by Matt Barr

St. Elsewhere

The last couple days have seen some outstanding posts on some of the blogs I frequent. They deserve some trackbacks.

Brian Micklethwait at Samizdata:

Democracy is often denounced by its remaining enemies for being so relentlessly military in tone. But that is actually a lot of the reason why it works so well. All the people who would have thrived during a real war have an arena of conflict where many of their martial virtues, or vices if you prefer, can have free play. All that posturing and backstabbing, manouevre and counter-manouevre – all those "killing grounds", to use a phrase that a political wonk friend of mine is fond of – that democracy and war have in common, metaphorical in the one and literal in the other, these are all part of why democracy works as well as it does. It finds alternative work for warlike hands....

There is another reason why democracy's losers have a habit of taking their defeats peacefully, which is that the verdict of democracy is never final. There will always be another election. In deciding whether to try to overthrow the result of an election, the losers have to choose between doing that, and trying to win the next election. Given that your average democratic footsoldier – canvasser, party worker, humble party member and donor – does not relish getting killed in a battle where the glory will all go to much grander people, the massed ranks of the demcratic armies, for all their dashed hopes the day after the election, are inclined at that moment to lick their metaphorical wounds and keep them metaphorical, and focus their attentions on the next election....

If the electoral war settled everything, then the electoral war would, time after time, be followed by the real thing. That elections never settle everything, only things in the meantime, enables losers to live in hope and to stay peaceful, thereby not trampling all over people's freedom and provoking their electorally victorious opponents into doing the same.

Similarly, the prospect of future electoral defeat can work wonders for the civility of the victors.

Democracy's only chance is if Madison et al. were right, and great numbers of people, avoiding faction and allying with different teammates on each issue, in the aggregate vote for the best result for everybody. I think we're too factionalized, and too reluctant to buddy up with ideological "opponents" on other issues -- Rudy Giuliani, he of the 69 percent approval rating, is summarily dismissed from consideration for the 2008 Republican nomination because he's pro choice, for example. Some Libertarians are notorious for not wanting to sully themselves by voting Democrat or Republican. My folks wouldn't vote for a Republican if he ran on a free beer platform. Still, it's tended to work, and indeed, but for gerrymandering, the next election does promise the chance last time's losers will win and vice versa.

I don't mind democracy's winners passing laws I disfavor, precisely because I am perfectly able to try and persuade people it's a raw deal and join up with the like-minded to restore sanity. Messrs. Justice Kennedy and Stevens are profound enemies of democracy, and far greater threats than BusHitler or John AshKKKroft or the PATRIOT Act or whathaveyou. If enough people are aggrieved by the latter, we can be rid of them.

Kind of a tangent, there. To Ginny at ChicagoBoyz:

The desire for a cocoon – the fear of challenge– is perhaps most characteristic of the modern academic world. And, thus, it is not a surprise that such professors have been moved to find answers in Arthur Miller rather than Sophocles, in Foucault rather than Shakespeare. They view courses in the great books with suspicion[.] But Sophocles' tragic vision energizes us. Responsibility and risk-taking (when necessary and it costs us, not merely because we can) exercise the muscles of maturity. Without these we have no authority, even over our own lives. Challenges make us conscious of what it is to be human.

Lately this blog has discussed memes that underlie choices in the MSM but also much liberal arts & social science thinking. Occasionally, the comments either describe or reflect how much these have permeated modern thought.... Within [the academy's] ivory walls is a broad belief in the noble savage and immutable pie of goods; scholars regularly contend red staters are ignorant of both the world and what is best for them; scholars have great faith in the liberating force of the sixties with its emphasis upon the unleashed self leading the unrestrained life; they believe globalization destroys the poor and enriches the rich. Finally, of course, they are sure war never solves problems nor frees people. They find no resonance in the choir’s words at that post-9/11 service:

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,

With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:

As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,

While God is marching on.

To a modern academic these words have no resonance; the mind stops at the word "die" and thinks of the nightly solemnity of the Lehrer show's "honor roll" -- appropriately. But it doesn't note its tragic balance with those raised and purple fingers. Only an impoverished imagination finds no power in one and no purpose in the other.

Read the whole thing, which is about Ward Churchill and tenure. She argues convincingly that with academic pay not tied to teaching or teaching well, but instead dependent on publications, which make briefer but louder noises now, there is no meritocracy in the academy; in fact salary, advancement, renown, all are baubles that tend the academic toward self-centeredness. "Doesn’t [Churchill] sound like crazies we’ve heard all our lives, at the front of the room or from the back of the room, drunk at a party, an adolescent poseur? He shifts the argument not because he thinks but because he doesn’t. He has halfway bought his own bluster and bullying, manipulating others almost unconsciously. On some level, he's bought his own shallow absurdity."

Finally, Timothy Sandefeur at Freespace:

The bottom line: you do not help poor people by making their jobs illegal or their housing more expensive. But you do make yourself feel like a more compassionate person.

I've lost friendships over disagreements about that very simple and profound truth.

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