Challenges to Democracy
The good things that frustrate democracy, and how to have them all
“And what, I said, will be the best limit for our rulers to fix when they are considering the size of the State and the amount of territory which they are to include, and beyond which they will not go?
What limit would you propose?
I would allow the State to increase so far as is consistent with unity; that, I think, is the proper limit.” -Plato’s The Republic, Book IV
It’s useful to look back on Plato’s The Republic when thinking about the limits of a state. He witnessed the earliest evolution of the Athenian state that can be traced to modern democracy. America is by far the oldest continuous democracy still functioning. There’s nuance there, but it’s beside the point. Other than India, America is the largest democracy in the world. When we refer to America as an experiment, it’s more literal than we may at first realize. Democracy is not natural or easy. We know this because history tells us how rare it is. It wasn’t until very recently, with the fall of the Soviet Union, that democracy became the most common form of government (we don’t have data for ~25 countries, so it could be even more recent, or not have happened yet).
The question of the efficacy of democracy comes up from time to time. The events of January 6th have caused me to think on it again. The ideals of democracy, that a government’s legitimacy comes from the consent of the governed and that the governed have the power to be heard and to affect the workings of their government, are certainly the best way for individuals to be governed, but what are its limits? If it’s the best way to be governed, why isn’t the whole planet a single democracy? It turns out there are practical limits to how large a democracy can be. Perhaps size is the wrong way to describe it. I imagine if everyone thought the same and had the same values, a single global democracy would work.
It turns out that freedom and diversity work against democracy. For a democracy to work, the people that comprise it must share at least some as-yet-unknown number of values. As more people are included, and if those people are free to believe what they choose, the beliefs and values are likely to become more and more divergent. At some point, there is enough divergence that a single democratic government does not work because some number of values held by the people within it are mutually exclusive, meaning they cannot coexist with each other.
The Founders of the United States figured out a partial solution to this problem: federalism. What this allowed was for the diverging values to be divided amongst the states, with fewer values being required to form the overarching federal government and subsequent national unity. The individual states did not have to agree on the same values as all the others. This diversity between the states meant that you could have more diversity amongst the governed, without all the values having to reside in the federal government, applying to everyone in the nation equally. Instead, diverse values could be divided between different states, with the federal government being indifferent to them.
Another way to make democracy work with a larger population is for most of that population to be the same. Multiculturalism, multi-ethnicity, multiple religions, and other types of diversity directly impede the ability of democracy to function by increasing the number of different potentially conflicting values citizens hold. This isn’t to say that multiculturalism and the like are bad, only that they are limiting factors on democracy. It is certainly easier to keep a state running well if there are majority values. This is why so many states throughout history have enforced common values. The Founders figured out some partial solutions to these, too: separation of church and state. Again, the government was required to be indifferent on religion in order to allow democracy to function for people of diverse religions. They did the same for most ethnicities, designing the government to be indifferent to ethnicity. We’ve improved on this, as well as similar issues of sex, race, sexuality, etc. since. In fact, the United States was the first state founded without one or more of these kinds of categories as its basis. It was the first state founded with ideas as its unifying values.
It appears that our values have become more divergent in the last 15 years or so, especially in the last four. On top of this, the federal government has pulled more and more power from the states to itself, thus reducing the diversity-tolerance effect of the federalist system. This reduces the amount of tolerance in the nation while the nation is growing in population size and diversity.
How do we increase the ability of democracy to function? Plato told us: unity. Unity is the key to democracy, the more things that divide us (religion, culture, values, political parties, etc.) the less democracy works. This is not an argument for the abolishment of any of these things or the imposition of any particular one. It means that having them all in one nation makes democracy harder. If we want to live in such a democracy, which I do, we must do the hard work to have a tolerant, diverse democracy.
“America isn’t easy. America is advanced citizenship.” -President Andrew Shephard, The American President
America is an experiment, and a very fragile one, because so many elements of human nature push against its success. The fact that it’s worked this long is truly miraculous. We’ve survived enormous strife as we constantly struggle to figure out what our common values should be and what should be absolutely forbidden, while balancing that with individual freedom and increased diversity. We’ve fought a civil war that could have easily ended the experiment after 75 years. This experiment is hard. We’re all responsible for it. Any time we find ourselves thinking about ‘us’ vs. ‘them,’ unless ‘us’ is Americans, we’re helping the experiment fail. We must tolerate our differences, while pushing back against intolerant ideas. We must push for a federal government that addresses only the most serious conflicts of values (those that are Civil War level) and pushes everything else back down to the states.
We must value our First Amendment ideals. When I was in the military, many of us took pride in saying, “I may not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.” That doesn’t mean only when you say it in your bedroom, or your house, or your street, or your school. That means everywhere, all the time. And where we think speech absolutely must be curtailed, only the government should have that power, the speaker must be presumed innocent, the standard for violation must be clear and universally applied, and the speaker must be afforded due process and a vigorous defense. I hope our service members are still saying it.
On top of all the other things pushing against democracy, we now have a handful of tech companies wielding power to remove people and entire groups from the public discourse. This is one of those natural human tendencies that we must resist as part of advanced citizenship. The only alternative is a less advanced democracy, one that enforces values on the people instead of allowing freedom and diversity and reflecting the values of the people. We have plenty of those in the world. The US is better than them, but we’re slipping.
One of the things that made Plato’s comment about unity jump out at me is a perfect example of how the tech companies are making us a less advanced democracy. The Unity movement was designed to bring unity to the 2020 Presidential election. No one can provide any evidence that it was not trying, however vainly, to foster unity. It continues to work for unity despite the 2020 ballot initiative’s failure. Twitter suspended @ArticlesOfUnity in early September. It’s still suspended with no explanation, no evidence of violating anything, no response to requests, and no recourse (more). This is not how democracy works. This is not unity, freedom, diversity, or advanced citizenship. The Unity movement wasn’t even controversial. What happens if citizens want to discuss a controversial idea or even a radical one?
If we value real diversity, which we should, we must allow that diversity to be expressed, even when we disagree with it. Perhaps especially then. This is what the First Amendment was written for. Those protections must be extended into the public discourse, regardless of where it takes place. The Founders knew this, even when they did not live up to it themselves. They knew well enough what ideals they were aiming for. They could not anticipate radio, television, or the internet, so it is incumbent upon us to ensure that those protections are applied to new domains.
More importantly, we must find unity. We must take it back where it has been lost, and we must continue to seek it out everywhere if the U.S. is going to remain a single democracy. We must reaffirm the value of tools like federalism and First Amendment protections that allow democracy to function at larger and larger scales. We must do this as a society and individuals. We must be part of the unity, not just advocate that others do so. When we find ourselves thinking in terms of groups we cannot unite with, we should think very hard about ways to make unity possible. This is not easy. This is advanced citizenship, and without it the American experiment will fail.
