On Liberty and Authoritarianism
The United States of America was founded on liberalism. In a liberal democracy such as ours, the essential political philosophy begins with the assumption that the citizens have natural rights. Our Constitution recognizes this from the very beginning with the phrase “We the people” and it specifically states it again in the 9th amendment: “the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” Laws will always be necessary to uphold the common good and act in society’s interest, but we must hold our laws to a high standard because they must overcome the presumption of individual liberty.
Today, the biggest threat to our liberal democracy is rising authoritarianism. Authoritarians believe that people only have the rights that are specifically enumerated in the Constitution. That is why they laughingly ask where the “right to privacy” is mentioned in the Bill of Rights. They also believe that even enumerated rights can be overcome by laws if those laws agree with their personal opinions, regardless of the societal interest. That is why authoritarians advocate laws that discriminate against homosexuals or advance their own religious beliefs.
It is hard to trace the history of authoritarianism because there have always been those who do not respect individual liberty. Tolerance, however, is one of our most important political virtues in America. It is my perception, though, that authoritarianism is gaining strength in the political world. In large part, this is due to fear-mongering from the highest levels of government and the argument that “the government knows best,” so “don’t question the decision that has already been made.” These attitudes are all extremely dangerous, but it is even more dangerous when masses of people go along with it.
Masses of people supported the PATRIOT Act after 9/11. Masses unquestioningly supported a war in Iraq. Now they support liberty-threatening policies like expanding NSA warrantless wiretapping and sneak-and-peak searches. Hopefully, we will remember our philosophical and legal heritage and we will stop the expansion of authoritarianism and return to what was once a liberal democracy.
In order to “remember our philosophical and legal heritage”, it would be helpful if people actually knew anything about it to begin with.
John Dean’s book Conservatives Without Conscience examines the rise to power of these protoauthoritarians and the (often flimsy) ideology behind them. Despite Dean’s identification with that sanctimonious jackass Keith Olbermann, its a pretty good book.
isn’t it interesting that the same people who tell us that we can and should trust the state to police itself and protect us are the ones who disdain anything else the state might do?
Dean’s book is good (someone gave it to me for Christmas), but Bob Altemeyer’s is even better. Altemeyer is the one who did all the studies on authoritarianism and his book is not only very easy to read, but also free.
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
You can get it as a pdf here. I did and I printed it out at the HU library.
It occurred to me, while reading Altmeyer’s book, that the (high scale) authoritarians adopt philosophical theories similar to Calvinistic theory. According to the Calvinistic theory, the one great offense of man is Self-will. All the good of which humanity is capable, is comprised in “obedience.” There’s is no room for questioning. No room for debate of the merits of the situation. You, essentially, have no choice; thus you must do. “Whatever is not a duty is a sin,” said John Calvin. The dictum of life is not found in the dialectic, as Plato or Engel would find it, but in the way of obedience, that is, in a way prescribed to them by authority.
This type of legal or human philosophy is very dangerous and tends to lend to the oh-so-feared “tyranny of the majority.” And if it is true that this protoauthoritarians have taken the reigns in this country, it is no surprise that we are in the current state of abrogated civil liberties and bad geopolitical decisions — both essentially mandated by a disillusioned mass.
“Laws will always be necessary to uphold the common good and act in society’s interest, but we must hold our laws to a high standard because they must overcome the presumption of individual liberty.”
“It is hard to trace the history of authoritarianism because there have always been those who do not respect individual liberty.”
Could you clarify?
Technically we are supposed to have a consitutional republic.
Democracy is no where to be found in the bill of rights or the USC.
Liberal today doesn’t mean what it used either. I tend to use classical liberal to distinguish myself from the modern day uses.
Check out Ron Paul’s “Freedom Under Siege”
Or if you like audiobooks (45 min)
http://mises.org/multimedia/mp3/audiobooks/MisesPersonalView.mp3
When I say “democracy” in this context, I am talking about the most general kind, where the “people rule.” While this may not always be through direct democracy, it does stand in stark contrast with other types of government, such as monarchies or dictatorships. When I say “liberal,” I am referring to the timeless ideal of freedom.
Ingrained within the social contract theories that the United States is based upon are the ideas that the people should rule and that the people should retain all rights unless it is shown to be necessary for the state to abridge them.
Democracy is everywhere in the Constitution – it began in the first sentence (“we the people”); it was explicitely shown in the 10th amendment (“other [rights] retained by the people”); and it has been expanded ever since then, such as in the 17th amendment.
Libertarianism has some very appealing characteristics. I tend to agree a lot with libertarians with individual liberty issues, but I also have a positivist view of the government because I believe that we can only solve some problems as a society through the mechanism of government.
Fair enough. But the word itself is not there.
i suggest Hoppe’s “Democracy: The God that Failed”
Our Wilsonian foreign policy is meant to promote democracy. And for some reason the people continue to support this.
“the people should retain all rights unless it is shown to be necessary for the state to abridge them.”
can you give me an example? you were talking about natural rights correct?
Authoritarianism, the AP or RWA is in my mind the driver of social inequity and the extended socio-economic hierarchy (divide and rule) of civilisation. To get rid of authoritarianism is to challenge the fundamentals of civilisation (see Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael) which is to provide a sense of certainty (it all started when we began to hoard grain in the Middle East) in an uncertain ecological context (or the mystery of God context). Human fear, consciousness, anxiety, drove us to civilisation and from that point onwards the fear has still been there (fear of each other, and now fear of Gaia’s revenge).
In this context oe key to reducing the authoritarian dynamic (need for strong leaders to reduce the anxiety of their followers) is to decentralise (what Jeff Vail refers to as rhizome to replace hierarchy) and bring authority to a human-scale community level (i.e. a few hundred people at most) so that authority becomes more transparent and challengable – so that corrupt leaders can be more easily deposed. This is the basic premise of anarcho-syndicalism, a human-scale implementation of democracy, localised. Aristotle’s idea of The State began at the family/community human-scale level and there is no suggestion that he meant that it would work at todays’ multi-million population level.
The effects of authoritarianism are due to a scale problem in human social structure.
I think your theory of decentralization makes sense in the abstract. What would that look like in reality? I tend to think that centralization and cooperation are natural developments of humanity and not decentralization and isolation.
Several responses come to mind as I have been thinking about what you wrote. I will try to keep them somewhat organized.
I think you misidentify the connection between scale and authoritarianism. It is true that the effects of authoritarianism are as apparent in the world today as the vast population is, but that does not mean that one caused the other. Taking a snapshot in time (the present day), I fail to see a correlation between scale and authoritarianism in social systems.
Of course, it depends on how you define a social system. Could the Republic of China (a unitary state) be considered a single social system? How about a large city of millions of people? Large social systems in the world today are not those that demonstrate the most remarkable authoritarian traits. It is the small systems that do.
I know of dozens of small churches of between 40 and 120 members that epitomize authoritarianism. The most extreme examples of radical authoritarianism are found in cults. There, authority figures command and followers provide absolute and unquestioning obedience. It is much harder for leaders of larger groups to obtain the same degree of authoritarian response.
I think that decentralization would actually lead to an increase in authoritarianism. One reason is because decentralization brings homogenization. When people split up into smaller groups, they tend to group with those most like themselves. With less diversity, the individuals in the groups will become less tolerant of outsiders and dissidents and more aggressive toward them (a core component of Altemeyer’s RWA scale).
It is a paradox that as human leaders gain more power – in terms of population and budgets – they actually hold less power over the individuals under them. They lose the personal connection and the power of the social pressure inherent in smaller groups. Their superficial power, then, is not the kind that tends to bring out the worst kind of authoritarianism.