Yes, he's dead, but many of his ideas are just as timely now as ever. From a 2003 speech:
Real democracy comes out of many subtle individual human battles that are fought over decades and finally over centuries, battles that succeed in building traditions. The only defenses of democracy, finally, are the traditions of democracy. When you start ignoring those values, you are playing with a noble and delicate structure. There's nothing more beautiful than democracy. But you can't play with it. You can't assume we're going to go over to show them what a great system we have. This is monstrous arrogance.
...
Because democracy is noble, it is always endangered. Nobility, indeed, is always in danger. Democracy is perishable. I think the natural government for most people, given the uglier depths of human nature, is fascism. Fascism is more of a natural state than democracy. To assume blithely that we can export democracy into any country we choose can serve paradoxically to encourage more fascism at home and abroad. Democracy is a state of grace that is attained only by those countries who have a host of individuals not only ready to enjoy freedom but to undergo the heavy labor of maintaining it.
....
Democracy, I would repeat, is the noblest form of government we have yet evolved, and we may as well begin to ask ourselves whether we are ready to suffer, even perish for it, rather than readying ourselves to live in the lower regions of a monumental banana republic with a government gung-ho to cater to mega-corporations as they do their best to appropriate our thwarted dreams with their elephantiastical conceits.
From a Time piece:
The world's not what I want it to be. But then no one ever said I had the right to design the world. Besides, that's fascism.
Quotes attributed to him in a recent post at FPR:
“The style of New York life has shifted since the Second World War (along with the rest of American cities) from a scene of local neighborhoods and personalities to a large dull impersonal style of life which deadens us with its architecture, its highways, its abstract welfare, and its bureaucratic reflex to look for government solutions which come into the city from without (and do not work)…Our authority has been handed over to the federal power. We expect our economic solutions, our habitats, yes, even our entertainments, to derive from that remote abstract power, remote as the other end of a television tube. We are like wards in an orphan asylum. The shaping of the style of our lives is removed from us—we pay for huge military adventures and social experiments so separated from our direct control that we do not even know where to begin to look to criticize the lack of our power to criticize….[O]ur condition is spiritless. We wait for abstract impersonal powers to save us, we despise the abstractness of those powers, we loathe ourselves for our own apathy.”
and
“People are healthier if they live out their prejudices rather than suppressing them in uniformity.”
And in an article with his son in American Conservative Magazine:
He foresaw the city, its independence secured, splintering into townships and neighborhoods, with their own school systems, police departments, housing programs, and governing philosophies. In some areas, church attendance might be obligatory, in others free love mandatory. “People in New York would begin to discover neighborhoods of the left, the right, and the spectrum of the center which reflected some of their own passions and desires and programs for local government,” he wrote.
But in his view, Left and Right do not necessarily need to exist in solitary states. Rather, they could dwell together in a radically alternative system to the one we know today—one in which governance belongs to local inhabitants bound by as little federal interference as possible. His claim to be running to the left and right of every man in the race was no gimmick.
More quotes to come. I'm not sure whose next, but I got a decent size list of weirdos to choose from.
6 comments:
You have presented a series of pessimistic quotations. I would suggest turning to the works of the Enlightenment before finally adopting such pessimistic attitudes. I say that the following questions offer some ways to highlight the distinction from those thinkers and what has been quoted:
Does man yearn to be an individual or a drop of water in an ocean? Are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness fundamental rights? Why do we even have government?
John, first you need to clarify the pessimism of the quotes for em, I must not be reading them the same way you are. Second, please clarify which Enlightenment thinkers/works you refer to, as there were so many, and often contradictory. But to answer your questions, in short, yes (humans desires both to be independent and also to fit into a larger whole), yes (humans have natural rights, but they are acquired often at great cost), and I could answer your last question on religious, philosophical, biological, or historical grounds, but suffice it to say that leadership & government are part of the human condition.
Are the following quotes any less pessimistic?
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.
- Thomas Paine
Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.
- Thomas Paine
A nation of well informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins.
- Benjamin Franklin
Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.
- Patrick Henry
Bad men cannot make good citizens. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience are incompatible with freedom.
