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Is It Time to Reform the Canadian Prime Minister?

Election day may have come and gone, but Canadian democracy has weathered a number of alarming turns in recent months. And yet, of all the issues discussed during the campaign, Canada’s “democratic deficit” barely received a mention. Has Canadian democracy survived unscathed or does the threat remain?

One of the most concerning things about Canada’s constitution is the Office of the Prime Minister. Anyone looking for a description of the prime minister’s powers in Canada’s constitution will be disappointed. Canada’s unwritten constitution functions according to the conventions of Westminster-style parliamentary system (as used in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, India, Belize, and many more countries). The prime minister is appointed as the head of government (the head of the monarchs council of advisors) by the head of state (the monarch) on the basis that they have the confidence of a majority of MPs in the House of Commons. The powers and limitations of the office are mostly based on unwritten convention.

A 2001 book on the topic called Canada’s prime minister “the friendly dictatorship.” And in the decades since, Canadians occasionally wonder if the government has become too centralized in the Office of the Prime Minister. The prime minister has the power to appoint their cabinet, parliamentary secretaries, senators, judges (including the Supreme Court), ambassadors, civil servants, the governor general and the provincial lieutenant governors; they advise the monarch when parliament should sit (something only constitutionally mandated once per year), and they alone advise when elections should be called; all without any parliamentary oversight.

In addition, the prime minister is also usually (but not necessarily) the leader of the political party with the largest caucus of MPs in the House of Commons. Being a party leader provides other perks as the party constitution can shield a leader from accountability from their own caucus and the leader has almost unilateral powers to appoint or deny someone being a candidate for the party (even if the candidate was already selected by party members in their local constituency). Thus, a prime minister cannot only create many incentives to keep MPs quiet and make them toe the party line, but if they don’t the leader can simply prevent them from running again. This means that even those in the prime minister’s own party have little ability to hold their leaders accountable, as we saw late last year.

The relative lack of oversight and accountability for such an unusual amount of concentrated political power is concerning. The only real check on the prime minister is the House of Commons’ vote of non-confidence. Without more political tools, it’s difficult to reign in an incompetent or wayward prime minister. This was recently put to the test when former Prime Minister Trudeau, facing a 20% approval rating and the likelihood of electoral oblivion at the next election, faced increasing calls to step down, even from within his own party. It’s hard to argue that Trudeau’s government was known for its competence, but despite a clear consensus that Trudeau should probably go, Liberal MPs insisted that their party’s constitution did not permit them to replace a leader – despite the fact that a majority of Liberal MPs were eventually calling for Trudeau to quit.

By the end of last year, every other political party backing Trudeau’s minority government publicly stated that they had lost confidence in Trudeau and would seek to vote non-confidence at the first opportunity. So, while it was clear that not only could Trudeau not command the support of the House, and even his own caucus, one would think replacing him would be straightforward. It was not. With the Parliament in recess, there was no way to actually hold a vote of confidence, and without that one check on the powers of the prime minister, Trudeau was able to spend weeks “reflecting” before finally making a decision to resign (he could have waited months longer if he wanted to).

Regardless of how anyone may feel about Trudeau politically, his decaying premiership stands as an objective example of the dangers of a prime minister who refuses to go. Defenders of the state of Canadian democracy may take this as proof that the system works: Trudeau was removed. The truth is that Trudeau weakened the only check on the powers of a prime minister on his way out of office. Rather than resign immediately or simply have the Liberal caucus choose a new leader (as often happens in other parliamentary systems), Trudeau prorogued parliament, preventing a vote and giving the Liberal Party weeks to engage in a protracted leadership campaign while the country was staring down an economic crisis with the United States.

Prorogation – the parliamentary procedure to reset things and start a new session of parliament – isn’t normally controversial. However, twice in the past twenty years a (Liberal and Conservative) prime minister has used this mechanism to avoid an impending vote a non-confidence. Imagine, for example, a clear majority of Congress (including 2/3rds of senators) indicating publicly that they intend to impeach the president, but before a vote can be called, the president closes Congress and prevents it from sitting for months so that people can “cool off.”

This kind of concentrated power lends itself to abuse. Yet, according to constitutional convention, it is only the prime minister that can advise the monarch, and as far as the Canadian media and legal establishment is concerned, this power is almost absolute until a non-confidence vote can actually occur. In other words, any time a prime minister gets a whiff that they might face a non-confidence vote, they are entitled to seek prorogation. And, recall, Parliament only has to sit once per year.

This kind of power is difficult to defend. To escape political danger, a prime minister only has to ignore a minority parliament, claim that it is being dysfunctional, and call for a reset. But the courts of the United Kingdom have already recognized that a prime minister should not have a unilateral say. When Boris Johnson advised the monarch to prorogue Parliament during Brexit negotiations, the courts ruled that the advice was unlawful because it prevented Parliament from carrying out its constitutional function. So, when a prime minister is facing a revolt from roughly his entire caucus and deadlocks Parliament by refusing to hand over documents relevant to parliamentary oversight, it’s reasonable for people to see this as preventing Parliament from performing its duty.

This issue is bigger than Trudeau, it’s about the Office of the Prime Minister. The legitimacy of all executive power of the prime minister (and everyone they appoint) should not rest on interpretations of vague conventions only a select few constitutional scholars will understand. Clearly these unwritten conventions are ripe for abuse, and recent evidence strongly suggests that these problems will only get worse. Some kind of constitutional amendment governing the powers of the prime minister ought to be formalized. Unfortunately, the powers of the prime minister were barely discussed during the campaign (I doubt many even understand the problem). Canadians may have voted, but democracy has lost.

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Calling Out Polarization

There is a great deal of discussion about the relationship between misinformation and polarization, or the relationship between AI and polarization, particularly the dangers of things like filter bubbles and collaborative filtering. Most people recognize that political polarization – the tendency for the public to divide sharply between left and right in ways that encourage radicalization, increase mistrust, and strengthen intolerance for people and ideas – is generally a bad thing for democracy. This is true not only because it makes it more difficult to identify our shared interests and values, but also because it makes people easier to manipulate. Yet, while many emphasize the need for regulatory reform, perhaps a more straightforward social solution is required: calling out and condemning such attitudes.

First, let’s consider why polarization presents a problem for democracies. In its most fundamental form, the concept of democracy assumes that the public is capable of self-governance. This requires that individuals be able to understand public issues that affect them and to advocate for their own interests. Without the ability to understand what is in your own good, voting power, by itself, is of little help. If something inhibits public communication and deliberation, it greatly restricts the public’s ability to deliberate. As Philosopher Thomas Christiano notes, “To the extent that the epistemic weaknesses generated by a particular environment contribute to many people being deprived of important tools for thinking about their interests or aims, and vulnerable to having their rational abilities subverted by others with different purposes and interests, we have a serious problem for democracy.”

In cases of extreme polarization, where each side essentially listens to their own news with its own isolated take on public issues, individuals are cut off from potentially learning about common issues and shared values that will allow them to weigh interests, debate, and compromise. Such conditions allow voters to be easily manipulated as they are unlikely to trust “the other side,” making it more likely that hatred and outrage will keep people’s attention and keep a larger public divided.

If we can call out people for expressing “fascist” sentiments, “authoritarian” sentiments, “woke” sentiments, or “socialist” sentiments then why is it that we don’t call out figures for expressing needlessly polarizing sentiments? While the idea of attempting to push back against polarization sounds good in theory, as noted people can disagree on the causes. Also, when groups are polarized against other groups, they often feel their condemnation and dismissal of their political opponents comes with good reason.

Given the power of misinformation in othering, it quickly becomes impossible to reach across the aisle and take the concerns of the other side seriously. If we fundamentally disagree on the facts, it will be difficult to carry on a conversation. And this is no less true if we fundamentally disagree over values. It may seem unreasonable or even unacceptable to associate people who champion values that are in direct conflict with our own.

But another essential piece of democratic dialogue is the advancement of one’s views and the criticism of alternative policy ideas. Attempting to avoid polarization by minimizing differences between different political groups comes with its own set of consequences and complications.

Still, if we are going to denounce polarizing behavior, we need to be clear what kind of behavior should qualify. Pointlessly focusing on past political battles, “trolling” the other side, engaging in guilt-by-association fallacies, dismissing the concerns of whole groups of people, engaging in whataboutism; all count as unhelpful, polarizing tactics.

We also know that we cannot resist outrageous content, so perhaps we need to be better at policing both those in the media who benefit from posting “click-batey” material and ourselves for being tempted to consume it. We know full well that such content will not provide a balanced take on an issue, and we are all too prone to assuming that the other side is operating in bad faith. Even a failure to appear sufficiently patriotic quickly devolves into public figures being branded as “traitors.” But such attitudes and discourse are detrimental to democratic dialogue.

Of course, none of this means that you have to believe what the other side believes or adopt the same values they do. What it does require is that you don’t respond in ways that dismiss or demonize. As philosopher Jane Addams argues, “We know instinctively that if we grow contemptuous of our fellows, and consciously limit our intercourse to certain kinds of people whom we have previously decided to respect, we not only tremendously circumscribe our range of life, but limit the scope of our ethics.” Addams believed that most political conflict is a result of unnecessary personal attitudes getting in the way and that the key to a well-functioning democracy is a sympathetic understanding of our fellow citizens. Instead of concluding that one’s political opponents are degenerates or fools for believing as they do, see the wide gap that is said to separate their misguided ways from your true beliefs as a symptom of a larger social problem. You may find that the values, priorities, and interests of the other side, even if disagreeable, are still very much intelligible.

This shared understanding may in turn reveal shared values hidden under the veneer of political rhetoric and venom. As Addams notes, democracy requires that “all must turn out for one another, and at least see the side of one another’s burdens” and that “diversified human experience” is “the foundation and guarantee of democracy.” We should unite against those who seek only to polarize, just like those who litter, for polluting social discourse and obscuring our perception of a common cause.

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Banning Candidates in the Name of Democracy

Last year, far-right candidate Calin Georgescu won the first round of the Romanian presidential election. Two days before the runoff election, the Romanian Constitutional Court (similar to the U.S. Supreme Court) declared the original election legally invalid, on the basis of allegations of Russian interference on Georgescu’s behalf. Heightening the crisis, the Romanian Central Election Bureau barred him from re-running — a decision upheld by the court on Tuesday, March 12th. The same bureau has also barred far-right candidate Diana Sosoaca from running, although a third far-right candidate George Simion remains in as of March 16th.

Georgescu and Sosoaca, unsurprisingly, maintain that the behavior by the court and election bureau is anti-democratic. The on-the-ground details matter in Romania, but it raises a more general question: can such “anti-democratic” behavior be justified as necessary for defending democracy?

A tempting starting point is to adopt a rule like, “if the voters are okay with it, it’s okay.” This makes elections the ultimate test of political acceptability. A plausible rationale is that democracies should reflect the will of the people, either directly or through their representatives, and therefore the more they reflect the will of the people, the better and more democratic they are. But this view quickly encounters difficulties.

First, it fails to account for corruption of the democratic process itself. For example, if a politician cheated during an election through hacking voting machines, then voters’ endorsement has little meaning. This conclusion may also hold true in cases of misinformation or other forms of psychological manipulation. Arguably, if voters are sufficiently misinformed about underlying facts, then they cannot actually articulate a political will. By comparison, consider someone consenting to surgery for which a doctor provided a deliberately false description of its risks and benefits — is this really consent?

This suggests that democratic integrity may be a defensible reason to ban a candidate. It seems legitimate to remove people from participating in the democratic process, if they are actively undermining that process. Unfortunately, the precise implementation of this policy is extremely challenging. Something like hacking voting machines is cut and dried; deciding what constitutes misinformation, who decides, and how much misinformation there has to be before the integrity of an election is undermined is much trickier business.

Second, we may think that certain behavior — murder, or theft, or corruption — should, at least for a time, disqualify one from running for office. When someone commits such a deed they typically lose rights and privileges (e.g., the freedom to go where one wishes). Holding political office may simply be another kind of privilege that gets revoked. Again, it may be challenging where precisely to draw the line, but a core idea here is that elections should not be viewed as a substitute for law and justice (for further discussion see my piece on Presidential Immunity).

But most controversial of all is the question of whether someone should be disqualified from the political process not for interfering with electoral integrity, nor for criminality, but because of the particular political positions they hold. An especially extreme example would be a politician whose main campaign promise is to begin a program of genocide on day one. Should this person be allowed to run for office? Should this platform be put to a vote?

A possible grounds for dismissal stems from Karl Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance (previously discussed in the Post). Essentially, if a society is too tolerant of intolerance, then tolerance itself can be lost. Rights, in fact, can secure the very conditions under which the intolerant can grow strong. A party planning to suppress speech has every incentive to take advantage of free speech to get its message out and even to claim its free speech is being suppressed if the government responds. Therefore, a society striving to be tolerant of diverse opinions and beliefs, needs to be at least somewhat intolerant of intolerant opinions – those positions that threaten to undermine the foundations of a free society. Unfortunately, how intolerant of intolerance the tolerant society should be remains a particularly perplexing puzzle. At the center of this difficulty lies a crucial question: Is the commitment to maintaining a tolerant society the kind of thing that should be put to a vote?

The concern here is what philosophers sometimes call the “tyranny of the majority,” previously discussed by Benjamin Rossi. Imagine if 51% of the population could vote to expel or imprison the other 49%. Is this really government by the people? To combat the ability of the majority to define the lives of their fellows, the courts, constitutional minority rights protections, and other democratic institutions and features act as backstops to protect against the majority’s power. Perhaps, holding certain constraints on who can run and what their policies can be are similarly defensible.

Or perhaps the proper way to deal with these concerns is to have constraints on the kinds of policies that can be enacted. A proponent of fundamental human rights, for example, claims that we deserve certain rights and privileges simply on the basis of the kind of thing (a human thing) that we are. Governments don’t “give” us rights; we come into this world already deserving consideration. Plausibly, then, a candidate intending to take away those rights, could be considered illegitimate and barred from participating.

Unfortunately, there is no definitive list of third-rail rights and freedoms which politicians are not allowed to touch. Hopefully, a constitution spells out such freedoms, but it’s typically considered legitimate to modify a constitution. As long as a candidate is committed to this constitutional process, we have no reason to bar their entry. It must be noted, however, that, after granting someone great power, it is not always easy to enforce constraints on what they do with that power. Therefore, there may be a practical argument for removing candidates hostile to others’ rights before they attain office.

As we’ve seen, there are multiple justifiable grounds for potentially barring someone from running for office, from protecting the integrity of the democratic process to protecting minority rights. The implementation however is often exceptionally difficult. Who gets to be the guardian of democracy? Who gets to decide which candidates are offensive, which platforms are objectionable, which values are odious? How could we possibly escape the potential risk of abuse of such king-making power?

Despite these difficulties, we should be clear-eyed about these “who watches the watchmen” concerns. There may be no perfect process to safeguard democracies, no truly neutral party. But there will be nothing left of democracy to protect if we insist on having no safeguard at all.

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“Freedom” Is Good for Democrats, Bad for Democracy

photograph of miniature flags at political rally

The central debate in this presidential campaign was set out at the beginning by the novice pundit Beyonce: “freedom, freedom where are you?” The Democrats have claimed that freedom has always belonged with them and they are finally reclaiming it from the right. Conservatives, of course, countered that freedom is being hijacked from its true home and used to dress up the left’s usual coercive politics. So, who’s right – did the Democrats reclaim or hijack freedom? And, more importantly, should they have done either?

Commentators on both sides agreed on the answer to the first question: it depends on your definition of “freedom.” The philosopher Isaiah Berlin famously distinguished between two kinds of freedom, negative and positive. Negative freedom asks the government only to “mind [its] own damn business,” while positive freedom allows the government to intervene in people’s lives to help them achieve their goals. So, when Democrats used “freedom” to describe their interventionist policies, they were reclaiming a positive definition of freedom to reframe values like safety, equality, and justice as (somewhat tortured) freedoms: the “freedom from fear, violence, and harm,” “freedom to live without fear of bigotry and hate,” and the “freedom to learn and acknowledge our true and full history.”

