Comments Elsewhere

Randall McElroy: From “the people ruling themselves” we could favorably read “each man/woman ruling him/herself,” but this idea is something of a fantasy.

I’m not sure what you mean. That this doesn’t currently exist, or that it’s fantastic to think that it could? Of course it doesn’t currently exist (the least invasive states in the world are mostly elective oligarchies). But I think it’s hardly fantasy to think that it could; as a libertarian, it’s the political system that I aim at fully and completely realizing. What about you?

That said, while I happen to think that libertarianism, and indeed anarchism, are implicit in democratic values, that’s not the point I was making.

Randall McElroy: The unavoidably common interpretation of democracy is “the whole body of people ruling the whole body,” and this can only really be done as it’s done now, by picking some people democratically who make decisions undemocratically.

What you’re suggesting, then, is that democracy is for all intents and purposes impossible, not that democracy is expressed through elective oligarchy. Elective oligarchies are closer to democratic values than appointed ones, and some methods of electing them closer to democratic values than others, but as long as they hold exclusive or supreme legislative authority you just haven’t got a democracy at all, but rather something else.

That said, I have no idea where you’re getting the idea that elective oligarchy is the closest approach to democracy possible. There have been lots of examples of more directly democratic political systems than the U.S. style of oligarchy (classical era Athens, contemporary Switzerland). Since actuality entails possibility, I conclude that there really are ways that democratic governance can be done other than picking rulers to make the decisions for you.

This also doesn’t touch on the second issue, viz. that democracy is not a purely procedural notion, but that substantive political equality between government officials and citizens is a necessary component of democracy. If that’s so, then knocking down laws that violate that substantive equality, no matter how those laws were enacted, and no matter how they were knocked down, has to be considered a promotion of democracy, not an undermining of it.