The Atlantic: America is experiencing a nightmare of mob rule

When James Madison rushed to Philadelphia in 1787 (Translator's Note: James Madison, one of the founding fathers of the United States, the main drafter of the United States Constitution, and the 4th President of the United States), he was thinking about Athens. Madison was determined to avoid repeating the mistakes of these "ancient and modern confederacies" when drafting the Constitution, believing that these once great nations had ultimately fallen under the rule of demagogues and mobs. .

Madison, who had read extensively, was convinced that it was the populist passions unleashed by direct democracies - such as the Citizens' Assembly in Athens, which required 6,000 citizens to meet the minimum attendance requirement (quorum) - that It blinded the calm and prudent reason praised by Enlightenment thinkers. In The Federalist Papers , which he drafted with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay and laid the theoretical foundation for the U.S. Constitution, he wrote:

In all these various assemblies, no matter what the character of the participants, passion will always usurp the scepter from reason... Even if every Athenian citizen becomes Socrates, every Athenian citizen assembly will still end up Turned into a mob rally.

In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever characters composed, passion never fails to wrest the sceptre from reason... Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.

Madison and Hamilton believed that Athenian citizens had long been swayed by ambitious politicians who manipulated their emotions. The demagogue Cleon is said to have induced the Assembly to adopt a more hawkish policy against Athens' opponents during the Peloponnesian War, and even the reformer Solon, through his eloquence in the Assembly, abolished (Translator's Note: Solon, who was elected as consul, abolished the old custom of repaying debts in person in Athens, forbade creditors from taking borrowers as slaves to repay debts, and restored the freedom of those who had been enslaved in the past) and ordered Currency devaluation. To Madison, history seemed to be repeating itself in America. After the Revolutionary War, he witnessed in Massachusetts "the rage against paper money, the abolition of debt, and the equal division of property." This populist rage led to Shays' Rebellion, which essentially became the Armed conflict between debtors and their creditors.

Madison called these impetuous mob groups factions , and defined them in Federalist No. 10 as "aggregations of people based on some common impulse of passion or interest, and acting against others." groups that cause harm to the rights of citizens or the permanent and general interests of society as a whole." He believes that factions emerge when public opinion is quickly formed and spread, and dissipate when the public has time and space to consider long-term interests rather than short-term gains.

To prevent factional strife from distorting public policy and threatening liberty, Madison decided to exclude the people from being a direct part of the government. Madison wrote in Federalist Papers 10:

A pure democracy, by which I mean a society composed of a small number of citizens who form and administer the government themselves, cannot find a cure for the evils of faction.

A pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction.

The Framers did not design the U.S. constitutional system as a direct democratic system, but as a representative republic to serve the public interest through enlightened elected representatives. They also built into the constitution a series of cooling mechanisms designed to curb the formation of passionate factions and ensure that a rational majority prevailed. (Translator's Note: A highly controversial and often misunderstood mechanism is the filibuster "filibuster," also known as the "procedural filibuster." It is a unique charter of the U.S. Senate through which minority members can block the "majority" Tyranny", forcing the majority to reschedule the discussion of legislation, requiring a 3/5 majority to end the debate)

Members of the House of Representatives could be directly elected, but popular enthusiasm in the House would be cooled by the "Senatorial saucer": a natural aristocracy chosen by state legislators. composed rather than elected by the people. The method of selecting the head of state is not a direct vote, but the people first vote for wise electors - which at that time meant white people with private property - and they will finally choose the person with the most noble character and the most decisive judgment. president. At the same time, the separation of powers will prevent any one branch of government from gaining too much power. Further decentralization between the federal and state governments ensures that no one of the three branches of government can claim to represent the people alone.

According to classical theory, republics can only exist in relatively small areas where individual citizens can get to know each other and assemble face to face. Plato would have capped the number of citizens in self-government at 5,040. However, Madison believed that Plato's thesis of the Small Republic was wrong. He believed that the so-called ease of communication in a small republic was precisely the reason why the hastily formed majority was able to oppress the minority. Madison wrote:

Expanding the scope of the (republic's) territory will greatly increase the diversity of parties and interests; thus, the possibility that the majority of the population will form a common motive and infringe on the rights of other citizens will be reduced; or even if there is such a common Motives can also prevent all those incited by this motive from discovering the violence they can use, making it more difficult for them to act in a unified manner as a group.

Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other.

Madison predicted that the sheer size of the United States' geography and population would prevent the coordinated mobilization of passionate mobs. Their dangerous energy dissipates before it can incite others.

Of course, in the country's early days, nascent media technologies , including what Madison described as "the circulation of newspapers throughout the whole body of the people," were already closing the communication gaps among citizens scattered throughout the United States. The mass media of the 18th and early 19th centuries were highly partisan—the National Gazette, founded in 1791, which published Madison's own ideas, was the Democratic-Republican Party (1792). The main political party in the United States founded by Madison and Jefferson, opposed to the New Federalist Party led by Hamilton, and later took control of Congress. In 1824, it split due to the political line of the party. It is a propaganda organ of the modern Democratic Party and the Republican Party), and is often vicious. to attack the Federalists.

But newspapers at the time were still a platform for elites to exchange ideas through long harangues, and Madison believed that enlightened journalists, whom he called "literati", would ultimately promote the "commerce of ideas" operation. He believed that citizens would take the time to read complex arguments (including the essays later collected as the Federalist Papers) so that non-conformist reason could slowly spread across the borders of the new republic.

James Madison died at his Virginia estate in Montpelier in 1836, making him one of the few people who lived to see Andrew Jackson (Translator's Note: Andrew Jackson, the 7th President of the United States) , founder of the modern Democratic Party) one of the founding fathers of the United States who ushered in the democratic era. Madison supported Jackson's efforts to protect the Union from southern secession but was alarmed by the populist ethos he stirred up in the Midwest. What would Madison have thought if he were still alive and seeing the development of American democracy today dwarfing the populism of Jackson’s day? Madison's worst fears about mob rule had come true—the cooling mechanism he had devised to slow down the impetuous majority had failed.

The polarization in Congress reflects the ideological war between parties brought about by the most divided electorate since the Civil War, and directly channels the passions of the most extremist elements of voters and donors of both parties into the political arena. And this is precisely the kind of factionalism that the founding fathers abandoned.

Meanwhile, the executive branch has been transformed by the spectacle of Twitter governance, but the presidency was freed from its constitutional constraints long before social media existed. During the 1912 presidential election, radical populists Theodore Roosevelt (the 26th President of the United States) and Woodrow Wilson (the 28th President of the United States) insisted that the president's power derives directly from people. Since then, U.S. presidents have continued to behave contrary to the expectations of the founding fathers: to this day, presidents make emotional appeals to the public, communicate directly with voters, and cater to the desires of the mob.

Twitter, Facebook and other platforms dramatically accelerate public controversy, creating virtual versions of mob groups. Provocative posts motivated by passion spread more widely and faster than opinions based on reason. Instead of promoting careful thinking, mass media undermines rational thinking by creating bubbles and echo chambers in which citizens see only the views they want to see.

In short, we are living in a Madisonian nightmare. How did we get here, and how do we escape this nightmare?

From the outset, the mechanisms the Founding Fathers put in place to prevent the rapid mobilization of passionate majorities did not work the way they intended. After the 1800 presidential election, the Electoral College, which was envisioned as an independent and enlightened group, has been reduced to a rubber stamp for presidential candidates of emerging parties.

The most serious mistake in the vision of the Founding Fathers was their failure to anticipate the rise of mass political parties. The earliest parties played an unexpected cooling role, tying together diverse economic and local interests through a common constitutional vision. After the 1824 presidential election, Martin Van Buren reshaped the Democratic Party into a political coalition that defended the strict constitution and states' rights in the name of the people, while the Federalists took control of the federal court system. Represented the wealthy class and sought to consolidate state power. As historian Sean Wilentz has pointed out, the great movements that brought about constitutional and social change in the 19th century—from the abolition of slavery to the Progressive Movement—were the product of powerful and diverse political parties.