Even as commentators argued over whether Democrats were entitled to use the language of freedom, however, no one questioned whether they should. Messaging gurus declared it a winning strategy based on focus group testing and the broad appeal of freedom. Liberal writers celebrated it as potentially transforming American politics. And even political philosophers were pleased; parsing this one word back into its many meanings is going to keep us relevant for at least a month. In an election that has struggled to elevate the debate above who is “weird” and who is “real,” it might be hard to get worked up about too much philosophy in politics. But, in this case at least, what’s good for philosophers and Democrats is ultimately bad for democracy.

Campaigns are not just contests between messaging gurus. Party platforms are created to win elections, but they also serve the important democratic purpose of providing a clear contrast to the other party so voters can choose the party that speaks to their priorities. To draw a clear contrast, it helps to use different words. Consider the debate over national security after 9/11 or the recent debates on pandemic policy. It is difficult enough to choose between safety and privacy or freedom and health without commercials telling you that privacy is the new safety or true freedom starts with health. And once both sides try to redescribe their priorities in the language of freedom, you end up with a confusing contest between freedom from fear and freedom from surveillance, or the freedom to be healthy versus the freedom of association. These debates are framed for lawyers, not the voting public. And if voters can’t understand what they’re choosing between, then their chosen representatives don’t and can’t represent their will.

Replacing other values with “freedom” also runs counter to the pluralist strand of Democratic politics, which Barack Obama represented in his speech at the DNC. As he often has, Obama talked about the importance of how we treat those who disagree with us – how we listen to and learn from them. On his podcast the next day, Ezra Klein described this strand as valuing how we “make space for them even in disagreement.” Part of making this space is to acknowledge that others’ values are indeed valuable, even if they aren’t what’s most important right now. But when we suggest that ours is the “real” freedom, we don’t leave any space for theirs. For instance, when we frame pandemic policies as sacrificing some amount of freedom to promote public health, we are at least acknowledging the trade-off between legitimate values. If, instead, we call public health the “freedom from viruses,” it suggests that there is not an inevitable trade-off but a way in which we can have both freedom and health. Anyone who thinks otherwise just has the wrong idea about freedom. This insight that there are inevitable trade-offs in politics is another aspect of Isaiah Berlin’s thought – one that did not resurface last week. In Berlin’s world, we often have to choose between good things – safety and privacy, speech and inclusion, freedom and health. If we don’t acknowledge these trade-offs, it becomes difficult to even see the need for a compromise with others, let alone pursue one.

Maybe you’re not a pluralist Democrat, though, and you don’t care whether voters can make a clear choice. Maybe all that matters is that voters choose the right president in November, and we can work out the policy details later. Even then, reframing all Democratic values as freedoms does little to move the public in a progressive direction. The reason that reframing progressive values as freedoms broadens their appeal is that freedom seems to demand less than progressives usually want. For some people, freedom only demands non-interference – no one telling them what to do. For others, freedom demands that they have the option for something, but not necessarily a realistic opportunity, a responsibility, or an entitlement to that thing. As a result, the freedom to vote is not necessarily a demand to make voting easier. The freedom to “get ahead” is not necessarily an equal opportunity to get ahead. And the “freedom to learn and acknowledge our true history” takes a strong stand against banning books, but doesn’t suggest a responsibility to teach our children how race has shaped that history. When these slogans get translated into policy, Democrats may find that freedom is flexible enough to accommodate Republican aspirations, but not quite broad enough for their own.

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When Does a Democracy Die?

photograph of statue of liberty silhouette

The Democratic party refrain of 2024 has been that democracy is on the ballot. Certainly, Trump’s actions have raised concerns from the events of January 6th to his continued denial of the results of the 2020 election (and refusal to commit to accepting future election results), to a recent controversial quote: “In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not going to have to vote.” (Trump later provided some clarification.)

And yet the Democrats have hardly been maximalist about democracy this election. When Biden was his most stubborn during the nomination process, he asserted that the voters had spoken, despite the lack of a competitive primary. Later, when he stepped aside, Harris was advanced to the top of the ticket without a public referendum.

Of course, the spirit of Democrats’ rallying cry is not that this or that behavior is undemocratic, but rather that the former president represents an existential threat to American democracy. This raises a surprisingly challenging question: When does a democracy end? And how do we know?

We tend to speak of democracy in generalities: rule by the people, majoritarian rule, etc. Yet most modern democracies are a complex jumble of elements subject to varying levels of impact from the voting public. In the United States for example, senators and representatives are elected by the people (more democratic), whereas the president is selected through the electoral college (less democratic), and the Supreme Court is appointed (less democratic). It is worth noting that “democratic” is not always the same as good. Some notionally “less democratic” elements, such as courts, may be important safeguards for the protection of minority rights, as both Benjamin Rossi and I have previously discussed. The complexity of modern democracies hinders the ability to make simple, clear-cut distinctions and comparisons.

When evaluating failures of democracy, one strategy is to start with a minimal definition. The idea being that when these core features go, so does democracy. The conservative political theorist Joseph Schumpeter famously argued that democracy requires nothing more than competitive elections. Others have longer lists. For example, the theorist Robert Dahl enumerates six: elected officials; free, fair and frequent elections; freedom of expression; alternative sources of information; associational autonomy; and inclusive citizenship. According to Dahl these are the minimal political institutions required to achieve a functioning democracy. Even minimal approaches do not allow for a crisp delineation between democracy and non-democracy, for each criterion is complicated on its own. How should elected officials be elected? What is required for a fair election? Nonetheless, minimal accounts highlight common important features of democracies and we may be able to identify democratic failures even without a black and white distinction or single authoritative definition.

Alternatively, rather than looking for defining features, we can instead focus on what democracy is supposed to do. America is rather proud of its democratic history, but what makes democracy so great in the first place? Among numerous defenses, a classic approach is “instrumental defenses” of democracy. The idea is that democracy is good because it delivers good results, such as effective policy, economic growth, peaceful international relations with other democracies, and a civically engaged populace. From an instrumental perspective we can worry about the health of democracy – that is, the results it’s delivering – even if we think our democratic procedures are solid. We may think that there has been a democratic failure if a country elects to drastically limit civil rights, even if a majority of voters supported it. Less radically, we might also identify democratic failure with elected officials no longer being responsive to voters after they take office. Popular conceptions of democracy often incorporate features beyond political process, such as rights and liberties, but there can still be disagreement about what exactly a democracy is supposed to do. Nonetheless, considering what we want democracy to do can highlight key elements. For example, it may make sense to limit campaign spending, if we believe it accomplishes an important goal of democracy, like giving citizens with vastly differing personal wealth and power an equal stake in government. An implication of a result-oriented approach is that people may lose faith in democracy if it fails to deliver certain political outcomes.

Assuredly, some democratic failures are especially decisive: a party staging a coup with the help of the military, a president refusing to leave office after losing an election, officials banning a specific demographic from voting. In such cases, we can expect citizens to recognize that a major democratic failure has occurred. But consider the following two scenarios. In case one, an incumbent politician loses an election 48% to 52%, but nonetheless refuses to step down and pressures the judiciary to declare them victorious. In case two, through limiting the number of polling stations and controlling their location in unfavorable neighborhoods, an incumbent party wins an election 52% to 48%. Absent this manipulation of polling stations, they would have lost the election 48% to 52%. The democratic failure is more obvious in case one, but the effect is similar.

The worry is that if people expect certain signals for major democratic failures, they may fail to appreciate the less dramatic ones. Votes can be rigged, voters can be disenfranchised, voting power can be unfairly distributed, and real decision-making power can rest with unelected officials. The public quickly acclimates to less democratic approaches. The United States gladly considered itself democratic for much of its history, even while systematically denying voting rights to Black Americans, women, and the poor. It turns out that democratic lip service and actually democratic political practices come apart quite easily.

Today, Americans are extremely cynical about the state of their democracy. 72% say the U.S. is no longer a good example to follow. But we should not expect the death of democracy to look like just one thing. Voter suppression, gerrymandering, moneyed influence, or an overzealous Supreme Court can undermine democracy as assuredly as a coup. Guided or managed democracies, which maintain the superficial appearance of democracy, even while being largely beholden to an entrenched minority, may be as much of a threat as some extravagant collapse into totalitarianism. If anything, focusing on Trump as a singular threat to democracy interferes with a broader conversation about democratic failures and the ideal that American democracy should aspire towards.

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Should Corporations Be Democratic?

photograph of chairs in a boardroom

It can be easy to forget what a corporation essentially is. We may all have preconceived notions about what a corporation should do, but, ultimately (and historically), a corporation is simply a group of people engaged in some kind of enterprise that are legally recognized as a distinctive entity. It is common enough to think that a corporation should primarily focus on maximizing its returns for shareholders, but obviously the business world is more complicated than the narrow view of earnings. We saw this last week with Elon Musk highlighting that he is willing to prioritize political principles over profits. A similar question was raised regarding the future of OpenAI when its board of directors was forced to rehire its CEO after employees threatened to leave. This tension between profits and principles gives way to an interesting question: Should corporations be democratic – should employees have a direct say over how a corporation is run? Is this likely to result in more ethical corporations?

There is no fixed notion of what a corporation is for or how it is supposed to be run. Typically, a corporation is governed by a board of directors who are elected by shareholders and who appoint a CEO to run the company on their behalf. Typically, this creates a structure where executives and managers have a clear fiduciary responsibility to act in the interests of shareholders. This can create tension within a corporation between management and labor. Whereas the owners and managers seek to maximize profit, employees seek higher wages, greater benefits, and job security. But would it be better if the gap between workers and owners were erased, and employees had direct democratic influence on the company?

Industrial democracy is an arrangement where employees are capable of making decisions, sharing responsibility, and exercising some authority in the workplace. Giving employees a democratic say can be done in many ways. A company could include employees in a trust where that trust controls the corporation’s shares and thus the board of directors. Another way employees can engage in democratic control over a corporation is by establishing a cooperative where every employee owns a share. Finally, a third form of industrial democracy takes the form of “codetermination” such as is practiced in Germany where any corporation with more than 1,000 employees must be given representation on the corporation’s board of directors.

Defenders of industrial democracy argue that the practice would ensure employees have a more meaningful influence on their workplace, giving them greater say over how corporations are run and what their wages will be. They further argue that this can lead to higher wages, less turnover, greater income equality, and greater productivity. For example, Mondragon – one of the largest worker cooperatives headquarters in Spain – allows their employees to vote on important corporate policies. They have, for instance, enacted regulations that require that wages for executives be no capped at a certain ratio compared to those making the lowest wage.

Some have argued that efforts to democratize the workplace help to offset the lost influence and bargaining power that’s come from the demise of unions. It’s possible that some forms of industrial democracy could be an alternative to unions where rather than creating a countervailing power to management, individual employees can enjoy a seat at the table. In this way, employees might become more invested in the company, and also potentially prevent disputes and conflicts between employees and management.

Supporters of industrial democracy argue that reforming the corporate governance system is necessary because the standard model contributes to economic underperformance, poor social outcomes, and political instability. Giving employees more say can make them more enthusiastic about the company. It may also be especially desirable in a case like OpenAI’s where there is concern about how the AI industry is regulating itself. Greater employee say could even encourage greater accountability.

On the other hand, critics worry that increasing democracy in the workplace, particularly if required by law, represents an unwarranted interference with business practice. Obviously, people on different sides of the political spectrum will differ when it comes to regulations mandating such practices, but there may be a more fundamental ethical argument against granting employees representation on a board of directors: they don’t deserve it. The argument that investors should have representation follows from the idea that they are choosing to risk their own funds to finance the company. Given their investment, the board and corporate executives have the right to dictate the company’s direction.

In the abstract, critics of industrial democracy argue that it will undermine the business ultimately because employees will be incentivized to work to their own self-interest rather than what is best for the company. However, in practice perhaps one reason for not adopting industrial democracy is that it doesn’t necessarily have a significant impact on business practices in areas where it is practiced.

A 2021 study from MIT found “the evidence indicates that … codetermination is neither a panacea for all problems faced by 21st century workers, nor a destructive institution that appeals obviously inferior to shareholder control. Rather, it is a moderate institution with nonexistent or small positive effects.” When employees have a stake in the company, they tend to behave more like shareholders. If their bottom lines are affected, there is no reason to think that an employee-controlled corporation will be more inclined to act more ethically or more cutthroat.

In other words, the greatest argument against increasing workers’ say in the workplace may be that it simply won’t have the positive effects on corporate governance that might be hoped for. Even with direct representation on the board, that does not mean that this will equate to any kind of direct control over the corporation’s practices, particularly if they are in the minority. Union supporters have long argued that rebuilding union strength is a superior alternative to increasing employee representation.

It is worth pointing out, however, that even if workers don’t invest money directly in a business, they do invest their time and risk their livelihood. Perhaps this fact alone means employees deserve greater voice in the workplace. While representation on the board of directors won’t necessarily lead to dramatic change, numerous studies have shown that it can supplement union and other activities in increasing employee bargaining power. Thus, while it may not be a full solution to improving corporate governance, it might be a start.

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Is Canadian Democracy Getting Weaker?

photograph of Justin Trudeau in front of row of Canadian Flags

Last week Prime Minister Trudeau criticized Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki for democratic backsliding. This might seem a bit rich from someone who is mired in controversy over whether his government failed to act to stop foreign interference in elections when that interference aimed to hurt his rivals. There is no hard proof of this, but Trudeau has resisted calling a public inquiry into election interference, prompting accusations of a cover-up. Trudeau’s bizarre attempt to avoid an inquiry by appointing a “special rapporteur” recently ended, but it is far from clear whether any democratic checks to hold the Trudeau government accountable on this issue will prevail. Two years ago, I asked whether the U.S. is becoming less democratic. Given this issue in Canada, along with various other issues recently, perhaps this raises questions about the robustness of Canadian democracy and whether we are engaging in democratic backsliding of our own?

Canadian media reported that China attempted to interfere in the 2019 and 2021 Canadian elections, including threatening Canadian politicians. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) had advised the government that China had attempted to deploy disinformation and secure funding for preferred candidates to help the Liberal Party of Canada secure a minority government. Sources have claimed that Trudeau and his cabinet ignored these warnings. It has also been reported that China had targeted MPs like Michael Chong and that the government did not warn him. The government initially tried to claim that they weren’t briefed on this, but it was later revealed that they were aware of these efforts.

This has the potential to undermine democratic trust in Canadian elections, both because it makes it more difficult to accept the results as valid (Conservatives estimate, for example, that Chinese interference may have cost them 9 seats), but also because of the possibility that the government was either complicit or incompetent in the face of it. Thus, the public wanted a public inquiry into the issue. Yet, despite near universal calls for such an inquiry from every opposition party, only the Prime Minister can decide if a public inquiry should be called. Trudeau decided to make up an entirely new and ad hoc process to decide if an inquiry should be called by appointing a “Special Rapporteur” in the form of former Governor General David Johnston to investigate matters and on the basis of his good name alone, ask that Canadians trust Johnston to decide if an inquiry was necessary.

There were already suspicions of a conflict of interest which were only magnified when Johnston’s report announced that there would be no judicial inquiry as it would be difficult dealing with classified materials in a public inquiry. Instead, he suggested leading hearings about the experiences of diaspora communities in Canada. Canadians were not happy with this. Only 27% of Canadians polled believed that Johnston was impartial. The House of Commons passed a motion requesting his resignation and for an inquiry to be held. At first, Johnston resisted, saying he respected the right of the House to “express its opinion” but that his mandate was to the Prime Minister himself.

