Discuss

Dr. King understood freedom more deeply than any real-estate broker waving a Gadsden flag. He understood true freedom is a bond, that freedom ties us all together rather than atomizing us into millions of tiny universes, which bend toward nothing at all. https://t.co/enqiTTXmva

— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) January 18, 2021

Lewis Lapham:

Together with the other fifty-five signers of the Declaration, Jefferson shared Paine’s distrust of kings but not his trust in the common man. Maybe in the eyes of God and Jean-Jacques Rousseau all men were created equal, but not in the fields of Jefferson’s plantation at Monticello. Traveling to Philadelphia in 1775 as a new member of the Continental Congress, Jefferson arrived in the city in a handsomely gilded coach attended by three of his slaves dressed in ornamental French brocade, wearing white silk stockings and powdered wigs.

When it came time, eleven years later, to write the Constitution, the prosperous and well-educated gentlemen acquiring their newfound American estate didn’t want anything to do with Paine; they looked upon him as a troublesome idealist on too-familiar terms with the lower orders of society and therefore not to be trusted with the task of dividing the spoils.The words for their enterprise the framers borrowed from the English philosopher John Locke, who had declared his seventeenth-century willingness “to join in society with others who are already united, or have a mind to unite, for the mutual preservation of their lives, liberties, and estates, which I call by the general name property.” Having in mind a beloved capitalist community not unlike the Puritan earthly paradise or our own latter-day gated communities of saints in Palm Beach and Palo Alto, Locke could not conceive of freedom established on anything other than property. Neither could the framers of the Constitution. By the word liberty they meant liberty for property, not liberty for persons.

They shared with John Adams the conviction that democracy “will infallibly destroy all civilization,” agreed with James Madison that the turbulent passions of the common man lead not only to revolution but also to the “rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project.” Together with Aristotle the framers believed that the best government incorporates the means by which a fortunate few arrange a distribution of property and law to the ignorant and less fortunate many. They envisioned a wise and just oligarchy to which they gave the name of a republic, to be owned and operated by men like themselves.

Aristotle, Politics

The basic example of a democracy is liberty.  People constantly make this statement, implying that only in this constitution do men share in liberty; for every democracy, they say, has liberty for its aim. Ruling and being ruled in turn is one element in liberty, and the democratic side of justice is in fact numerical equality, not equality based on merit.  When this idea of what is just prevails, the multitude must be sovereign, and whatever the majority decides is final and constitutes justice. First, they say, there must be equality for each of the citizens.  The result is that in democracies the poor have more sovereign power than the rich, for they are more numerous, and the decisions of the majority are sovereign.  So this is one mark of liberty, one that all democrats make a definitive principle of their constitution. Another is to live as you like.  For this, they say, is a function of being free, since its opposite, living not as you like, is the function of one enslaved. This is the second defining principle of democracy, and from it has come the ideal of not being ruled, not by anyone at all if possible, or at least only in alternation.

From these fundamentals, and from rule thus conceived, are derived the following features of democracy: elections to office by all from among all; rule of all over each and of each by turns over all; offices filled by lot, either all or at any rather those not calling for experience or skill; no tenure of office dependent on possession of a property qualification, or only on the lowest possible; the same man not to hold the same office twice, or only rarely, or only a few apart from those connected with warfare, short terms for all offices or for as many as possible; all to sit on juries, chosen from all and adjudicating on all or most matters, i.e., the most important and supreme, such as those affecting the constitution, scrutinies, and contracts between individuals; the assembly as the sovereign authority over everything, or at least the most important matters, officials having no sovereign power over any, or over as few as possible (the council is of all offices the most democratic as long as all members do not receive lavish pay; for lavish pay all around has the effect of robbing this office, too, of its power; for the people when well paid, take all decisions into their own hands); payment for services in the assembly, in the law courts, and in the offices is regular for all; as birth, wealth, and education are the defining marks of oligarchy, so their opposites, low birth, low incomes, and mechanical occupations, are regarded as typical of democracy; no official has perpetual tenure, and if any such offices remains in being after an early change, it is shorn of its power and its holders selected by lot from among picked candidates.

These are the common characteristics of democracies. And from the idea of justice that is by common consent democratic—justice based on numerical equality for all—springs what is reckoned to be the most thoroughgoing democracy and demos; for equality exists if the poor exercise no more influence in ruling than the rich and do not have sole sovereign power, but all exercise it together on the basis of numerical equality.  In this sense, they could think of the constitution as possessing equality and freedom.