226. When Error Philosophers Become Kings

 

Call somebody a philosopher and sure enough you'll get the question, "But how will he do as a ruler?"  Too many minds have been seeded by Plato's pronouncement: "There will be no end to the troubles of the state or indeed of humanity until philosophers become kings or until those we now call kings really and truly become philosophers."  So how do I think my error philosopher (pictured in Post 224) will behave as a king, or ruler?

The error philosopher's first concern, remember, was to avoid gross mistakes, rather than attain fine truths.  And that concern, to avoid rather than attain, would no doubt be carried into government.  In the financial crisis of 2008, for example, he would ask, not "What can we do to rise shining out of this recession?" but "What can we do to avoid falling into a Great Depression?"  Both George Bush and Barack Obama could, I think, be called Avoidance Rulers in that year, and I think most of us now approve — as we disapprove of Herbert Hoover for the mistake that in 1931 tipped recession into World Depression: raising tariffs.

In foreign policy the Cold War gave us perhaps our clearest distinction, since the grossest mistake was so terrible: falling into a nuclear war.  There was no goal so fine that it would be worth suffering that, though there was a goal that came close: containing communism.  So close.  For some it was almost a tie.  What a problem! And there it stood for forty years: to patrol the line against communism without blundering over it into world destruction.

There we have no trouble identifying our Avoidance Statesman: he's the one being so careful to step on the safe side.  The Attainment Statesman will be careful too but he'll have a harder time keeping his balance.  He's got too many forces impelling him ("Drive on, American, drive on!  Fulfill your high destiny!") and too many people pushing on him ("What are you going to be, soft?  A wuss?").  Feel sorry for the poor Avoidance Statesman.  He's got all that testosterone against him, with all that idealism it can dress itself in.

Another word for idealism here is romanticism, typified in Robert Browning's famous lines "A man's reach should exceed his grasp/ Or what's a heaven for?"  The Avoidance Ruler and his Statesman are anti-romantics.  Anti-romantics (sometimes called classicists), if they were to write a counter-poem, would write, "A man's reach should coincide with his grasp, and that's how you mount to heaven."  A few years ago they'd have put their view, or found it, in Greek, to show how deeply rooted it was in ancient wisdom, the old warnings about over-reaching.  Hubris, you know.  But no Greek at election time.  You look a little wussy.

In politics and foreign affairs a close-observing classicist (the most common kind) would see that the romantic idealist's banner-word, "freedom," now means (or has been revealed by our experience in the Middle East to include) "freedom of warlords to go at each other."  So: "Pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship for that?  Extremism in defense of that is no vice?  moderation no virtue?" Oh that young idealist, John F. Kennedy.  Ah that old romantic, Barry Goldwater.  John McCain, would you step forward?

You can feel sorry for the Attainment Statesman too, though.  He's got all those people trying to put more hair on his chest.  Look at him at election time, a manly enough fellow already, being badgered to open his shirt.  Even so, as we observed, he's got to be careful too, and think, and choose the least dangerous steps, and risk looking like a wuss, even on the way to the greatest attainment.

Nuance, that's what's needed in arguments for war or peace, especially now, when cases are so complicated and words jump around so.  Hawks are as capable of it as doves, as we know when think tanks flow out against each other.  But there's this about hawks: when they're in danger of losing an election they know they can tap another tank, the no-think tank, with a spigot doves can barely reach.   Need backing for Marines into Da Nang? bombs on Haiphong?  Out it comes, onto bumper stickers: "Victory over Communism, not Coexistence."  Think of all the work doves would have to do, all the explaining, before they could get that kind of sock into a sticker.

Sure, doves have their spigots.  There is such a thing as liberal reflex, and it's widely exploitable.  But the doves' spigots are nothing like this one.  This one opens directly, with nearly frictionless ease, into the pool of under-educated voters, the great pool that collects under every democracy.  Though a constant in the minds of political scientists, its occupants are known by different names at different times.  What I call the "under-educated" was once, in America, the "Know-Nothing" and is now, more commonly, the "low-information" voter.  Not too long ago he could be called the "dumbhead" voter.  In any case, he's in a pool most easily tapped by hawks.