Does this offer evidence of democratic backsliding? Certainly such an unprecedented and improvised process raises eyebrows. The prime minister handpicked the investigator tasked with determining whether he or his government is potentially undermining Canadian elections. The investigation was conducted in private with no opportunity for cross examination of witnesses, no one testified under oath, and evidence was only provided voluntarily by the cabinet. In other words, the methods used were potentially unreliable and accountable, prompting criticism from Conservatives.

Johnston, who despite enjoying respect and admiration for his time as Governor General, has numerous ties to the Prime Minister. He was a member of the Trudeau Foundation, which had accepted donations from Chinese sources, and whose entire board recently resigned. He was also a long known acquaintance of the Prime Minister and his family, having known Trudeau as a student at McGill University and from a family friendship “rooted only in the five or six times” their families skied together years ago.

Given that Trudeau has a minority government and depends on the opposition, their governing partners in the NDP could have insisted Trudeau and Johnston, acting on their own motion. But, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh refused to back out of his informal gentleman’s agreement to support the Liberals, citing the fact he didn’t want an election to be called while there were still doubts about election integrity. This eliminated the only realistic democratic check to keep Trudeau accountable on this issue. Until Johnston finally agreed to step down this week. Now the Liberals have even signaled that they are open to a full inquiry.

Defenders of the process have argued that Johnston is an honorable gentleman being treated unfairly – he was simply a public servant working in good faith who fell victim to partisanship. Johnston was known as a person of honor and enjoyed great respect for his nonpartisan role as Governor General. He also privately asked a retired Supreme Court Justice for his opinion on the matter and that judge said he didn’t believe there was a problem. Others have argued that anyone chosen for the job would have had the same fate; criticism was inevitable. Besides, since Johnston ultimately resigned and an inquiry looks more and more likely, perhaps the system ultimately “worked.”

On the other hand, problems with the process remain. For example, the justice who signed off on Johnston also was associated with the Trudeau Foundation at one point, and Johnston’s legal council consisted exclusively of Liberal advisors. Ultimately, the complaints highlight a trend with Trudeau’s government which has had so many conflict of interest problems. It’s gotten so bad that the Ethics Commissioner recently called for basic training for all cabinet ministers.

Does this mean that Canadian democracy is weakening? For many years, critics have expressed worry about the government depending far too much on the executive and the Prime Minister’s Office. Calls are getting louder to reign in that power. There have also been concerns regarding the government’s recent attempt to regulate speech on the internet, laws which have made Canada an outlier. Trudeau’s use of the Emergencies Act to stop a protest he helped inflame, and the use of state power to seize bank accounts serve as additional signals of the weakening of democratic guardrails. This was only further underscored by the fact that the Commissioner who investigated the use of the Emergencies Act and controversially concluded that that the threshold for its invocation had been met, had (you guessed it) a history with the Liberal Party of Canada.

The increasing polarization in the country is making it easier for politicians to try to justify some fairly sketchy policies. A significant base is all too willing to jump to their defense, purely for the purpose of partisanship. This only makes the potential for the abuse of power easier. While some might argue that Canada’s democratic system of accountability ended up working in this particular case, an inquiry is not certain and even if it comes to pass it will only be by luck and public pressure. Johnston asked Canadians to trust him and now Singh is asking Canadians to trust him to judge when Canadian elections are free from interference. But any investigation will still depend on the goodwill of Trudeau and his league of extraordinary gentlemen.

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The Meaning of Monarchy

photograph of Queen Victoria statue at Kensington Palace

A prominent figure for nearly a century, the death of Queen Elizabeth II leaves a tremendous void behind. Many are deeply affected by this loss. For some, however, the death of the Queen also breaks a spell. As perhaps the most famous representation of monarchy, her image seems to have put some questions about the nature of monarchy on hold for some time. Almost immediately after her death, however, questions about the future of monarchy – generally, or in the U.K. specifically – began to swirl. While some have started to map out the succession line, others voiced criticism of their historical (colonial) ties to the monarchy. Now, there is a strong call to take a moral stance regarding monarchy, in general. Questions concerning the role of monarchy coupled with the financial, diplomatic, and moral burden of the royal families are coming to the fore.

The problem with taking a moral stance, however, is that the monarchy today is quite different from the monarchy in the past: Not many “Royalists” in the traditional sense remain standing in the Western world. These domesticated and tranquilized monarchies hold almost no political power; they are merely symbolic.

But what’s not clear is what exactly these “Symbolic Monarchies” symbolize, and whether one is morally obligated to support or oppose what they represent. Do they pose some threat of oppression like in the past or are they now somehow “redeemed”?

From my regional point of view, the idea of monarchy is still a very dangerous one. The Middle East, in general, is quite accustomed to a very strong central figure, and developing democracy or civil society is always under threat by an autocratic one-man regime. As the West of “The East” or the East of “the West,” Turkiye is an interesting boundary case where the idea of monarchy is both very weak and yet still somehow scary at the same time. From time to time, the possibility of a symbolic Ottoman Emperor is jokingly suggested. Most react radically to even the mere mention, whereas some think a powerless monarchy has some kind of emotional and historical nostalgic value – mainly in a more cultural, diplomatic, and touristic sense. One year after the establishment of the Turkish Republic, the Osmanoglu Family were sent into exile in 1924 since it was thought they would pose a threat to the newly found republic. In the first half of the 70s, this exile was lifted for all members as any dream to resurrect the Ottoman Empire seemed unrealistic. (I believe it is still unrealistic.)

However, some events involving members of the Osmanoglu Family are worrying. Some, claiming to be the rightful inheritors of the Ottoman Sultan, Abdulhamid II, demand lands on the ground that these were the personal property of the Sultan. Meanwhile, Abdulhamid Kayıhan Osmanoglu, claiming to be a royal family member, has entered into politics in “New Welfare Party” – a revamp of a radically conservative party – and usually goes around in Sehzade/Prince clothes. Additionally, the 21st century has brought a “Neo-Ottoman” political and cultural wave in Turkiye. From the very beginning, some have pointed out a relation between governing “Justice and Development Party (AKP)” and this “Ottomania” or “Neo-Ottomanism.”

In one sense, no one – including AKP – appears to be seriously considering abolishing democracy and bringing the monarchy back. However, in another sense, interest in monarchy appears to be very much revived.

This situation is enough to make any citizen of a country with a similar history uneasy.

From a North American or European point of view, these events may not seem relevant since the threat – especially in the Middle Eastern region – is not about Symbolic Monarchy, but the possibility of reinstating Traditional Monarchy. The general belief that a Symbolic Monarchy is safe, harmless, or powerless is generally accepted unquestioningly in the West. Its assumed lack of political power is so overemphasized that its message – what a monarchy represents – is generally overlooked.

Some treat Symbolic Monarchy like they do fictional entities like Santa Claus. Having great cultural importance, this take on monarchy assumes that Symbolic Monarchy is not really a “monarchy” as much as a glamorous imitation for show. These declawed figureheads are like Santa Claus giving out gifts in malls and ringing a bell on the corner of the streets. Perhaps the Queen was not a “Queen” after all. Maybe she represented the fantasy of an ideal benevolent ruler that we know doesn’t exist. It was simply an unforgettable role played by the actor Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor, whose fans now feel they’ve lost their heroine.

But for those more familiar with the monarchies of old, this preoccupation with pageantry is naïve.

Even if it is merely a role to be played, we must still ask: What does this role represent? Even though we may appreciate the actors who play them, the public performance of roles like “Queen,” “Tzar,” and “Sultan” evoke real historical associations.

This is where these roles get their power, and contrary to the nostalgic reception, some of these associations are negative. Reminiscing often comes with memories of colonization, abuse, and torture. Many people are reminded of how they or their ancestors were oppressed. The very existence of Symbolic Monarchy and its global glorification seems capable of hurting many or being used as a tool to numb people to historical harms. Even in its lightest form – where we assume the characters are benevolent and we acknowledge and condemn past transgressions – monarchy represents inequality, as Nicholas Kreuder has recently argued; it contradicts the natural or essential equality of all human beings.

Is this necessarily true? I’m sympathetic to Benjamin Rossi’s critique that suggests that as long as people can in some way voluntarily embrace it, monarchy can be morally legitimate. But, from another point of view, it’s difficult to judge whether the adoption is voluntary or not.

In historically oppressed cultures, it is common to observe the adoption of their oppressors’ values, language, and religion, which were forced on them in the past. For such people, an idea like “Queen” can be very damaging and, controversially, soothing at the same time.

Ultimately, Symbolic Monarchy is thought to exercise some influence on the public but a low political influence: They seem to play only a support role to major events with no decision-making power. But what is “real” power these days? Members of a royal family have many powerful symbols at their disposal that wield great influence, including casting a shadow over politics. Though they are generally not allowed to endorse an ideology, party, or politician, the line between supporting a moral cause and supporting a policy is incredibly blurry. As “influencers,” their discretion in addressing particular issues rather than others, their preferences on charity and patronage, or the moral positions they adopt in royal dramas are not easily separable from political issues. While royal families’ political influence is difficult to quantify, there is no doubt – from their fashion sense to their diplomatic missions – that they possess “power.”

Today, monarchy is under increasing scrutiny following the Queen’s death. Some admire these royal families. Some remember the yoke of oppression. Some fear past monsters may rise again. What power the idea has left – be it Traditional Monarchy or Symbolic – remains an open question.

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Monarchy and Moral Equality

photograph of Queen's Guard in formation at Buckingham Palace

In a recent column, Nicholas Kreuder argues that the very idea of monarchy is incompatible with the moral equality of persons. His argument is straightforward. He claims that to be compatible with moral equality, a hierarchy of esteem must meet two conditions. First, the person esteemed must be estimable — in other words, esteem for her must be earned, or at least deserved. Second, deferential conduct toward the esteemed person must not be coerced or otherwise involuntary. But the deference demanded by a monarch is neither warranted, nor voluntarily given: monarchs are esteemed only for their royal pedigree, and their subjects are expected to show esteem even though they are not, at least in the typical case, subjects by choice. Therefore, the hierarchy of esteem between monarch and subject is fundamentally incompatible with moral equality.

This argument is compelling, and as a confirmed republican, I confess bewilderment at the practice of paying a woman to live in fabulous wealth for a century so that she can christen the nation’s boats.

Nevertheless, for the sake of argument, I would like to critically examine Kreuder’s premises to see whether they really establish his sweeping conclusion.

The first question to consider is a simple one: what is a monarch? The argument against monarchy from moral equality appears to assume that monarchies are by definition hereditary, and that they are never elective. In fact, elective or non-hereditary monarchies are not unusual in human history. In Ancient Greece, the kings of Macedon and Epirus were elected by the army. Alexander Hamilton argued for an elective monarchy in a speech before the Constitutional Convention of 1787; he thought the American monarch should have life tenure and extensive powers.

In truth, authoritative sources seem confused about just what a monarchy is. For instance, the Encyclopedia Britannica defines “monarchy” as “a political system based upon the undivided sovereignty or rule of a single person.” Yet the accompanying article acknowledges that in constitutional monarchies, the monarch has “transfer[red] [her] authority to various societal groups . . . political authority is exercised by elected politicians.” That does not sound like undivided sovereignty to me.

My conclusion is that “monarch” is a label promiscuously affixed to wildly different kinds of regimes, leaving the concept monarch without much determinate content. A monarchy can be limited or absolute, elective or hereditary.

It’s difficult to argue that a concept with little determinate content is incompatible with moral equality. However, if we limit the argument to hereditary monarchies, then the argument against monarchy from moral equality appears to get back on track. If the monarch is not elected, then the deference she demands is not voluntary. And if her claim to esteem is inherited, then it is certainly not deserved.

Yet even when restricted to hereditary monarchies, the argument does not seem entirely plausible. The problem is that in some cases, the hierarchy of esteem between a particular hereditary monarch and her subjects seems voluntary. Consider the United Kingdom’s hereditary but constitutional monarchy. The citizens of that country appear to have widely divergent views about both their monarchs and their monarchy. Some people detest the newly-crowned King Charles III, yet have no qualms with the monarchical institution. Some liked Queen Elizabeth on a personal level but are staunch republicans. Moreover, Britons do not keep their opinions on this score a secret, and they are not generally thrown in jail for publicly criticizing the monarch in the harshest terms. (Although in saying this, reports of anti-royal protestors being arrested on bogus charges of breaching the peace make me pause.)

No one is forced to sing “God Save the Queen” who doesn’t wish to do so. In short, in the U.K., deference to the monarch may be encouraged, but it is certainly not required. A Briton can thrive in her society without ever showing the slightest deference to her monarch.

With respect to the hierarchy of esteem between the U.K.’s monarch and her subjects — as opposed to her constitutional functions or public prominence — the situation seems somewhat akin to the relationship between Catholic priests and the rest of society in the United States. Even non-Catholics regularly refer to priests as “father,” a gesture of deference that is less required than customary. (That said, I refrain from this practice if at all possible; it mildly affronts my democratic temperament. This did not go over particularly well at Notre Dame.)

It might also be doubted whether every hereditary monarch does not deserve esteem. Many Britons seem to think that with her stoicism and quiet dignity, Queen Elizabeth provided stability over the course of a turbulent twentieth century. I take no stance on that proposition, but it certainly seems conceivable that a monarch could come to earn esteem through her exemplary conduct either before she ascends to the throne or while she serves as monarch.

Thus, the extent to which monarchy cuts against moral equality really depends on the conditions of the society in which a particular monarchical institution exists.

The concept of a hereditary monarchy might seem incompatible with moral equality at a very high level of abstraction, but some of its instantiations may be perfectly consonant with it.

This does, however, lead me to a more philosophical point. In the argument against monarchy from moral equality, the test for whether a hierarchy of esteem is morally legitimate requires it to meet both the conditions of deservedness and voluntariness. But it appears that voluntariness alone is sufficient to make such a hierarchy compatible with moral equality. If I routinely genuflect before my girlfriend because I believe her gorgeous auburn hair possesses mystical powers, that does not seem particularly demeaning to my dignity so long as my delusional belief cannot be said to undermine the voluntariness of my deferential act — even though the deference is wholly undeserved. Likewise, so long as a Briton is not forced to pay obeisance to King Charles III, her acts of deference seem to be compatible with her dignity even if the king doesn’t deserve them.

Indeed, voluntariness seems not only sufficient to legitimize a hierarchy of esteem, but also necessary. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X are both, in my view, figures richly deserving of esteem. Yet if I were forced to regularly kiss their feet, that hierarchy of esteem would be an insult to my dignity as a moral equal.

Philosophers love abstractions, and I am no exception. Sometimes, however, what appears to be a strong argument at a high level of abstraction loses some of its luster once the messy reality of human existence is brought into view. Such is the case, I think, with the claim that monarchy is per se incompatible with human equality.

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Should Monarchies Be Abolished?

photograph of British monarchy crown

On September 8th, 2022, Queen Elizabeth II of England died at the age of 96. She held the crown for 70 years, making her the longest reigning monarch in the history of Britain. Her son, now King Charles III, will likely be coronated in mid-2023.

The death of the British monarch has drawn a number of reactions. Most public officials and organizations have expressed respect for the former monarchies and sympathy towards her family. However, others have offered criticism of both the Queen and the monarchy itself. Multiple people have been arrested in the U.K. for anti-royal protests. Negative sentiment has been particularly strong in nations that were previously British colonies – many have taken to social media to critique the Crown’s role in colonialism: the Economic Freedom Fighters, a minority party in South Africa’s parliament released a statement saying they will “not mourn the death of Elizabeth,” and Irish soccer fans chanted that “Lizzy’s in a box.” Professor Maya Jasanoff bridged the two positions, writing that, while Queen Elizabeth II was committed to her duties and ought to be mourned as a person, she “helped obscure a bloody history of decolonization whose proportions and legacies have yet to be adequately acknowledged.”