However, whatever benefits parties brought in the 19th and early 20th centuries, they have long since ceased to exist. A series of populist reforms undermined the moderating role of political parties , including direct elections of senators, popular ballot initiatives, and direct primaries in presidential elections. ; In particular, direct primaries reached nationwide popularity in the 1970s.

More recently, geographic and political self-categorization has created a constituency of voters and representatives who are committed to party lines at all costs . After Republicans won a majority in both houses of Congress in 1994, the House of Representatives was led by then-Speaker Newt Gingrich (Translator's Note: Newt Gingrich, who served as Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999 and participated in the Republican primary in the 2012 presidential election. Under the leadership of the Democratic Party, the House rules that enforce party discipline were adjusted to wrest power from committee chairs, allowing the party leadership to push proposals to legislative votes without full debate or bipartisan support. program. Congressional achievements under President Barack Obama and thus far under President Donald Trump — the Affordable Care Act of 2010 and the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 — were not approved by the minority. It was passed without a vote by party members.

Madison feared that Congress would become the most dangerous branch of the federal government, sucking power into its "impetuous vortex." But today, he would probably shudder at the power wielded by the executive branch. The rise of what presidential historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. calls the "imperial presidency" disrupted the balanced relationship between the three branches. Modern presidents govern through executive orders rather than in consultation with Congress. They lead a vast administrative system with jurisdiction over everything from environmental policy to regulation of the airwaves. Trump’s populist promise — “I alone can fix it” — is just the most dramatic page in a line of extravagant promises made by every president from Wilson to Obama, and every president The purpose is to mobilize the most ideologically extreme groups among voters.

During the 20th century, the Supreme Court also became increasingly powerful and internally divided. Courts overturned federal law only twice in the first 70 years of American history, more than 50 times in the subsequent 75 years, and more than 125 times since 1934. Anthony Kennedy was appointed in 1987 (Translator's Note: Anthony Kennedy, a Supreme Court justice appointed during the Reagan era, often cast a key vote of 5 to 4 when the Supreme Court decided a deadlock. He retired in July 2018. ), the Supreme Court became increasingly polarized between justices appointed by Republican presidents and justices appointed by Democratic presidents. Kennedy's retirement raises the possibility of more split verdicts between five Republican appointees and four Democratic appointees.

Intensifying all these political confrontations is the development that may have troubled Madison most: the polarization of media, which allows geographically dispersed citizens to self-isolate into virtual factions, communicate only with like-minded people and reinforce common interests. Belief. Not only are social media platforms not sanctioned channels of opinion among educated elites, they also spread disinformation and stoke partisanship. In fact, people on Facebook and Twitter are more likely to share inflammatory posts that are more emotional than complex arguments based on reason. Madison's concerns about passionate incitement, extreme polarization, and hasty decisions in large centralized groups have not only been proven, but in very large distributed groups communicating through the Internet, the situation is far more dangerous than expected.

Is there any hope of resurrecting Madison’s view of majority rule based on reason rather than passion? Unless the Supreme Court reinterprets the First Amendment to allow the government to require sites like Twitter and Facebook to suppress extreme speech that is just one step away from intentionally inciting violence — an unwise and (fortunately) unlikely scenario. scenarios – otherwise any effort to encourage thoughtful thinking on these platforms must come from the platforms themselves. Their unsatisfactory solution currently confers American and European approaches to free speech: Mark Zuckerberg recently publicly claimed that Facebook would not remove Holocaust denial posts because it could not determine the poster’s intent. But it will continue to delete hate speech protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution (Translator's Note: the famous Free Speech Amendment), which naturally arouses controversy.

It's not all hopeless, of course, and there are some slow-moving fixes. An independent commission led by Stanford Law School professor Nathaniel Persily, who is studying Facebook's impact on democracy, noted that the company has taken steps to address the problem of "clickbait. " Sensational news headlines are used to entice users to click and read. Previously, articles that received a lot of clicks from users would appear prominently in Facebook's news feed; now, the company prioritizes articles in the news feed that users will actually spend time reading.