"Fine.  Your Avoidance Ruler will be above that.  He'll be above — meaning indifferent to — a lot of things that could lead his country into trouble.  But he'll also be indifferent to a lot of things that could lead the world, including his country, into disaster.  Hitler militarizes the Rhineland.  What will he be doing?  Passively waiting for the Great Mistake.  What will he be saying?  'Calm down, you (dumb?) hotheads, calm down.'"

You're missing something.  The Avoidance Ruler is a philosopher, remember.  Thinks.  Sorts out and traces cause and effect.  Visualizes consequence-chains.  Does a cost-benefit.  And what he can't do he has a staff of experts do.  But what he does best, and must do all by himself, is prioritize threats.  So he can concentrate on the big ones and wave away the little ones, no matter how hot his citizens get over them.

I know that sounds presumptuous, but ranking blunders is his thing.  He (or she) is an error philosopher.  So I think, with his philosophy, and his (or his helpers') ability to work out the cause-effect chain, that when Hitler went into the Rhineland, he'd have said, "This is big.  It would be a mistake not to act.  And act big."   You can't call an Avoidance Ruler a passive ruler.

"Got you.  And I think you're letting me call George W. Bush an active Avoidance Ruler.  He went right after terrorists.  It would have been a big mistake, a Rhineland-ignoring mistake, not to."

Oh please, let's not get back into George Bush.  I'm tired of talking about him.  I know, I know, he was an Avoidance Ruler.  I've granted that.  But he wasn't a philosopher.  He didn't come close.  Low standards of evidence, haphazard justification, loose cost-benefit, weak imagination.  I don't think he finished 101.  But I don't think I need to say any more about him.  Ari Shavit, in Wednesday's NYT Op-Ed (11-21-13), has pretty well said all that needs to be said.

115. Is Democracy an Ideology?

Is democracy an "ideology"? Does it have "agents"? Would they be "foreign agents"?

"No, you can't talk that way. An agent of a foreign ideology is somebody like those members of the Communist Party in the U.S. in the thirties. Somebody who works to undermine democracy."

Ah, but Marshal Tantawi and Prime Minister Putin are apparently talking that way. When Tantawi's people in Egypt's caretaker government accuse American NGOs of "interfering in domestic politics and stirring unrest" I hear his voice. When Putin's people lay responsibility for "turmoil in the streets" on American democracy-building groups I hear his. Both have gotten louder in the last month, with Putin's people accusing the American ambassador of "promoting revolution" (Huffington Post, 1-18-12) and Tantawi's people putting a travel ban on U.S. pro-democracy activists (Reuters, 1-26-120). What I'm wondering is how exactly their words are different from the words we used when we talked about communists as "agents of a foreign ideology."

"Well, the agents are certainly different and so are the ideologies — whatever the words. These give us enough to identify them."

Maybe so, but by the dictionary I think we're pretty firmly stuck. If an ideology is "the body of doctrine associated with a political movement" and an agent is "a person who acts on behalf of another person or group" and "foreign" tells you that person is from another country then those American-paid democracy-building people in Cairo and Moscow, right up to the ambassadors, are correctly called "agents of a foreign ideology." Putin and Tantawi are right.

"And so the only difference between communist agents in Washington then and democracy agents in Moscow now would be in their ideologies. But, you know, we shouldn't mind being stuck with that as long as we distinguish properly between their ideologies. Putin and Tantawi are each appealing to an ideology peculiar to their nation ("You're in Russia now, Ambassador McFaul") or culture ("Egypt is an Islamic country, sir") with its particular values; our ambassadors and NGOs are appealing to an ideology for the whole human race ("All men are created equal," they are "endowed with inalienable rights"). If democracy is an ideology our agents represent a superior one."

I know, I know. Universal values trump particular values. The American and French revolutions are the best. No nation or culture is justified in opposing them. Wonderful. Our ambassadors and NGOs work for humanity. And you know what? When I look at them all I can think of is "Old Dan Tucker." You know that song? "Get out of the way of old Dan Tucker, running late to get his supper.

"Don't you approve of those values? And of their priority?"

Yes, but they scare me to death. President Bush, appealing to them, loving them in the person of that Western, liberal president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, pushed to get Georgia into NATO. You know what that meant? It meant that if Russian troops invaded Georgia we, by the NATO commitment, would have had to send troops to their aid. All the way to Georgia, a country far from us, and which we could supply only through the Black Sea. Furthermore, it was adjacent to Russia, which still had a load of nuclear weapons. And we'd have had to take them on, or been "humiliated" — as they say of the worst thing that can happen to a Great Power.