My goal in this article is to reflect on monarchies, and their role in contemporary societies. I will not focus on any specific monarch. So, my claims here will be compatible with “good” and “bad” monarchs. Further, I will not consider any particular nation’s monarchy. Rather, I want to focus on the idea of monarchy. Thus, my analysis does not rely on historical events. I argue that monarchies, even in concept, are incompatible with the moral tenets of democratic societies and ought to be abolished as a result.

Democratic societies accept as fundamentally true that all people are moral equals. It is this equality that grounds the right to equal participation in government.

Equal relations stand in contrast to hierarchical relationships. Hierarchies occur when one individual is considered “above” some other(s) in at least one respect. In Private Government, Elizabeth Anderson distinguishes between multiple varieties of hierarchy. Particularly relevant here are hierarchies of esteem. A hierarchy of esteem occurs when some individuals are required to show deference to (an) other(s). This deference may take various forms, such as referring to others through titles or engaging in gestures like bowing or prostration that show inferiority.

Generally, hierarchies of esteem are not automatically impermissible. One might opt into some. For instance, you might have to call your boss “Mrs. Last-Name,” athletes may have to use the title “coach” rather than a first name, etc. Yet, provided that one freely enters into these relationships, such hierarchies need not be troubling. Further, hierarchies of esteem may be part of some relationships that one does not voluntarily enter but are nonetheless morally justifiable – children, generally, are required to show some level of deference to their parents (provided that the parents are caring, have their child’s best interests in mind, etc.), for instance.

The problem with the monarchy is not that it establishes a hierarchy of esteem, but rather that it establishes a mandatory, unearned hierarchy between otherwise equal citizens.

To live in a country with a monarch is to have an individual person and family deemed your social superiors, a group to whom you are expected to show deference, despite your moral equality. This is not a relationship you choose, but rather, one that is thrust upon you. Further, the deference we are said to owe to, and the higher status of, monarchs is not earned. Rather, it is something that they are claimed to deserve simply by virtue of who their parents are, who in turn owe their elevated status to their lineage. Finally, beyond merely commanding deference, monarchs are born into a life of luxury; they live in castles, they travel the world meeting foreign dignitaries, and their deaths may grind a country to a halt as part of a period of mourning.

So, in sum, monarchies undermine the moral foundation of our democracies. We value democratic regimes (in part) because they recognize our equivalent  moral standing. By picking out some, labeling them as the superiors in a hierarchy of deference due to nothing but their ancestry, monarchies are incompatible with the idea that all people are equal.

However, there are some obvious ways one might try to respond. One could object on economic grounds. There is room to argue that monarchies could potentially produce economic benefits. Royals may serve as a tourist attraction or, if internationally popular, might raise the profile and favorability of the nation, thus increasing the desirability of its products and culture. So perhaps monarchies are justified because they are on the whole beneficial.

The problem with this argument is that it compares the incommensurable. It responds to a moral concern by pointing out economic benefits.

My claim is not that monarchy is bad in every respect. Indeed, we can take it for granted that having a monarchy produces economic benefits. However, my claim is that it undermines the moral justification of democracy.

Without a larger argument, it does not follow that economic benefits are sufficient to outweigh moral concerns. This would be like arguing that we should legalize vote-selling due to its economic benefits – it seems to miss the moral reason why we structure public institutions the ways that we do.

Another objection may be grounded in culture. Perhaps monarchies are woven into the cultural fabric of the societies in which they exist; they are part of proud traditions that extend back hundreds or even thousands of years. To abolish a monarchy would be to erase part of a people’s culture.

While it’s true that monarchies are long traditions in many nations, this argument only gets one so far. A practice being part of a people’s culture does not make it immune to critique. Had the Roman practice of gladiatorial combat to the death for the sake of entertainment survived to this day, we would (hopefully) think it ought to be eliminated, despite thousands of years of cultural history.

When a practice violates our society’s foundational moral principles, it ought to be abolished no matter how attached to it we have become.

Finally, one might argue that abolition is unnecessary. Compared to their status throughout history, monarchies have fallen out of grace in the 20th and 21st centuries. Of the nations with monarchies, few have a monarch which wields anything but symbolic power (although some exceptions are notable). This argument relies on a distinction between what we might call monarchs-as-sovereigns and monarchs-as-figureheads. Monarchs-as-sovereign violate the fundamental tenets of democracy by denying citizens the right to participate in government, while monarchs-as-figureheads, wielding only symbolic power, do not, or so the argument goes.

The issue with this argument is that it underappreciates the full extent of what democracy demands. It does get things right by recognizing that the commitment to democracy arises from the belief that people deserve a say in a government that rules over them. However, it is just not that all citizens deserve some say, but rather, that all citizens deserve an equal say. One person, one vote.

Part of the justification for democracy is that individuals ought to be able to shape their lives, and thus deserve a say in the institutions that affect us all.

Although individuals may vary in their knowledge or other capabilities, to give some greater say in our decision making is to give them disproportionate power to shape the lives of others. No one individual should automatically be someone to whom we all must defer. We might collectively agree to, say, regard someone as an expert in a particular matter relevant to the public good and thus defer to her. However, this only occurs after we collectively agree to it in a process where we all have equal say, either by voting directly for her, or voting for the person who appoints her. Unless we have a parity of power in this process, then we diminish the ability of some to shape their own lives.

On these grounds, perhaps a monarchy could be justified if the citizens of a nation voted the monarch into power. This would simply be another means of collective deferment. But since electorates are constantly changing, there would need to be regular votes on this to ensure the voters still want to defer to this monarch. Yet current monarchies, by elevating the monarch (and family) above others while leaving this outside the realm of collective decision-making, violate the moral justification of democracy – some are made superior by default in the hierarchy of esteem. The establishment of democracy and abolition of all monarchy are proverbial branches that stem from the same tree. Our recognition of human equality should lead us to reject monarchy in even innocuous, purely symbolic forms.

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Leaders Behaving Badly: Executive Overreach and Dangers to Democracy

photograph of Donald Trump and Scott Morrison at White House press conference

In the same week that Donald Trump was being pilloried for taking classified documents from the White House, Australia was facing its own crisis of executive overreach. Reports surfaced that our former Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, had ignored the unwritten rules of Australian democracy and given himself responsibility for a variety of government portfolios, extending his power way beyond his remit. This extraordinary concentration of power in the hands of one man represented a significant threat to our venerable system of government. It also raises an interesting question about the nature of democracy: what is the best way to ensure that the voices of the population are represented in the halls of power?

What’s so great about democracy?

There are a couple of normative benefits to democracies over alternative forms of government. One is that executive power is limited, saving us from the sort of governmental overreach which characterizes totalitarian regimes. As political philosopher George Kateb wrote, “in contrast to dictatorship, oligarchy, actual monarchy or chieftainship, or other forms [of government], representative democracy signifies a radical chastening of political authority.” Both presidential and parliamentary democratic systems achieve this chastening by dividing powers between branches of government and providing checks and balances on executive authority. (That said, American presidents tend to have far more individual power than Australian prime ministers – despite the separation of powers in the U.S., executive orders are incredibly common).

For this chastening to be successful, however, strong constitutional or legal protections must be in place to ensure that power doesn’t become overly concentrated.

As we’ll return to in a moment, Australia’s reliance on unwritten laws, precedent, and tradition means that we are at risk of unscrupulous actors accumulating excessive power and wielding unfettered political authority.

Another positive of representative democracy is right there in the name – it is representative. Parliament, or congress, is made up of people from across the nation, and is supposed to represent the interests of those people; allowing them a say in, and control over, the laws and institutions that determine their lives. Australian philosopher Elaine Thompson equated representation with fairness: democratic systems are representative only insofar as “the parliament is accepted [by the people] as representing the people who elected it.”

The Australian parliamentary system

Before diving into issues of representation, it’s worth giving some background on Australian governance. There are quite a few differences between the Australian and American political systems but the major one is that, in Australia, we don’t directly elect our leader. Both Australians and Americans vote for local representatives and for senators to represent their states.

But whereas every American has the opportunity to vote for their president (ignoring the vagaries of the electoral college), Australia’s prime minister is chosen by the aforementioned local representatives.

Currently, the Labor party holds a majority in the House of Representatives and have elected one of their own, Anthony Albanese, to the Office of Prime Minister. But if one party doesn’t hold a majority in their own right, parties must work together to form governing coalitions. Once a prime minister is elected, they select a ministry of members of parliament who are given responsibility for different portfolios – things like health, education, trade, foreign affairs, and so on. The minister is then supposed to wield authority over their area, meaning they make the big decisions on policy matters and (occasionally) take responsibility when things go wrong.

So, the Australian flavor of representative democracy is quite different to the American one. But if representation is the goal, what offers better representation – parliamentary or presidential systems?

President or Parliament?

On the one hand, American presidents are directly elected by the whole nation, which might make them more representative than Australian prime ministers. Presidential candidates can’t afford to only appeal to small minorities or particular geographical areas: they have to garner support across the country. Theoretically, at least, this should temper their wilder inclinations as they attempt to cast as broad a net as possible (although empirical evidence might suggest otherwise). On the other hand, it might be unreasonable to think that anybody could truly reflect the diversity of a huge country like the U.S.

Unlike presidential candidates, local representatives can (and perhaps should) pander only to their narrow constituencies. This means they can take up local matters or focus on representing minority groups, although that narrow focus can mean they are less representative of the nation as a whole.

In Australia’s system, the issue of representative leadership is somewhat offset by the existence of parliament: although any one member might not be particularly representative of the entire nation, the parliament as a whole – all 151 members of the house, plus the senate – ought to offer a decent reflection of the nation. And because decision-making isn’t centralized in the prime minister, it’s not such a huge issue that they are only elected to parliament by a small proportion of the population. By spreading decision-making responsibility across members of parliament, representing different people from different places, we avoid the need to have any single, broadly representative, head of state or government.[i] Lately, however, this hasn’t been happening.

The secret ministries

Last week, news surfaced that during the pandemic (now former) Prime Minister Scott Morrison secretly swore himself in to five different ministries: Home Affairs; Finance; Health; Industry, Science, Energy and Resources; and Treasury. So rather than having responsibility for policy decisions spread across members of parliament, we had an unprecedented concentration of power in Australia – something closer to the American presidential system than the system we are used to.

What’s worse, we didn’t get any of the benefits of the presidential system.

Instead of having a president elected by the entire country and entrusted with heading government, we had a prime minister with a huge amount of centralized power elected by a small group of people from south-east Sydney – an area richer, whiter, and more religious than Australia as a whole.

Essentially, we had the worst of both systems: an unrepresentative leader with too much individual power. Thompson’s fairness was nowhere to be seen, and the chastening of power that Kateb wrote about had been eroded from within.

Despite public outrage and condemnation of Morrison’s actions (including from those in his own party), they were perfectly legal – even if they “fundamentally undermined” the practice of responsible government. Luckily, Morrison did little with his extreme power, other than cancel a permit for a gas project off the coast of Sydney. Next time, however, we might not be so fortunate. What the Morrison saga shows us is that regardless of whether we live in a presidential or parliamentary system, we can’t rely on convention, tradition, and unwritten rules. Strong laws limiting individual power are essential to the creation of democracies which truly represent the will of the people.

 

 

[i]  (For an excellent overview of the strengths and weaknesses of parliamentary and presidential systems, check out political scientist Steffen Ganghof’s recent book).

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Corporate Activism and Non-Ideal Democracy

photograph of Disney and Mickey with castle in the background

This piece is part of an Under Discussion series. To read more about this week’s topic and see more pieces from this series visit Under Discussion: “Woke Capitalism.”

In March, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the Parental Rights in Education Act (PREA). The “Don’t Say Gay” law restricts classroom instruction about sexual orientation or gender identity and empowers parents to sue school districts over teachings they don’t like.

Many are critical of the PREA, including, controversially, the Walt Disney Company. On the day it was signed, Disney released a statement saying that the PREA “should never have been signed into law” and declared that its “goal as a company is for this law to be repealed” or “struck down.” DeSantis and the state legislature retaliated by canceling some important privileges afforded to Disney. DeSantis described this as a wakeup call, declaring that Disney needs “to get back to the mission” and “back on track.”

The quarrel between DeSantis and Disney is representative of a broader ongoing controversy about the proper role of corporations in politics and public discourse.

Recent developments have propelled this issue into the spotlight. In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting corporations from independently advocating for or against political candidates, opening the door to unlimited corporate spending. Moreover, corporations have recently become increasingly active in signaling support for progressive social causes, a trend which has been described as “woke capitalism.”

There are many reasons to be critical of corporate involvement in politics and public discourse. In most cases it’s probably motivated mainly by a cynical desire to curry favor with lawmakers, distract from corporate exploitation, or otherwise advance profits; corporate activism can exacerbate cultural divides and grievances; it’s unclear whether corporations have a moral right to free speech. And, most importantly, a democracy should be governed by the people, not by businesses or the economic elite.

Let’s suppose (as seems plausible) that there are many good objections against corporate activism and that in a well-functioning liberal democracy, corporations have no place in politics or public discourse. It does not follow that corporations should not participate in politics or public discourse in our society. The significance of this supposition for the Disney-PREA case (and the general controversy) depends largely on whether we live in a just and well-functioning liberal democracy. I’d like to suggest that we don’t.

If we live in a society that is only partially democratic and only partially liberal, a society that is characterized by serious systemic injustices, then perhaps we should welcome the efforts of the powerful, including corporations, when they act to redress injustices.

Perhaps corporate activism is less than ideal but nevertheless all-things-considered justified in our non-ideal situation.

To explore this line of thinking, I need to paint an ugly picture. We are told in school that the United States is a beacon of freedom and hope for the world. We are told that the U.S. is a liberal democracy, a state committed to protecting the basic freedom and equality of all its citizens, governed by the will of the people.

There are good reasons for thinking this is a convenient bit of propaganda that is only partially true.

We can look outwards first. The U.S. is an empire of sorts. Old-style empires exerted power over territories by conquering and directly ruling them. Contemporary empires like the U.S. exert imperial power less directly. The U.S. furthers its international interests through soft-power and diplomacy, like when it leverages its considerable power in the UN to influence foreign governments. It also wields unprecedented hard power. For example, the U.S. has about 800 foreign military bases in 80 countries. It uses its economic and military might to overthrow foreign governments, influence foreign political and revolutionary movements, and generally meddle in the affairs of other countries.

Although those who have a grip on the levers of U.S. imperial power are ostensibly accountable to voters, we voters have virtually no de facto control over U.S. foreign affairs.

Consider the presidency. The president has a lot of say over how U.S. military power is deployed in the world. But voters only have two real options in presidential elections. And despite the standard rhetoric to the contrary, presidents from both parties tend to wield military power in more or less continuous ways. The War in Afghanistan is a representative example. This war was started by a Republican (Bush) and expanded by a Democrat (Obama). A Republican (Trump) initiated withdrawal from the region, which was completed by a Democrat (Biden).

Things look about the same looking inwards. The Declaration of Independence states that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Yet our laws routinely fail to conform to the will of the people. For example, U.S. federal laws currently fail to reflect that a majority of voters support changing the electoral college (55%), protecting access to abortion (61%), greater action on climate change (65%), decriminalizing marijuana (68%), health insurance public options (68%), universal background checks on gun purchasers (84%), and price limits on lifesaving drugs (89%). Many entrenched factors contribute to this, from the fact that some voters have far more power than others, to the influence of industries and economic elites (especially super-rich private donors) on public policy, the disproportionate wealth of lawmakers, the various demagogues clogging public discourse with inane conspiracy theories, and so on. The undemocratic elements in our society are coupled with illiberal systemic injustices like extreme economic inequality and laws that protect freedoms selectively. For example, in 2021, the top 1% of households held 32.3% of all household wealth, while the bottom 50% held only 2.6%. And at the time of this writing, federal law does not protect LGBTQ people from discrimination in employment and housing (although 70% of people support such protections).