But solutions including these could have serious First Amendment consequences. "The democratic nature of the internet itself poses a threat to democracy, and there is no clear solution," Persily told me. “Censorship, delays, de-prioritization of online information, deterrence, and dilution of objectionable content – ​​all create classic free speech problems, so everyone should pay close attention to government regulation of speech. Every step taken.”

Of course, just as it poses threats, it can also give greater power to the democratic agenda, allowing dissidents to criticize government in the way the Founding Fathers intended. The Internet also makes American democracy more inclusive today than it was in the founding, amplifying the voices of women, minorities and other disadvantaged groups. While our national politics are gridlocked by partisan polarization, the potential for compromise remains at the local level, where political movements—often organized online—can bring about real change.

Federalism remained the strongest and most dynamic component of Madison's legacy of cooling and continued to promote ideological diversity. Currently, the combination of low voter turnout and ideological extremism tends to give advantages to very radical or very conservative candidates in primaries. Safe zones created by geographical self-categorization and partisan gerrymandering Allowing many extremists to continue to win elections. Today, all congressional Republicans are further to the right than the most conservative Democrats, and all congressional Democrats are further to the left than the most radical Republicans; look back to the 1960s, when at least 50 percent of legislators There is ideological overlap.

Voters in several states are experimenting with alternatives to the primary system that might select more moderate representatives. California and Washington state use a "top-two" system in which multiple candidates from each party compete in a nonpartisan primary, and the two candidates with the most votes compete against each other in the general election— —It doesn’t matter if they belong to the same party. The states, which Louis Brandeis (a famous U.S. Supreme Court justice in the early 20th century) called "laboratories of democracy", proved to be a place where Congress acted solely on the basis of The most effective way to encourage careful thinking in this moment is to act along party lines.

However, the best way to promote the return of Madison's principles may be exactly what Madison originally proposed: constitutional education. In recent years, the call for more civic education seems to have become a cliché. But the Framers pointed out that the fate of the republic depended on a well-educated citizenry. Reading studies of ancient republics, Madison discovered that people in classical antiquity had argued that a broad education of citizens was the best safeguard against "scheme intrusions upon public liberty." Madison thus insisted that the rich should subsidize the education of the poor.

To combat the power of faction, the Founding Fathers believed that people must be educated about the structure of government. In 1822, Madison wrote in support of the Kentucky Legislature's "education plan for every class of citizens":

A government of the people that does not make public information available to the people, or provide the means to obtain that information, is either a farce or a prelude to tragedy; or perhaps both.

A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both.

In urging Congress to establish a national university in 1796, George Washington said:

The main objective of such a national institution should be to educate the youth of our country in relevant government subjects.

A primary object of such a national institution should be the education of our youth in the science of government.

The citizenship half of the education equation is crucial. Recent research suggests that higher education polarizes citizens rather than ensuring the rule of reason : highly educated liberals become more radical, while highly educated conservatives become more conservative. Meanwhile, the National Assessment of Educational Progress found that citizens, both liberal and conservative, were more likely to be educated about the constitutional checks and balances on direct democracy, such as the need for an independent judiciary. Likely to express trust in a court's decision and less likely to call for impeaching a judge or overturning an unpopular Supreme Court decision.

These are dangerous times: from the United States to the Netherlands, the percentage of people who consider liberal democracies “essential” is falling sharply. Support for democratic alternatives to authoritarianism is particularly prominent among young people. Madison wrote in 1788 that the best reason for adopting the Bill of Rights was its effect on public opinion. . He concluded that as "political truth combined with national sentiment" proclaimed in the Bill of Rights would eventually "counterbalance the impulses of interest and passion." Today, passion has prevailed over our reason. If the republic is to survive, there is an urgent need to teach constitutional principles to new generations and revive Madisonian reason in an impetuous world.

Source: Rosen, Jeffrey, America Is Living James Madison's Nightmare , The Atlantic, October 2018 Issue