reformulate an argument for liberalism for a modern (somewhat ignorant audience) I would tie the modern sense of "democracy" to the original classical liberal notion of freedom.
That is, the classical liberal notion of a democratic republic was one with a representative government (indirect Demos) wielded strictly limited powers (Kratos). Freedom came from the strict limitations upon Kratos, which led the individual to remain sovereign over most matters of life.
If you want to explain this to a modern audience, ask them whether it's "democratic" to overturn the constitutional right to abortion. In the mechanical sense, it certainly is. What was once off limits (and a matter of individual choice) is now a matter of literal democratic voting.
But most folks, especially those who prefer abortion rights will immediately grasp that something "democratic" has been lost. Certainly, democracy is misused and has too many competing meanings in the modern use, but perhaps there is still a consistent meaning to be found where:
The ability to act based on individual choice > the ability to participate in collective decision-making (Kratos) > the imposition of non-participatory collective decision-making.
In the modern sense, a liberal democracy is one in which every individual is, as much as possible, a democracy of one. Literally, an autocrat over their own lives.
Who disagrees with whom? While Rauch uses the term "Democratic decision-making," he also mentions the checks on true democracy that you do.
Using "liberal democracy" to mean representative government is like saying "non-democracy democracy." If the people are not exercising power directly with no intermediaries, it's confusing to use the term. This is perhaps one of the biggest reasons why the people are losing faith in liberalism, which is the issue that Rauch is complaining about. I have other disagreements with what Rauch wrote (I don't agree that the founders, Locke, and Kant are all really part of the same strain of the liberal tradition), but I wanted to advance this point and promote Cartledge's book as an antidote.
Liberalism is not a democratic ideology. There's been an unfortunate ~2 century trend of liberals trying to cloak this inherently elitist ideology with democratic legitimation. This unfortunately leads to a lot of confusion and disappointment. The people understandably become upset when they press the "kratos" button and nothing happens while oligarchs (using the term in its original, non-pejorative sense) rule the political system. When people are told they will get something and then they do not get it they leave the political equivalent of a 1 star review.
I think also that taking Cartledge's point of view seriously would be helpful to liberal reformers who want to find an appropriate venue for the people to exercise power. Judge Rakoff, as a left-wing example, has advanced arguments about why plea bargaining should be curtailed as unconstitutional. If hypothetically liberal elites stopped promising the people that voting is a real way for them to wield power, but return the power of life and death back to them within real trials in their community, you would be increasing the amount of real democracy in the country without having negative effects on larger policies that should not really be the business of the people.
I think you are generally right, although I think the focus on "democracy" the word as being what is driving the confusion and disappointment is attributing your (our) care for etymology to other people.
It is true we have a republic, not a democracy, and nearly all modern "democratic states" are in fact republican states, or even oligarchies of a sort. However, the real issue is the limited government aspect, I believe. Generally people forget that part, that government isn't supposed to touch our lives daily and rule on every aspect of our behavior. The kratos exerted by the state, whether via representatives or the people directly, is severely curtailed, and in the case of the US Constitution circumscribed to very specific realms. The limits on government power are the focus of the Scottish Enlightenment thinkers when it comes to government policy, but moderns want to see their will be done by force of arms regardless, and as predicted their will is often very bad.
This issue is a big part of the debate between the liberal strains that emphasize liberty and those that emphasize equality of rights, as dramatized by Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn in his book. In the 19th century US up until the overturning of Lochner (the doctrine that prevented governmental interference with contract) and the old interpretation of the Commerce Clause, the US government was firmly on the "liberty" side of the intra-liberal divide.
Most modern day educated people would say that, to reify the principle of equality of rights under the law, the state must intervene in private affairs to guarantee some level of material equality as well ("a chicken in every pot," the right to counsel in criminal cases established by the Gideon case, Social Security, the Great Society, etc.). Unless there is some minimal level of material equality, that equality of rights is just a guarantee on paper.
So right, this kratos by the state you're describing is usually justified as something done for the people by the state, which holds itself out to be by the people and of the people in Lincoln's terms.
As an aside, our education system is very good at creating a false sense among people that the system guarantees true material equality under the law when they become subject to their first civil case. It's typical for college-educated people to be shocked that they must spend a lot of money to actualize their rights to assert certain defenses in court or even to wriggle out of false claims that have been asserted against them. The system creates an impression among people that rights are free floating assertions that you can just shout out like a sovereign citizen and then the judge will say "by god, it's your right" and then you'll be acquitted and all the children will clap.
"Using "liberal democracy" to mean representative government is like saying "non-democracy democracy.""
And that is how it is used.
https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/government-type/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_democracy
"If the people are not exercising power directly with no intermediaries, it's confusing to use the term."
Confusing or not, it is common. It is as close to universal as it gets.
"Liberalism is not a democratic ideology. There's been an unfortunate ~2 century trend of liberals trying to cloak this inherently elitist ideology with democratic legitimation."
Maybe I shouldn't add another issue but it sure sounds like you are equating what Rauch calls liberalism to liberals of the Democratic party. I'm pretty sure they are not at all the same thing.