The picture that is emerging is one of an empire that, despite having democratic and liberal elements, is largely run by elites and routinely fails to protect the basic freedom and equality of its citizens.

Suppose this picture is roughly accurate. Also suppose for the sake of argument that the PREA is seriously unjust. Since it is seriously unjust, we citizens should work to see it repealed. But we do not have as much power to affect legislation as we are encouraged to believe. Wealthy corporations have power, however, and we can solicit assistance from them. Now if the U.S. had legitimate democratic institutions, then corporate meddling in democratic processes would threaten the legitimacy of those institutions. But by supposition that legitimacy is already seriously compromised by entrenched factors. So, arguably we should solicit and welcome assistance from powerful entities like Disney insofar as this increases the likelihood that the PREA will be repealed and the expected side effects are acceptable. And arguably this is compatible with maintaining that corporate activism is ultimately a bad thing.

Here’s an imperfect but suggestive analogy. Imagine we live under a dictatorship. Many people are oppressed by harmful laws. But the dictator’s counselor is sympathetic to the oppressed. It seems to me that we could, without logical inconsistency or hypocrisy, both beseech the counselor to convince the dictator to change the harmful laws and also maintain that neither the dictator nor his counselor should have any power over us.

This suggests that corporate activism can be justified in our non-ideal situation, but only to the extent that it is efficaciously directed at making our society more just.

This marks a difference between corporations and citizens. Citizens have an autonomy-based moral right to participate in collective governance and public discourse, which entitles them to sincerely advocate for positions that are in fact unjust. Corporations have no such right. Their entitlement to advocacy is derived exclusively from the special power they have to improve our society.

It’s sensible to reject this argument if you are less pessimistic than I am about the state of our union. But I don’t think the argument should be rejected because of cynicism about corporate motivations. True, corporations are out to make a profit. Mickey is a rapacious mouse. Nevertheless, from time to time the motive of profit partially aligns with the cause of justice. We should do what we can to remind corporations of this.

Left unaddressed is the difficult practical problem of how we can effectively make use of corporate activism while also advocating for a society that is truly governed by the people, not corporations or elites. I don’t know how this problem can be solved. But I am hopeful that it can be.

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Are Politicians Obligated to Debate?

photo of empty debate stage

In the leadup to the provincial election in Ontario, many members of Ontario’s Progressive Conservative party have been avoiding the debates taking place in their respective ridings. In fact, 22 out of 34 Conservatives have recently failed to show up to debates in which members of their rival parties were participating, a number that greatly exceeds the absences from all other parties combined. When asked to comment on the situation, a campaign official speaking on behalf of the Conservatives stated that the party’s mandate was to have each candidate “carefully assess the value” of participating in a debate in order to “limit the risk” of doing so. He also stated that debates are of “low value” and a candidate’s time can be better used in other ways.

Debates ahead of elections are common in democracies around the world. So, too, are instances of politicians avoiding them. For example, in the run-up to the recent presidential election in the Philippines, candidate Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. participated in only one out of four scheduled debates; when asked to explain his absence, he cited the desire to keep his campaign “positive” (although many of his critics speculated that his failure to attend the debates was motivated by a desire to avoid discussing his family’s history). The strategy seems to have paid off, as he is presumed to have won the election.

Some who disapprove of Conservative Party candidates skipping debates in Canada have called the move “anti-democratic”; in the Philippines, Marcos’ opponent Leni Robredo said that participating in debates is something that candidates “owe…to the people and to our country.”

Is this right? Do politicians have any specific obligation to participate in debates? And if so, what kind of obligation?

There is one sense in which political candidates like those mentioned above are not obligated to participate in debates, given that not participating does not preclude one from running. We might think that there is a different kind of obligation involved, though, one associated with “playing fair” or maybe “being a good sport”; such norms, however, have rarely held much water in the world of politics. Of course, one risks losing face in front of one’s constituents by failing to appear for debates, but if a politician can make up that loss in other campaign activities, or if one’s target constituency doesn’t really care about the outcomes of political debates anyway, then it might be more prudent to skip debates altogether, especially given the risk of hurting one’s campaign by getting caught off-guard by a question or saying something dumb.

So we might think that politicians who refuse to attend debates are not violating any explicit electoral processes, or being imprudent, but are instead lazy, or cowards (or both). But this is perhaps a far cry from the accusations above of being “anti-democratic.”

Indeed, there does seem to be something more egregious about avoiding political debates, namely that doing so undercuts informed citizenship, something that is a necessary condition for a well-functioning democracy.

To defend this kind of argument we need to consider what we mean by “informed” and “well-functioning.” But in general, the claim is this: if those in positions of political power are meant to be reflective of, and act in service to, the will of the people, broadly construed, then those people need to be informed about what candidates’ positions are on important issues.

That’s glossing over a lot of nuances, of course. And it’s not as if every voter needs to be extremely knowledgeable about all the details of every candidate’s respective platform, or stance on every policy issue, in order to be well-informed. Regardless, the loose argument is that better-informed voters will tend to make better voting choices, and the responsibility to inform citizens lies not just with said citizens, but with the politicians, as well. Political debates are, arguably, a significant source of information about candidates. Failing to participate in such debates thus prevents voters from getting important information they need to be well-informed. We can then see why one might think that avoiding political debates is anti-democratic, as doing so is antithetical to the democratic process one is participating in.

One might think, though, that there are surely other ways in which one can become well-informed about the candidates in an election – one could, say, look up relevant information online.

Doesn’t such readily available information make political debates more or less obsolete, at least in terms of their ability to inform the public?

No, for a few reasons. First, reading statements online does not give one the same kind of information that might come up at a debate, as there are no opportunities for rebuttals or follow-up questions. Second, one does not get to compare candidates in the same way when simply reading information online. Finally, people are not great at actively seeking out information about candidates who are members of parties one does not already endorse. It seems less likely that one would change one’s mind when doing self-directed research, in comparison to a debate.

Here is the kind of being-well-informed that seems especially crucial for a well-functioning democracy: not just knowledge about what one’s favorite candidate is all about, filtered through one’s preferred news outlet or website, but information about how different candidates compare, as well as information about other choices one may not have considered. More than just custom or nuisance, debates serve an important function of helping to inform the voting public, and failing to engage in them violates obligations central to democracy.

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Is It Time to Nationalize YouTube and Facebook?

image collage of social media signs and symbols

Social media presents several moral challenges to contemporary society on issues ranging from privacy to the manipulation of public opinion via adaptive recommendation algorithms. One major ethical concern with social media is its addictive tendencies. For example, Frances Haugen, the whistleblower from Facebook, has warned about the addictive possibilities of the metaverse. Social media companies design their products to be addictive because their business model is based on an attention economy. And governments have struggled with how to respond to the dangers that social media creates including the notion of independent oversight bodies and new privacy regulations to limit the power of social media. But does the solution to this problem require changing the business model?

Social media companies like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram profit from an attention economy. This means that the primary product of social media companies is the attention of the people using their service which these companies can leverage to make money from advertisers. As Vikram Bhargava and Manuel Velasquez explain, because advertisers represent the real customers, corporations are free to be more indifferent to their user’s interests. What many of us fail to realize is that,

“built into the business model of social media is a strong incentive to keep users online for prolonged periods of time, even though this means that many of them will go on to develop addictions…the companies do not care whether it is better or worse for the user because the user does not matter; the user’s interests do not figure into the social media company’s decision making.”

As a result of this business model, social media is often designed with persuasive technology mechanisms. Intermittent variable rewards, nudging, and the erosion of natural stopping cues help create a kind of slot-machine effect, and the use of adaptive algorithms that take in user data in order to customize user experience only reinforces this. As a result, many experts have increasingly recognized social media addiction as a problem. A 2011 survey found that 59% of respondents felt they were addicted to social media. As Bhargava and Velasquez report, social media addiction mirrors many of the behaviors associated with substance addiction, and neuroimaging studies show that the same areas of the brain are active as in substance addiction. As a potential consequence of this addiction, it is well known that following the introduction of social media there has been a marked increase in teenage suicide as well.

But is there a way to mitigate the harmful effects of social media addiction? Bhargava and Velasquez suggest things like addiction warnings or prompts making them easier to quit can be important steps. Many have argued that breaking up social media companies like Facebook is necessary as they function like monopolies. However, it is worth considering the fact that breaking up such businesses to increase competition in a field centered around the same business model may not help. If anything, greater competition in the marketplace may only yield new and “innovative” ways to keep people hooked. If the root of the problem is the business model, perhaps it is the business model which should be changed.

For example, since in an attention economy business model users of social media are not the customers, one way to make social media companies less incentivized to addict their users is to make them customers. Should social media companies using adaptive algorithms be forced to switch to a subscription-based business model? If customers paid for Facebook directly, Facebook would still have incentive to provide a good experience for users (now being their customers), but they would have less incentive to focus their efforts on monopolizing users’ attention. Bhargava and Velasquez, for example, note that in a subscription steaming platform like Netflix, it is immaterial to the company how much users watch; “making a platform addictive is not an essential feature of the subscription-based service business model.”

But there are problems with this approach as well. As I have described previously, social media companies like Meta and Google have significant abilities to control knowledge production and knowledge communication. Even with a subscription model, the ability for social media companies to manipulate public opinion would still be present. Nor would it necessarily solve problems relating to echo-chambers and filter bubbles. It may also mean that the poorest elements of society would be unable to afford social media, essentially excluding socioeconomic groups from the platform. Is there another way to change the business model and avoid these problems?

In the early 20th century, during an age of the rise of a new mass media and its advertising, many believed that this new technology would be a threat to democracy. The solution was public broadcasting such as PBS, BBC, and CBC. Should a 21st century solution to the problem of social media be similar? Should there be a national YouTube or a national Facebook? Certainly, such platforms wouldn’t need to be based on an attention economy; they would not be designed to capture as much of their users’ attention as possible. Instead, they could be made available for all citizens to contribute for free if they wish without a subscription.

Such a platform would not only give the public greater control over how algorithms operate on it, but they would also have greater control over privacy settings as well. The platform could also be designed to strengthen democracy. Instead of having a corporation like Google determining the results of your video or news search, for instance, the public itself would now have a greater say about what news and information is most relevant. It could also bolster democracy by ensuring that recommendation algorithms do not create echo-chambers; users could be exposed to a diversity of posts or videos that don’t necessarily reflect their own political views.

Of course, such a proposal carries problems as well. Cost might be significant, however a service replicating the positive social benefits without the “innovative” and expensive process of creating addicting algorithms may partially offset that. Also, depending on the nation, such a service could be subject to abuse. Just like there is a difference between public broadcasting and state-run media (where the government has editorial control), the service would lose its purpose if all content on the platform were controlled directly by the government. Something more independent would be required.

However, another significant minefield for such a project would be agreeing on community standards for content. Obviously, the point would be not to allow the platform to become a breeding ground for misinformation, and so clear standards would be necessary. However, there would also have to be agreement that in the greater democratic interests of breaking free from our echo-chambers, that the public agree to and accept that others may post, and they may see, content they consider offensive. We need to be exposed to views we don’t like. In a post-pandemic world, this is a larger public conversation that needs to happen, regardless of how we choose to regulate social media.

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The Democratic Limits of Public Trust in Science

photograph of Freedom Convoy trucks

It isn’t every day that Canada makes international headlines for civil unrest and disruptive protests. But the protests which began last month in Ottawa by the “Freedom Convoy” have inspired similar protests around the world and led to the Canadian government declaring a national emergency and seeking special powers to handle the crisis. But what exactly is the crisis that the nation faces? Is it a far-right, conspiratorial, anti-vaccination movement threatening to overthrow the government? Or is it the government’s infringement on rights in the name of “trusting the experts”?

It is easy to take the view that protests are wrong. First, we must acknowledge that the position that the truckers are taking in protesting the mandate is fairly silly. For starters, even if they were successful at getting the Canadian Federal Government to change its position, the United States also requires that truckers be vaccinated to cross the border, so this is a moot point. I also won’t defend the tactics used in the protests including the noise, blocking bridges, etc. However, several people in Canada have pinned part of the blame for the protests on the government, and Justin Trudeau in particular, for politicizing the issue of vaccines and creating a divisive political atmosphere.

First, it is worth noting that Canada has relied more on restrictive lockdown measures as of late compared to other countries, and much of this is driven by the need to keep hospitals from being overrun. However, this is owing to long-term systemic fragility in the healthcare sector, particularly a lack of ICU beds, prompting many – including one of Trudeau’s own MPs – to call for reform to healthcare funding to expand capacity instead of relying so much on lockdown measures. One would think that this would be a topic of national conversation with the public wondering why the government hasn’t done anything about this situation since the beginning of the pandemic. But instead, the Trudeau government has only chosen to focus on a policy of increasing vaccination rates, claiming that they are following “the best science” and “the best public health advice.”

Is there, however, a possibility that the government is hoping that enough people get vaccinated and with enough lockdown measures, they can avoid having the healthcare system collapse, expect the pandemic blows over, and escape without having to address such long-term problems? Maybe, maybe not. But it certainly casts any advice offered or decisions made the government in a very different light. Indeed, one of the problems with expert advice (as I’ve previously discussed here, here, and here) is that it is subject to inductive risk concerns and so the use of expert advice must be democratically-informed.

For example, if we look at a model used by Canada’s federal government, one will note how often its projections are based on different assumptions about what could happen. The model itself may be driven by a number of unstated assumptions which may or may not be reasonable. It is up to politicians to weigh the risks of getting it wrong, and not simply treat experts as if they are infallible. This is important because the value judgments inherent in risk assessment – about the reasonableness of our assumptions as well as the consequences of getting it wrong and potentially overrunning the healthcare system – are what ultimately will determine what restriction measures the government will enact. But this requires democratic debate and discussion. This is where failure of democratic leadership breeds long-term mistrust in expert advice.

It is reasonable to ask questions about what clear metrics a government might use before ending a lockdown, or to ask if there is strong evidence for the effectiveness of a vaccine mandate. But for the public, not all of whom enjoy the benefit of an education in science, it is not so clear what is and is not a reasonable question. The natural place for such a discussion would be the elected Parliament where representatives might press the government for answers. Unfortunately, defense of the protest in any form in Parliament is vilified, with the opposition being told they stand with “people who wave swastikas.” Prime Minister Trudeau has denounced the entire group as a “small fringe minority,” “Nazis,” with “unacceptable views.” However, some MPs have voiced concern about the tone and rhetoric involved in lumping everyone who has a doubt about the mandate or vaccine together.

This divisive attitude has been called out by one of Trudeau’s own MPs who said that people who question existing policies should not be demonized by their Prime Minister, noting “It’s becoming harder and harder to know when public health stops and where politics begins,” adding, “It’s time to stop dividing Canadians and pitting one part of the population against another.” He also called on the Federal government to establish clear and measurable targets.

Unfortunately, if you ask the federal government a direct question like “Is there a federal plan being discussed to ease out mandates?” you will be told that:

there have been moments throughout the pandemic where we have eased restrictions and those decisions have always been made guided by the best available advice that we’re getting from public health experts. And of course, going forward we will continue to listen to the advice that we get from our public health officials.

This is not democratic accountability (and it is not scientific accountability either). “We’re following the science” or “We’re following the experts” is not good enough. Anyone who actually understands the science will know that this is more a slogan than a meaningful claim.