The trouble with universal values is that you act on them in particular situations, facing a particular number of troops motivated by a particular culture or ideology. You can, as a friend in the Army once said, lose your particular ass.

"Isn't that the risk, more or less, of acting on any ideal?"

Yes, but risks vary with the ideal, and this one is loaded, especially for Americans. Talk about defending liberty and human rights and we'll line up behind you. How we lined up behind President Kennedy when he said, “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty” It excites me still. But where did that line lead? Into the agony of Viet Nam.

Think of President Bush going into Iraq. Get out of the way of Old Dan Tucker. He was like the other presidents except that he called up the defend-democracy spirit late, after he was already in the particular place. "No weapons of mass destruction? No Al Qaeda? No real threat? OK, we're here to build democracy." The American public will always excuse action toward that ideal. They wouldn't do that for an "ideology."

"That gives me an idea. Call 'democracy' an ideology and they'll quit excusing action in its name. And they won't be so eager to fight for it in every corner of the world. Good verbal move."

Sure, and it's exactly the move Putin is making. Democracy is an ideology like any other, and it happens that this particular country, the United States, is pushing it. On us.

"Is democracy an ideology like any other?"

Only, I suppose, if the American revolution is a revolution like any other.

102. How Should We Speak the Word "Democracy"?

"You don't really believe in democracy, you English-speakers, you believe in it only when the right guys are going to win." Try to answer that and you're hit with the names of the democratically elected wrong guys our guys moved out of office, Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran, Salvadore Allende in Chile. Or, worse, a quote from Dwight Eisenhower backing Ngo Dinh Diem's cancellation of elections in Viet Nam: "80 per cent of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh." Hold on, Vietnamese, you're not going to get any support from us for democracy.

So, if we state, "America is a democracy" proudly we're going to get a lot of noise. Can we quiet it down by making the statement doggedly? "We know, we know, but everybody has to compromise their ideals sometimes. In those times that you mention national self-interest trumped the democratic ideal, sure. But we had a good reason for that: serving our interest served the interest of democracy. The nation keeping democracy alive around the world has to keep itself alive, doesn't it? The Soviets used the same argument about communism and their country."

Say that, and then point out that we still have an election every four years, don't we? Peaceful transfer of power, that's our big claim. Democracy gives "power to the people most likely to be troublesome if deprived of it, the majority" (Post 39). We've got the essentials.

Clearly doggedness in that line can buy us some peace and quiet. But will it ever last? Aren't there always going to be some bad guys we want to keep out of power? And aren't there always going to be people of our own, maybe a majority, crying, "Bad! Bad! Keep them out! Keep them out!" Right now we've got Islamists threatening to win elections all over the Middle East. In Egypt there are some generals ready to keep them out. If we say, "Go ahead, generals, deprive them of power," how dogged can we be about those essentials? That's just what the generals will be violating. "Oh no," they'll hear us saying, "those people aren't going to be troublesome. They're just the majority." Yes, and we're the voice of democracy.

We don't know whether we'll talk like that yet but we know that if we do the word "democracy" is going to stick in our throats. And dogged repetition isn't going to help.

So, how will we speak the word? Should we maybe not use it? Find some other word for what we represent? No, we are still doing many things that only the word "democracy" identifies. And some of these are the ones that get us into the deepest trouble. Why do our leaders listen to those voices crying simply, "Bad! Bad!" — over communists in Viet Nam, or tyrants in Mesopotamia, or Islamists in Egypt? They know that the situations in those places are, or were, very complicated, and simple good-bad calls are very dangerous. They must know that. Educated people know that. Ah, but these educated people must, to stay in power, have the votes of the majority, which has never, in any country yet, had time (or inclination) to educate itself. So there you are. Democracy. There's no other word for it.

All right, we just have to find a becoming way of saying the word "democracy." It's tough. Luckily, though, we have some pretty good guides. Winston Churchill, after admitting that democracy was a terrible form of government, once added that it was "just better than all the others." There's our cue. Say it resignedly, or wryly. "Ah me, America is a democracy." In a store full of trash you've got to make the best of a bad bargain.