- Patrick Henry
How prone all human institutions have been to decay; how subject the best-formed and most wisely organized governments have been to lose their check and totally dissolve; how difficult it has been for mankind, in all ages and countries, to preserve their dearest rights and best privileges, impelled as it were by an irresistible fate of despotism.
- James Monroe
It is certainly true that a popular government cannot flourish without virtue in the people.
- Richard Henry Lee
Let the American youth never forget, that they possess a noble inheritance, bought by the toils, and sufferings, and blood of their ancestors; and capacity, if wisely improved, and faithfully guarded, of transmitting to their latest posterity all the substantial blessings of life, the peaceful enjoyment of liberty, property, religion, and independence.
- Joseph Story
No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders.
- Samuel Adams
Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt.
- Samuel Adams
Nothing is more certain than that a general profligacy and corruption of manners make a people ripe for destruction. A good form of government may hold the rotten materials together for some time, but beyond a certain pitch, even the best constitution will be ineffectual, and slavery must ensue.
- John Witherspoon
The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.
- John Adams
To single out one writer, how about John Locke. You've identified several other figures from the time and some of those they inspired.
I take particular offense that fascism is the natural government of men. Many of the other quotations posted seemed to suggest that we're in some inevitably downward spiral and that history has been littered with only momentary miracles where we have been saved from our predisposition toward collectively harming ourselves.
Democracies and republics are imperfect governments. Maintaining them requires great effort as well as an informed and engaged populace; so, we do not disagree on those points. Nonetheless, no one has devised a better system to enable the populace to have a say in the collective governance of their society. If humans possess certain rights of self-determination, then I fully support U.S. policies helping others practice their God-given natural rights.
The rest of the quotes are disjointed, and responding to each one in a concise manner is difficult.
There are two fascism quotes. One was a personal statement by Mailer, and he speaks to the truth that most people feels like the world would be better off if only they ran the show. Yet, he is able to step back with humility and see his own desires for what they are. I think in this context you see his larger statement on the natural form of government being fascism. And I would single out the James Monroe quote above as saying basically the same thing.
By agreeing that democracy takes work to maintain, that seems to imply that you agree it is not the most natural form of government.
The point of the quotes (both Mailer's and the founders') was not only to highlight the work required to maintain a democracy, but the generations of traditions, thought, work and character that is required to give birth to a successful democracy.
Mailer says there is nothing more beautiful than democracy, and repeatedly calls it noble and a state of grace. I don't see any pessimism. What he is saying, much like Thomas Paine in the quote provided above, is that (to borrow a metaphor) a functioning (representative) democracy is a pearl of great price.
Now I will try to address what I perceive to be your real problem, which is that Mailer's quotes came in reference to America's engagement in Iraq. I find it ironic that one can be so skeptical of the role of government to be "altruistic" in domestic affairs by way of social programs, centralization and regulation, yet fully buy into an "altruistic" foreign policy of democracy export and global hegemony. Either the government is capable of altruism, or it is not.
I see government as functioning by coercion, or at the very least compliance. It can not, and should not, be a selfless organism. It's proper duty, under our noble constitution, is to protect its people and maximize their liberty. Government is not the answer to every problem, domestic or foreign.
Often when the government seeks "to protect our interests" they have presumed (often by way of lobbying, campaign contributions, and inside influence) to know the people's interests , and have them prioritized correctly. And as Patrick Henry warns, it would be good for the people to be suspicious.
Yup, that's my biggest issue but the overall pessimism of Mailer is an annoyance, too (we may have to agree to disagree there). I refuse to believe that humanity is naturally inclined to fascism. Creating and maintaining any government takes effort, including democracies/republics.
On a related note, I acknowledge that democracies/republics benefit from what has come before them historically. Nonetheless, the Greeks and Romans developed their own governments that enabled a significantly large portion of the citizenry to have a say in the state's governance, and this development arose with comparably minimal preceding historical examples than what we have today. Those civilizations ultimately collapsed, and I would argue that their failures offer the lessons for maintaining (rather than creating) democracies/republics.
As for my definition of government, I see it as existing first historically to protect a group of people from another group of people. Along the way, the governments were needed to develop and enforce rules for handling how those within a group interacted with each other. I fundamentally believe that government primarily should serve those purposes today.
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