There is also a bit of history at play. In 1970, Trudeau’s father Pierre invoked the War Measures Act during a crisis that resulted in the kidnapping and murder of a cabinet minister. It resulted in rounding up and arrest of hundreds of arrests without warrant or charge. This week the Prime Minister has invoked the successor to that legislation for the first time in Canadian history because…trucks. The police were having trouble moving the trucks because they couldn’t get tow trucks to help clear blocked border crossing. Now, while we can grant that the convoy has been a nuisance and has illegally blocked bridges, we’ve also seen the convoy complying with court-ordered injunctions on honking, we’ve also seen the convoy organizers opposing violence, with no major acts of violence taking place. While there was a rather odd proposal that the convoys could form a “coalition” with the parliamentary opposition to form a new government, I suspect that this is more owing to a failure to understand how Canada’s system of government works rather than a serious attempt to, as some Canadian politicians would claim “overthrow the government.”

The point is that this is an issue that has started with a government not being transparent and accountable, abusing the democratic process in the name of science, and taking advantage of the situation to demonize and delegitimize the opposition. It is in the face of this, and in the face of uncertainty about the intentions of the convoy, and after weeks of not acting sooner to ameliorate the situation, that the government claims that a situation has arisen that, according to the Emergencies Act, is a “threat to the security of Canada…that is so serious as to be a national emergency.” Not only is there room for serious doubt as to whether the convoy situation has reached such a level, but this is taking place during a context of high tension where the government and the media have demonstrated a willingness to overgeneralize and demonize a minority by lobbing as many poisoning the well fallacies as possible and misrepresenting the nature of science. The fact that in this political moment the government seeks greater power is a recipe for abuse of power.

In a democracy, where not everyone enjoys the chance to understand what a model is, how they are made, or how reliable (and unreliable) they can be, citizens have a right to know more about how their government is making use of expert advice in limiting individual freedom. The politicization of the issue using the rhetoric of “following the science,” as well as the government’s slow response and opaque reasoning have only served to make it more difficult for the public to understand the nature of the problem we face. Our public discourse has been stunted by transforming our policy conversations into a narrow one about vaccination and the risk posed by the “alt right.” But there is a much bigger, much more real problem here: the call to “trust the experts” can be used just as easily as a rallying call for rationality as it can be a political tool to demonizing entire groups of people to justify taking away their rights.

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‘Don’t Look Up’: Willful Ignorance of a Democracy in Crisis

image of meteor headed toward city skyline

“Don’t Look Up spends over two hours making the same mistake. In its efforts to champion its cause, the film only alienates those who most need to be moved by its message.”

–Holly Thomas, CNN

“it’s hard to escape the feeling of the film jabbing its pointer finger into your eye, yelling, Why aren’t you paying attention! … The thing is, if you’re watching Don’t Look Up, you probably are paying attention, not just to the news about the climate and the pandemic but to a half-dozen other things that feel like reasonable causes for panic. … So when the credits rolled — after an ending that was, admittedly, quite moving — I just sat there thinking, Who, exactly, is this for?”

–Alissa Wilkinson, Vox

“[The film’]s worst parts are when it stops to show people on their phones. They tweet inanity, they participate in dumb viral challenges, they tune into propaganda and formulate conspiracy theory. At no point does Don’t Look Up’s script demonstrate an interest in why these people do these things, or what causes these online phenomena. Despite this being a central aspect of his story, McKay doesn’t seem to think it worthy of consideration. There’s a word for that: contempt.”

–Joshua Rivera, Polygon

And so on, and so on. Critics of Adam McKay’s climate change satire all point to the same basic defect: “Don’t Look Up” is nothing more than an inside joke; it isn’t growing the congregation, it’s merely preaching to the choir. Worse, the movie flaunts its moral superiority over the deplorables and unwashed masses instead of shaking hands, kissing babies, and doing all the other politicking necessary for changing hearts and minds. When given the opportunity to speak to, it speaks down. In the end, this collection of Hollywood holier-than-thou A-listers sneers at their audience and is left performing only for themselves.

But what if the critics have it all wrong? What if the movie’s makers have no intention of wrestling the various political obstacles to democratic consensus? Indeed, they seem to have absolutely zero interest in playing the political game at all. Critics of “Don’t Look Up” see only a failed attempt at coalition-building, but what if the film’s doing precisely what it set out to do – showing us that there are some existential threats so great that they transcend democratic politics?

“Don’t Look Up” takes a hard look at the prospects of meaningful collective action (from COVID to the climate and beyond) with democratic institutions so corrupted by elite capture. (Spoiler: They’re grim.) Gone is any illusion that the government fears its people. In this not-so-unfamiliar political reality, to echo Joseph Schumpeter, democracy has become nothing more than an empty institutional arrangement whereby elites acquire the power to decide by way of a hollow competition for the people’s vote. This political landscape cannot support anything as grand as Rousseau’s general will – a collection of citizens’ beliefs, convictions, and commitments all articulating a shared vision of the common good. Instead, political will is manufactured and disseminated from the top down, rather than being organically generated from the ground up.

The pressing question “Don’t Look Up” poses (but does not address) is what to do when democracy becomes part of the problem. If our democratic processes can’t be fixed, can they at least be laid aside? With consequences as grave as these, surely truth shouldn’t be left to a vote. When it comes to the fate of the planet, surely we shouldn’t be content to go on making sausage.

Misgivings about the democracy are hardly new. Plato advised lying to the rabble so as to ensure they fall in line. Mill proposed assigning more weight to certain people’s votes. And Rousseau concluded that democracy was only rightly suited for a society composed entirely of gods.

Like these critical voices, Carl Schmitt similarly challenged our blind faith in democratic processes. He remained adamant that the indecisiveness that plagued republics would be their downfall. Schmitt insisted on the fundamental necessity of a sovereign to address emergency situations (like, say, the inevitable impact of a planet-killing comet). There has to be someone, Schmitt claimed, capable of suspending everyday political norms in order to normalize a state of exception – to declare martial law, mobilize the state’s resources, and organize the public. Democracies which failed to grasp this basic truth would not last. The inability to move beyond unceasing deliberation, infinite bureaucratic red tape, and unending political gridlock, Schmitt was convinced, would spell their doom. In the end, all governments must sometimes rely on dictatorial rule just like ancient Rome where time-limited powers were extended to an absolute authority tasked with saving the republic from an immediate existential threat.

This is the savior that never appears. The tragedy of the movie is that our protagonists know the truth, but cannot share it. There remain no suitable democratic channels to deliver their apocalyptic message and spur political action. They must sit with their despair, alone. Much like John Dewey, Kate Dibiasky and Dr. Mindy come to recognize that while today we possess means of communication like never before – the internet, the iPhone, Twitter, The Daily Rip – (so far) these forces have only further fractured the public rather than being harnessed to bring it together.

By the end, when the credits roll, the film leaves us in an uncomfortable place. In documenting the hopelessness of our heroes’ plight, is “Don’t Look Up” merely highlighting the various ways our democracy needs to be repaired? Or is it making the case that the rot runs so deep, democratic norms must be abandoned?

Whatever the answer, it’s a mistake to think “Don’t Look Up” fails to take the problem of political consensus seriously. It simply treats division as immovable – as inescapable as the comet. The question is: what then?

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Intervention and Self-Determination in Haiti

photograph of Hispaniola Island on topographic globe

Haiti is in crisis, though that fact is not new. Its president, Jovenel Moïse, has been assassinated, probably by foreign actors, after refusing to leave office following the end of his term — a term that began with a contested election. Though, this isn’t the first time that’s happened either. Haiti has been beset by conflict nearly since its founding with almost all the brief periods of “peace” accompanied by ruthless, authoritarian control either by native dictators or foreign powers. Using terminology from MLK Jr., there has never been the positive peace of liberation in Haiti, though for brief periods there has been the negative peace of iron-fisted oppression.

No one yet knows who assassinated Moïse or why they did it. However, there are some clues. The assassination was “well-orchestrated” with numerous vehicles full of upwards of 20 people storming the president’s home early in the morning while most of his guards were noticeably absent. And, Moïse had many enemies: he was unpopular, many powerful business-controlling families opposed him, and the leader of G9, the most prominent confederation of gangs, expressed opposition to his reign.

As a result of the assassination, the country has fallen into a chaos of leadership. At least three people have been claiming legitimate authority over the Haitian government: Claude Joseph, the acting Prime Minister who was fired by Moïse just a week before his death; Ariel Henry, the man Moïse appointed to replace Joseph; and Joseph Lambert, the President of the Haitian Senate who the Senate voted for to succeed Moïse. Meanwhile, the legislature is mostly empty, since the terms of all the representatives in Haiti’s lower house and two-thirds of those in the upper house expired last year and elections to replace them were not held. Because of this situation, Moïse was ruling by decree and advocating a constitutional referendum to increase the power of the presidency. Thus, when he was killed, there was no obvious authority to replace him. (Claude Joseph has agreed to hand power over to Ariel Henry, but, as NPR reports, “some lawmakers. . .  said the agreement lacks legal legitimacy.”)

Without clearly legitimate leadership, several ongoing crises in Haiti are likely to worsen: the spread of COVID-19 variants, the dysfunctional economy, and the growing power of violent gangs. The situation is unconscionable. Surely, Haiti is in need of aid and would benefit from the help of its rich, powerful neighbor, the United States, right? Unfortunately, it’s not that straightforward.

There are two main camps on this issue. Some people, mostly liberal American commentators, are pro-intervention for basically the reason expressed above: the situation is dire, requires an immediate fix, and the people of Haiti cannot do it alone. Others, including socialists, anti-imperialists, and activists in Haiti, oppose intervention, citing the long history of foreign intervention in Haiti that has only made things worse, furthering the interests of everybody except the Haitian people.

Before we turn to assessing the merits of these two positions, it’s important to appreciate some of the context since, without a sense of the history here, we seem doomed to repeat it. We’ll look at how Haiti has actually been governed, the history of intervention in Haiti by foreign powers, and why there is disagreement about who should lead the government.

Putting the Problem in Context

History of Foreign Influence in Haiti

In practice, Haiti has rarely lived up to the ideal of a constitutional republic. The Spanish and then the French colonized the island from 1492 to 1804, when Haitians declared independence. For most of its history thereafter, Haiti has been led by a local dictator (such as François Duvalier), a military junta, or a foreign occupying military (most often the United States).

The U.S. occupied Haiti from 1915-1937 and from 1994-1995 and participated in the 2004 coup d’état of Haiti’s first truly democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. In the first occupation, the United States military compelled Haiti to rewrite its constitution to allow foreign ownership of Haitian land. They killed fifteen thousands rebelling Haitians. And, they introduced Jim Crow laws, reintroducing racism to the island after its founders had declared that all its citizens would be considered Black. They did all this to reinforce American business interests on the island and to strengthen the United States’ imperialist interests in the region.

The UN then occupied Haiti from 2004 to 2017, ostensibly to keep the peace. They brought cholera, killing thousands. And, there were credible reports of UN soldiers very frequently sexually assaulting the Haitians they were stationed there to protect.

And, already, it has come out that some of the Colombian mercenaries involved in the assassination were U.S.-trained, if not actually U.S.-led. The U.S. trained these Colombian mercenaries to fight against drug cartels in Central and South America, just one more example of U.S. foreign intervention with unforeseen consequences.

Given all this foreign influence and the changes those foreign influences have had on the Haitian Constitution, the constitution in Haiti is not treated with the same reverence as the United States Constitution is in the U.S. Nonetheless, for those who don’t claim to rule by sheer force (as opposed to the numerous gangs who do, and, in practice, control large parts of the capital city of Port-au-Prince) the constitution is the sole source of authority.

Origin of the Leadership Controversy

The current Constitution, from 2012, says that the prime minister assumes the role of the president should the sitting president die. Thus, Claude Joseph and Ariel Henry, both of whom claim the Prime Ministership, claim the power to serve as acting president. But, as the Haitian Times reports, “the constitution also says that if there is a vacancy ‘from the fourth year of the presidential mandate,’ the National Assembly will meet to elect a provisional president.”

Unfortunately, the National Assembly has been almost entirely empty since last year when the terms of two-thirds of the Senators expired along with the terms of all the House Deputies. Thus, the remaining 10 Senators, who are the only elected representatives in office, claim the authority to elect the provisional president. Of those ten, eight agreed on Joseph Lambert, the President of the Senate, who is the third to claim the power of the presidency. With the president assassinated, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court recently having passed away from COVID-19, and the legislature virtually empty, all three branches of government lack straightforwardly legitimate leadership.

Ethical Perspectives on Intervention

Pro-Intervention

So, what should be done about this mess, if anything? The pro-intervention camp varies in their prescriptions, but we can identify two main suggestions that repeatedly crop up: first, they support a U.S.-led investigation into the assassination. As Ryan Berg of CNN states, “The international community. . . should push for an investigation. . . lest [the perpetrators] benefit from the impunity that is all too common in Haiti.” If unelected interests can simply kill politicians they don’t like, the government isn’t much of a government at all.

Second, they recommend the U.S. or UN organize an immediate election to refill the legislature and office of the president. In Haiti, the government is responsible for running elections. But, as we’ve seen, there isn’t much of a government left. Thus, as the editorial board of The Washington Post argues,

“The hard truth, at this point, is that organizing them and ensuring security through a campaign and polling, with no one in charge, may be all but impossible.”

Anti-Intervention

The anti-interventionists staunchly disagree. Kim Ives, an investigative journalist at Haïti Liberté explained in an interview with Jacobin that the assassination was likely a response to socialist Jimmy Cherizier. Cherizier brought together nine of the largest gangs in Port-au-Prince into a single organization called G9 and advocated against foreign ownership of Haitian businesses. He made a statement on social media, saying, “It is your money which is in banks, stores, supermarkets and dealerships, so go and get what is rightfully yours.” Ives supports the “G9 movement,” as he calls it and so opposes intervention that would serve to crack down on the “crime” he sees as revolutionary. As he says, the interests of Haiti’s rich are “practically concomitant with US business interests” and so U.S. intervention would “set the stage for the repression, for the destruction of the G9 movement.”

But, you need not be a revolutionary socialist to oppose intervention in Haiti. A great many Haitians oppose U.S. intervention. They tend to give two reasons: first, foreign intervention has frequently hurt Haiti, intentionally or unintentionally, far more than it has helped; and second, as André Michel, a human rights lawyer and opposition leader demands, “The solution to the crisis must be Haitian.” Racism and classism has led outside nations to think Haitians cannot solve their own problems. But, they have always failed. As Professor Mamyrah Douge-Prosper urges, “Rather than speaking authoritatively while standing atop long-standing racist tropes, it is important more than ever to be humble, ask questions, and focus on the deeper context.”

In short, it is Haitians who know best how to fix Haiti. Its problems are largely a result of colonialism and imperialism from foreigners. France forced Haiti into debt to preserve its independence. The UN brought cholera and sexual violence. Foreign aid money has destroyed the local economy. Foreign entanglement has always been the problem, not the solution.

Resolving the Disagreement

What are we to make of this disagreement between those in favor of and those against foreign intervention? One solution is to appeal to democracy and simply do what the Haitian people want. The people of Haiti may have a right to self-determination that we must respect. The value of respecting national sovereignty as a rule might be more important than the benefits accrued from a particular successful violation of that sovereignty. Now, Claude Joseph has requested U.S. or UN military intervention. But, as we’ve seen,

Haiti’s government is currently far from representing its people.

A strictly consequentialist view would be hard-pressed to justify intervention given the damage past interventions have done. But, perhaps we nonetheless have a duty to do something. Intuitively, it seems hard to say we can just do nothing. Just because the interventions of the past have failed does not mean that this one must too. Surely it’s possible that we might learn from our mistakes. And so, perhaps a limited intervention made with good intentions and careful consideration of past errors could do good.

If you’re a socialist, you might be inclined to oppose intervention in the hope that the G9 movement prompts a real revolution. But, if you agree that the past predicts the future when it comes to the inefficacy of foreign intervention, you must also consider how past socialist revolutions have resulted in dictatorships just as bad if not worse than the governments they were intended to replace. This can be seen least controversially in North Korea, Cambodia, and the Soviet Union.

Conclusion

Regardless of which way you swing on the issue, there are several uncontroversial conclusions we can draw about the situation in Haiti:

First, there is no simple solution. U.S. intervention will not immediately make things all better, nor will simply hoping that Haitians solve their crises on their own without addressing the systemic issues that have led to the present situation. There are a mess of interested players, from wealthy business families, to the abundant political parties, and to socialist gang confederations. Additionally, there are many axes of conflict relevant to this situation: bourgeois vs. proletariat, mulattos vs. Blacks, and colonizers vs. colonized, among others.

Anti-interventionists suggest we respect the autonomy of Haitians by respecting their preferences. But, given all these divisions, there’s no real majority preference to be respected. Respecting any preference would be taking a side. And, more than that, say the pro-interventionists, why do their preferences matter if intervention would make them all better off? It’s a valid concern, but is also the argument that has been given over and over again to justify intervention from foreign nations to ill effect.

Thus, second, we must act in the context of history. Any intervention that is carried out must be done extremely cautiously in light of all the harm past interventions have done. For Haitians to succeed in resolving their problems, they must be treated as capable of resolving their own  problems. An intervention that is not Haitian-led will reinforce the belief of many Haitians that they are not the ultimate agents of their own affairs. With that consciousness, Haiti will not retain any positive changes that are made.

Finally, as we began with, the status quo in Haiti is unacceptable. Something must be done. The situation in Haiti is the complex result of the involvement of numerous nations. These nations have a duty, if not to intervene, then at least to ensure that the sort of harms they caused (and continue to cause) Haiti do not follow it into the future. For example, the French might owe Haiti the enormous debt they unfairly levied on their former colony. Likewise, the United States might be obligated to end the American property holdings in Haiti that were only possible because of the revisions the United States forced upon their constitution. And finally, it may be that colonizing nations more broadly might have an obligation to invest more in colonized nations, to make up for the damage colonization has wrought on the Global South. Haiti’s crisis is just one more example of how the consequences of colonialism and imperialism can filter down across the centuries.

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“Stand Back and Stand By”: The Demands of Loyal Opposition

photograph of miniature US flag with blurred background

An incendiary essay is currently making the rounds. Glenn Ellmers’s “‘Conservatism’ is no Longer Enough” is a call to arms: “The United States has become two nations occupying the same country.” The essay details a kind of foreign occupation:

most people living in the United States today—certainly more than half—are not Americans in any meaningful sense of the term. […] They do not believe in, live by, or even like the principles, traditions, and ideals that until recently defined America as a nation and as a people. It is not obvious what we should call these citizen-aliens, these non-American Americans; but they are something else.

Given this dire situation where there is “almost nothing left to conserve,” “counter-revolution” represents “the only road forward.” Those brave enough to grasp this grave truth also possess the clarity of vision to see that “America, as an identity or political movement, might need to carry on without the United States.” For if true patriots fail to find the courage to mobilize and take action, “the victory of progressive tyranny will be assured. See you in the gulag.”

While it may seem irresponsible to grant such obvious propaganda additional attention, Ellmers’s essay is worthy of consideration for two reasons. First, this is not your run-of-the-mill internet debris. It bears the seal of a prominent conservative think tank. Published by The American Mind with direct ties to the Claremont Institute (where Ellmers graduated and serves as fellow), the essay is endorsed by a body with not insignificant cachet. The various fellows and graduates, for instance, have ties to major universities. It would be a mistake to see this as obscure preaching to a small flock; this narrative is emblematic. It’s an intellectualized hard-right manifesto serving as mission statement for the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy whose name Ellmers invokes.

Second, the essay provides a compelling framework by which to understand the motivations behind a number of recent events — the various efforts to overturn the results of the presidential election, the January 6th Capitol riot, as well as voting legislation in Georgia (and elsewhere) attempting to restrict the franchise to “real” Americans. Like Michael Anton’s “The Flight 93 Election” (another Claremont fellow whose work was published by the same body), Ellmers’s essay paints the current political moment as a desperate choice: fight or face extinction, rush the cockpit or die.

Ellmers’s essay has received attention in no small part due to its eerie similarity to Weimar-era German political writings. Echoing the kind of language used by Carl Schmitt – the constitutional scholar and jurist who embraced National Socialism – Ellmers emphasizes the need to declare a state of emergency and purge those who have infiltrated the state and subjected American politics, all in an act of restoration and purification. “What is needed, of course,” Ellmers claims, “is a statesman who understands both the disease afflicting the nation, and the revolutionary medicine required for the cure” — a pronouncement which seems strikingly similar to Schmitt’s explanation of the role of the sovereign to normalize the situation by embracing the responsibility to deliver the miracle of the decision – that is, the extra-legal authority to say whether everyday legal norms should apply.

Likewise, Ellmers’s essay seconds Schmitt’s conviction that the basis of politics rests on distinguishing friend from foe and treating them accordingly. For any state to continue to be, it must be willing and able to forcibly expel those who might undermine its fundamental homogeneity in order to save itself from corruption from within. Again, following Schmitt, Ellmers issues a dire warning on the supposed political virtue of tolerance and questions our blind faith in democracy’s ability to assimilate conflicting and antagonistic viewpoints and house them under the same roof.

Lost in all the fascist rhetoric is an important philosophical problem. The challenge is familiar to students of political obligation: how can citizens feel any tie to the law when it isn’t their team who’s making the rules? It is what David Estlund has called the “puzzle of the minority democrat”: how can those in the minority consider themselves self-governing if they are subject to laws they have not explicitly endorsed?

This is no small thing; resolving this tension is the key to the bloodless transition of power. Ensuring citizens can adequately identify with the law and see themselves sufficiently reflected in their government is a necessary component of the exercise of legitimate political authority. We need a compelling answer for how citizens might still see themselves as having had a hand in authoring these constraints even when their private preferences have failed to win the day. Why should those in the minority sacrifice their own sense of what is right simply because they lack numbers on their side on any particular occasion?

Our answers to this puzzle often begin by emphasizing that democratic decision-making is essentially about compromise. Majority rule acknowledges our basic equality by publicly affirming the worth of each citizen’s viewpoint. It privileges no single individual’s claim to knowledge or expertise. It grants each citizen the greatest share of political power possible that remains compatible with people’s basic parity. From there, explanations begin to diverge.

Some accounts emphasize the duty to live by the result of the game in which we’ve been a willing participant. Others highlight the opportunity to impact the decision, voice concerns, and engage in reason-giving. A few maintain faith in the majority’s ability to come to the “correct” decision.

Regardless of the particulars, each of these accounts makes a virtue of reciprocity; individual freedom must be balanced against the equally legitimate claims to liberty by one’s fellows. When we refuse to acknowledge this, we usurp others’ right to equal discretion in shaping our shared world and thus violate our moral commitment to the fundamental equality of people.

These considerations about how best to accommodate deep, and potentially incompatible, disagreement have important implications for our politics today. For example, the ongoing debate over reforming the filibuster is a conversation about, among other things, the appropriate portion of power those in the minority should wield. Different people articulate different visions of the part the opposition party needs to play. But we seemingly all agree that this role must be more robust than one wherein those in the minority simply bide their time until they can rewrite the law and install their own private political vision. Instead, we must continue to articulate the significant demands the concept of loyal opposition makes on all of us. Responsible statesmanship is not solely the burden of those who wear the crown.

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The Value of Secrecy in Congress

photograph of C-SPAN floor vote TV coverage

During both of the most recent impeachments, an old argument resurfaced. Afraid of retribution, many spoke out to advocate a way Republican members of Congress could get rid of Trump and keep their own seats. They suggested that the impeachment vote in the House and the Senate should be done in secret. Republican voters would know some Republicans voted to convict, but the blame would be diluted, spread across all 50 or so Republican senators. And so each Republican senator would individually be unlikely to lose his or her seat.

But this raises a question: if it would be good to convict Trump secretly, why not make the votes on all sorts of controversial issues secret? The people would know what laws were passed of course, but no one would be allowed to see committee meetings. No congressional sessions or votes would be broadcast on TV. You would vote in your representatives and then for two, four, or six years, you would simply trust that they voted in the way that was best. Members of Congress could pass legislation that might be unpopular to their constituency, but important for the nation at large. And neither ordinary citizens nor lobbyists could influence the legislative process after election day.

Many, however, are horrified by this idea. Making acts of Congress secret would be akin to government by aristocracy, rule by the elites, not democracy. Transparency is vital because it allows citizens to accurately judge whether their elected representatives are actually representing them instead of simply voting their own interests.

Let’s consider the arguments on both sides here and see if we can develop a better understanding of the issue. What are the benefits of congressional secrecy? And, are the costs to democracy too severe?

The first reason why one might think congressional votes should be secret is because this secrecy would allow Congress to stop acting only along party lines. Congress is extremely partisan nowadays and this hasn’t always been the case. Furthermore, this unwillingness to cross the aisle leads to difficulties in Congress achieving popular political ends. For example, nearly 60 percent of Americans supported Trump being convicted and removed from office after the second impeachment trial. Even more Americans, including 64 percent of Republicans, support stimulus checks. But, no Republican members of Congress voted for Biden’s stimulus check, despite voting for Trump’s. And finally, a majority of Republicans support increasing the minimum wage, but Republican members of Congress vote against it when the issue is raised by Democrats. Voting against political opponents seems to be more important to members of Congress than passing popular legislation.

The fact of the matter is that Congress isn’t beholden to your average voter. Nor even the average voter from their party. Members of Congress are beholden to the partisans of their party because of the primary system. According to a study from the Social Science Research Council, primary voters tend to prefer politically extreme candidates. And if candidates can’t make it past the primaries, it doesn’t matter how popular they would be in the general election. (Some have suggested primaries are responsible for Trump’s nomination.) In any case, if Congressional votes were more often secret, congresspeople could give lip service to extremism in the primaries while looking to what’s best for the country when they actually vote. Those extreme partisans wouldn’t know who betrayed them. Thus, legislation that is broadly popular, but not popular among extreme partisans, could be passed and perhaps we’d be better off.

But, partisans and primaries aren’t the only reason Congress doesn’t pass popular legislation. Another problem congressional secrecy, especially in committee meetings, could solve is the influence of lobbyists and donors. As I have written elsewhere, money in politics is a seriously corrupting influence. Lobbyists and donors frequently control the legislative agenda. But, again, this hasn’t always been the case. The number of lobbyists skyrocketed in the 1970s with the passage of so-called “Sunshine Laws” meant to improve government transparency. Some of these are good: Freedom of Information Act requests allow the people to have access to a great deal of information about the operation of government that would be otherwise hidden from them. But, they also allowed lobbyists to flow in from the lobby through the previously closed doors of committee meetings. As is argued by the Congressional Research Institute (a think tank, not part of Congress), these laws “enormously enhanced the ability of ‘outside’ lobbyists and powerful entities to influence the legislative process,” and so they claim “all legislative transparency overwhelmingly benefits special interests and the powerful.”

Think of it this way: before, lobbyists and donors could monitor how congressional votes shook out. If particular members of Congress voted how the donors wanted, they would get more campaign donations, and if not, they wouldn’t. This influence has always been around. But since the passage of the Sunshine Laws, lobbyists can monitor the entire legislative process: they can write the legislation, follow along with congressional committee meetings to make sure no revisions are made they don’t like, and display their approval or disapproval to members of Congress throughout the process. Of course, ordinary citizens can do this too, but they tend not to have the resources to lobby as powerfully as massive corporations or billionaires. If the relevant “Sunshine Laws” were reversed, many of these problems would go away, and if congressional votes were made secret too, lobbying would become a very bad investment. Donors could spend money on lobbying and campaign donations and hope that the legislator feels pressured by it, but they would never be sure if it worked. Thus, the influence of money in politics would be diminished.

However, there remains an enormous counter-argument to making the acts of Congress secret. I have been making a very utilitarian case for secrecy. It would achieve better results for the American people. But that may not be the only thing that matters. One might argue that the ends aren’t the only things that matter; the means do too. Making the acts of Congress secret would allow lawmakers to ignore the interests of the people in favor of their own opinions and values. It would allow members of Congress to lie to the people about how they voted with little to no consequence. Perhaps transparency should be considered a virtue such that if maintaining transparency means lobbyists and donors get their way, so be it.

One might say getting something they consider important, like removing Trump from office, or getting stimulus to the people, or raising the minimum wage, isn’t worth the cost of allowing Congress to be unbeholden to voters. Is a democracy led by representatives who can ignore the voters really a democracy at all? Many political philosophers, like John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, have argued that government derives its power from the consent of the governed. One might hold that doing what the people want, even if it’s wrong, is more important than doing right, if it means ignoring the will of the people. A government that doesn’t act for the people may not be much of a government at all. And why should we think representatives know better than the population at large? They are only human. And more than that they are an unrepresentative sample of the country, being more white, more male, older, and wealthier than the American population.Thus, on this view, making the acts of Congress secret is untenable: it is valid only according to a consequentialist framework and anyone who disagrees with such a framework will abhor the fact that legislators will be incentivized toward dishonesty and away from democratic principles. As Aristotle wrote in the Nicomachean Ethics, to act “at the right times, with reference to the right objects, towards the right people, with the right motive, and in the right way, is what is both intermediate and best, and this is characteristic of virtue,” nothing more, nothing less. This is a far higher standard than simply weighing the consequences and one we should strive for.

Making the acts of Congress secret would be an enormous change and not one to be taken lightly. As I have shown, your thoughts on this issue can vary significantly based on which moral framework you follow. The case, at least in the short term, is clear for the consequentialist. But for the virtue ethicist or deontologist, things are far murkier. Answering this question, as with many moral questions requires us to consider which of our values cannot be crossed? Which do you value more, if one has to be sacrificed: transparency and democracy, or the people’s welfare? In any case, something needs to be changed so that the problems of political partisanship and the influence of money in politics are resolved. Making the acts of Congress may be one solution but there are surely others. Perhaps we should reform the primary system. Perhaps we should overturn Citizens United to diminish the power of donors and lobbyists. The number of ethical solutions is only limited by our creativity, something which must be trained by continual practice and reflection.

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Climate Services, Public Policy, and the Colorado

photograpg of Colorado River landscape

What does the Colorado River Compact of 1922 have to do with ethical issues in the philosophy of science? Democracy, that’s what! This week The Colorado Sun reported that the Center for Colorado River Studies issued a white paper urging reform to river management in light of climate change to make the Colorado River basin more sustainable. They argue that the Upper Colorado River Commission’s projections for water use are inflated, and that this makes planning the management of the basin more difficult given the impact of climate change.

Under a 1922 agreement among seven U.S. states, the rights to use water from the Colorado River basin are divided into an upper division — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming — and a lower division — Nevada, Arizona, and California. Each division was apportioned a set amount with the expectation being that the upper division would take longer to develop than the lower division. The white paper charges that the UCRC is relying on inflated water usage projections for the upper division despite demand for development in the upper basin being flat for three decades. In reality, however, the supply of water is far lower than projected in 1922, and climate change has exacerbated the issue. In fact, the supply has shrunk so much that upper basin states have taken efforts to reduce water consumption so that they do not violate the agreement with lower basin states. As the Sun reported, “If it appears contradictory that the upper basin is looking at how to reduce water use while at the same time clinging to a plan for more future water use, that’s because it is.”

To see how this illustrates an ethical problem in philosophy of science, we need to first examine inductive risk. While it is a common enough view that science has nothing to do with values, a consensus among several philosophers of science has formed in the past decade which suggests that not only does science use values, but that this is a good thing. Science never deals with certainty but with inductive generalizations based on statistical modelling. Because one can never be certain, one can always be wrong. Inductive risk involves considering the ethical harms which one should be aware of should their decisions turn out to be wrong. For example, if there is a 90% chance that it will not rain, you may be inclined to wear your expensive new shoes. On the other hand, if you are wrong about that 90% chance, your expensive new shoes will get ruined in the rain. In a case like this, you need to evaluate two factors at the same time: how important are the consequences of being wrong, and, in light of this judgment, how confident do you need to be in your conclusion? If your shoes cost $1000 and ruin very easily, you may want a level of confidence close to 95% or 99% before leaving home. On the other hand, if your shoes are cheap and easy to replace, you may be happy to go outside with a 50% chance of rain.

When dealing with what philosophers call socially-relevant or policy-relevant science, the same inductive risk concerns arise. In an inductive risk situation, we need to make value judgments about how important the consequences of being wrong are, and how accurate we thus ought to be. But what values should be used? According to many philosophers of science, when dealing with socially-relevant science, only democratically-endorsed values are legitimate. The reason for this is straightforward; if values are going to be used that affect public policy-making, then the people should select those values rather than scientists, or other private interests, as that would give them undue power and influence in policy-making.

This brings us back to the Colorado River. A new area of climate science known as “climate services” aims to make climate data more usable for social decision-making by ensuring that the needs of users are central to the collection and analysis of data. Typically, such climate data is not organized to suit the needs of stakeholders and decision-makers. For example, Colorado River Basin managers employed climate services from state and national agencies to create model-based projections of Lake Mead’s ability to supply water. In a recent paper, Wendy Parker and Greg Lusk have explored how inductive risk concerns allow for the use of values in the “co-production” of climate services jointly between providers and users. This means that insofar as inductive risk is a concern, the values of the user can affect everything from model creation, the selection of data, and even the ultimate conclusions reached. Thus, if a group wished to develop land in the Colorado basin, and sought the use of climate services, then the values of that group could affect the information and data that is used and what policies take effect.

According to Greg Lusk, however, this is potentially a problem since if any user who pays for climate services is able to use their own values to affect scientifically-informed policy-making, then this would violate the need for the values to be democratically endorsed. He notes:

“Users could refer to anyone, including government agencies, public interest groups, private industry, or political parties …. The aims or values of these groups are not typically established through democratic mechanisms that secure representative participation and are unlikely to be indicative of the general public’s desires. Yet, the information that climate service providers supplies to users is typically designed to be useful for social and political decision making.”

It is worth noting, for example, that the white paper issued by the Center for Colorado River Studies was funded by the Walton Family Foundation, the USGS Southwest Climate Adaptation Science Center, the Utah Water Research Laboratory, and various other private donors and grants. This report could affect policy maker’s decisions. None of this suggests that the research is biased or bad, but to whatever extent values can influence such reports, and to whatever extent such reports affect policy-making, is the extent to which we should question whose values are playing what roles in information-based policy-making.

In other words, there is an ethical dilemma. On the one hand, climate services can offer major advantages to help users of all kinds prepare for, mitigate, adapt to, or plan development in light of climate change. On the other hand, scientific material designed to be relevant for policy-making, yet heavily influenced by non-democratically endorsable values, can be hugely influential and can affect what we consider to be good data-driven policy. As Lusk notes,

“According to the democratic view, then, the employment of users’s values in climate services would often be illegitimate, and scientists should ignore those values in favor of democratically endorsed ones, to ensure users do not have undue influence over social decision making.”

Of course, even if we accept the democratic view, the problem of defining what “democratically endorsable” means remains. As the events of the past year remind us, democracy is about more than just voting for a representative. In an age of polarization where the values endorsed may be likely to swing radically every four years, or where there is disagreement among various elected governments, deciding which values are endorsable becomes extremely difficult, and ensuring that they are used becomes more impactable. Thus, deciding what place democracy has in science remains an important moral question for philosophers of science, but even more so for the public.

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When Should We Be Undemocratic?

photograph of the White House at night

I am inclined to think the following two things:

  1. The Senate should have convicted former President Trump and prohibited him from holding future office (as permitted by Article I, Section 3, Clause 7 of the U.S. constitution).
  2. It would have been undemocratic for the Senate to bar President Trump from future office.

Why do I think it undemocratic to bar President Trump from office? Simply because it removes the ability of the democratic populous to select him once again as president. Certainly, I think his behavior should disqualify him from ever holding public office again; but there are a great many people who I believe should never hold public office, and yet it would be undemocratic for my will to be decisive in preventing my fellow citizens from electing them.

Barring a president from future office, then, is actually far more profoundly undemocratic than removing a president who was voted into office. After a president has been elected, it takes four years before the people could vote him or her out. Thus, impeachment and removal is necessary to maintain an interim political check. The problem with barring someone from future office, however, is that future elections already provide this democratic check. The people can choose to not reelect someone! To bar someone from holding office says: even if the people choose to reelect, even then, he or she should not be allowed to take that seat.

I’m tempted to console myself here; to tell myself that President Trump’s behavior made him a threat to democracy, and as such it is not undemocratic to remove his name from the list of potential candidates. This, however, I think would just be a pleasing rationalization. It is, itself, undemocratic for me to unilaterally decide which threats to democracy should (and should not) bar one from future office. For a long time, people thought that there was something essentially undemocratic about electing a Catholic to high office, since that would put U.S. decision-making under the moral control of the Pope. Of course, this was just anti-Catholic bigotry; but who am I to say the argument about Catholics is wrong and the argument about President Trump is right? When I look at the evidence this seems clear, but looking at the evidence I also thought Trump should never be president, and it would clearly have been undemocratic to make that choice for the nation.

To see the worry, note that I think there are many undemocratic aspects of both the Democratic and Republican platforms. But it would clearly be undemocratic to prohibit any Republicans or Democrats from running for office. To decide what undemocratic behavior disqualifies one from office should, in a democracy, be up to the people.

Most arguments I heard against impeachment seemed bad to me, but even I had to admit there was something to the worry that it would be undemocratic to not let the people decide for themselves.

Of course, there are goods other than democracy, and those goods speak in favor of impeaching President Trump. In particular, it seems important that we maintain a credible political threat against lame-duck presidents who have been voted out of office. If the Senate cannot impose a penalty barring future office, if the president is already on the way out the door, and if we want to preserve the norm against criminally prosecuting political enemies, then it is unclear what threat there is to hold a president in line other than impeachment (of course, this problem will still apply to president’s in their second term; so even impeachment is not an altogether adequate solution).

Now, I don’t want to here analyze whether it was right to bar President Trump from office. (I think it is, at least in this case, rather clear that barring him from office would have been the right thing to do all things considered.)

But I’m still worried, because I have no general principle for how to make these tradeoffs. I have no idea how to make comparisons between the undemocratic nature of barring someone from future office, and the importance of the social goods granted by the threat of impeachment. In this case, I have the strong intuition that the limited harm to democracy is unimportant when compared to the gains granted by deterrence. And, in fact, in this case, I’m actually pretty confident in that intuition. If any case is clear, it seems to me that this is going to be this one.

But what if the case were messier; what if the president’s behavior was itself less brazenly undemocratic? How would I go about comparing the good of democracy to other social goods? In a previous Prindle Post piece, I argued that, psychologically, we often make these decisions by intensity matching. How undemocratic does impeachment feel? How terrible do the president’s actions feel? If the president’s actions feel more terrible than impeachment feels undemocratic, then we should impeach and bar from future office. If the impeachment feels more undemocratic than the president’s behavior feels terrible; then impeach but don’t bar from future office. As I argued in that piece, however, the problem with intensity matching is that it does not reliably connect with any moral reality.  It depends on how one anchors their own scale, and often produces morally bizarre behavior (like a willingness to spend the same amount of money to save one hundred or one hundred thousand birds from oil spills).

So if our gut intuitions don’t tell us how to make this comparison, we need some principle. But right now I don’t see what that principle could be; and I think that should make us all a little more cautious in our calls for political action.

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The Cost of Free Speech

cartoon image of excited speech bubble

As 2021 got underway, and the United States was dealing with the fallout from the January 6 insurrection, a much smaller-scale political controversy was blowing through Australia’s sweltering summer. The prime minister was on holiday, his deputy Michael McCormack was in charge, and Craig Kelly, an outspoken member of the leading party who is a notorious climate skeptic, alternative COVID-19 treatment theorist, and vaccine doubter, had a hold of the mic and was getting plenty of attention proffering conspiracy-style views on his social media accounts.

Australia has done exceptionally well in keeping the global coronavirus pandemic at bay with strict lockdowns in response to outbreaks, effective contact tracing, and strict quarantine rules for all international arrivals. The country of 25 million, has recorded fewer than 1,000 deaths since the pandemic hit last March. Though the community is generally willing to comply with expert public health advice, there has been some dissent from conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers.

As Australia began preparing to roll out its COVID-19 vaccination program, Craig Kelly, that zealous critic of scientific evidence, was hard at work on his personal Facebook page posting in favor of unproven treatments and against vaccines and other public health measures, such as the wearing of masks.

Kelly has a large social media following, and public health officials in Australia, including the Australian Medical Association and the chief medical officer, pushed back hard, expressing concern that his views pose a danger to public health, and calling on senior government figures – the acting Prime Minister Michael McCormack and the Health Minister Greg Hunt – to condemn those views and rebuke Kelly. But no rebuke came. Instead, McCormack had this to say:

“Facts are sometimes contentious and what you might think is right – somebody else might think is completely untrue – that is part of living in a democratic country… I don’t think we should have that sort of censorship in our society.”

Notice how familiar this type of response is becoming: when politicians or pundits are called out for expressing views that are misleading, offensive or wrong, there is a tendency to claim a free speech defense. Notice too that McCormack makes specific reference here to what living in a democratic country involves. It is of course true that democratic legitimacy is one of the functions of free speech, but does free speech include freedom to lie, confabulate, or spread misinformation? And how do these things affect democracy? Can we untangle freedom of speech, as a fundamentally necessary democratic principle, from demagoguery?

Let’s look in a bit more detail at McCormack’s statement, which is problematic for a number of reasons, but namely in invoking freedom of speech in defense of views which ought to be rejected because they are wrong, harmful, and generally indefensible. This is a sly move, given the high importance citizens of free, democratic countries place on the right to free speech. It is also a tactic which often has little to do with defending this important right and more to do with evading a subject or shutting down an argument – contra free speech.

As a point of logic, rebuking Kelly for proffering dangerous falsehoods is not censorship. If McCormack’s assertion is that Kelly is free to make these claims then, on that argument, McCormack is free to condemn them.

Furthermore, McCormack’s assertion that facts are contentious appears to imply an ‘everyone is entitled to their own opinion’ kind of defense, which bears a strong resemblance to the free speech defense. But it simply isn’t right. In matters of fact, for example matters of science, as opposed to matters of taste, you are not entitled to your opinion; you are entitled to what you can make a case for, and what you can support through reasoned argument, true premises, and solid inferences. You are not entitled to an opinion that is demonstrably false. Both logic and good faith hold you to a standard which requires you to recognize when a belief is indefensible. Democratic legitimacy depends as much on that as it does on freedom of speech.

Following McCormack’s comments, as public and medical professional pushback grew, no senior member of Kelly’s government – not the Federal Health Minister, nor the Prime Minister himself (now back from his holiday) would bring Kelly into line. Finally, it was Facebook whose moderators intervened and Kelly was required to remove one post proffering COVID-19 misinformation and conspiracy-style rhetoric. Kelly did so, saying: “I have since removed the post… under protest.” He then gave this ominous pronouncement: “We have entered a very dark time in human history when scientific debate and freedom of speech is being suppressed.”

Perhaps Kelly is right that we have ‘entered a dark time in human history’ (if the present can be said to be history) – but not for the reasons he thinks. When we see the right of free speech being used again and again to evade responsibility and excuse lies and falsehoods, it is time to take stock, and look closely at what is at stake in our fundamental beliefs about freedom, democracy, and truth.

One reason this use of the free speech defense is so pernicious, is that most people living in open, democratic societies will agree on the importance of free speech and hold it in high regard. This invocation of freedom of speech seems to trade on the hearer not noticing that something they value highly is being used to degrade other things of value.

International law recognizes and protects the right to freedom of speech which is enshrined into the UN Declaration of Human Rights, as stated in Article 19. The antithesis of freedom of speech is censorship. Censorship is the intolerance of opposing views. This happens, politically, where the establishment fears or dislikes opposition, or where governments want to suppress information about their activities.

Democratic legitimacy is one of the most important functions of free speech. And free speech is one of the most important mechanisms of democratic legitimacy. Real democratic engagement requires the free exchange of ideas, where forms of dissent are not censored, and where differing or opposing views can be aired, discussed, and considered. In this way the citizenry can be engaged, well-informed, and part of the political process.

Even though the argument from democratic legitimacy holds free speech in high regard, very few people take an absolutist position on freedom of speech. Free speech does not imply a free-for-all. Therefore, protection of free speech always involves judgments on when and why speech might justifiably be regulated or curtailed. The answer to the question of what kind of speech causes harm and is justifiably restricted hinges on the extent to which freedom of speech is valued in itself. In liberal societies its intrinsic value is usually held to be high. If freedom of speech is curtailed, its limits will be decided around the protection of other, countervailing values, like human dignity and equality. In this sense there is a (sometimes unacknowledged) weighing-up of the value of freedom of speech relative to other values. If freedom of speech is, in itself, very highly valued, then other values may be subordinated. It is upon this scale that the right to freedom of speech is, for some, synonymous with the right to give offense.

A quick internet search of “free speech quotes” is instructive here, serving up such ideas as: “free speech is meaningless unless it tolerates the speech that we hate,” from Henry Hyde; “Free speech is meant to protect unpopular speech. Popular speech by definition, needs no protection,” from Neil Boortz; and “Freedom of Speech includes the freedom to offend,” courtesy of Brad Thor. Add to these offerings, the infamous contribution of Senator George Brandis, Australia’s erstwhile attorney general, who, in 2014 while making an argument for winding back Australia’s anti-racial discrimination laws, put it to the parliament that ”People do have a right to be bigots, you know.”

All this illustrates which values go down in ranking when free speech goes up. If we take freedom of speech to protect or our right to be bigots, that points to something we value. That is, it suggests, we value our right to be bigots more than we value equality or human dignity; that we would prefer to be allowed to vilify than to protect people from vilification.

Perhaps we will decide that we do have a right, by virtue of to the right to freedom of speech, to be bigots. If that is so, it certainly sheds light on the ethical problems that can arise from constructing our basic moral bearings around defending our rights at the expense of other ways of thinking about what is important in our moral lives. Perhaps we might orient our ethical thinking more towards questions about what we owe one another morally rather than what we can lay claim to. We might, for example, ask ourselves whether, rather than uncritically digging in about our rights, it would be better to reflect on our values in this space.

It comes back to the question of why freedom of speech is so important. If free speech, according to the democratic legitimacy argument, is so important because it allows us to better hold power to account, allows citizens to make informed decisions and engage in reasoned, open debate, then it does not make sense to defend or promote speech which itself undermines these goals — speech like Craig Kelly’s COVID-19 misinformation posts, or any picking from the multiverse of conspiracy theories currently working their way into the marrow of certain sections of society. Americans have recently experienced the very hard consequences of lies and misinformation on democratic society in the twin crises of the January 6 insurrection and the runaway COVID-19 pandemic.

In conclusion, we don’t seem to be paying close enough attention to the way that freedom of speech is being used to justify lies and to push back against demands for accountability from the powerful and privileged. If we can untangle freedom of speech as a fundamentally necessary democratic principle from demagoguery, we must do so by directing more critical attention to how it is invoked and what is at stake when freedom of speech is taken to mean freedom to lie or to further a pernicious ideology. Yes, freedom of speech is fundamentally important, and we should protect it because of its central role in the democratic process. At the same time, truth matters and lies have real consequences. When we stand up for freedom of speech, we should be thinking broadly in terms of why it is valuable, what role it serves, and what our responsibilities are in respect of each other. A broader discussion about our values will serve us better than a narrow focus on rights, no matter what they cost us.