Picking up some more points from Luke Slattery’s piece which was noted yesterday. One of the heroes of the article was the philosopher A C Grayling. Another hero of the piece is democracy. So the virtues of rationality, free speech, liberty and free inquiry “of democracy itself” need to be re-invigorated. This turned up a day after Jack Birner wrote something about two concepts of democracy that are so different that we probably need two different words to reduce the amount of confusion in political debates.
So what do we mean by “democracy itself”? The two different theories that come to mind are “majority rule” (which has been called “totalitarian democracy”, was that Talmon?) and “constitutional” or “limited” democracy.
It helps to do what Bartley described as a “check on the problem” (one of four or five forms of criticism that can be applied to theories). What if we are looking for a set of traditions and institutions which promote peace, freedom and prosperity?
So we can start with theories of leadership and the traditional question in the theory of government/leadership is “who should rule?” Popper noted, probably in the Introduction to C&R that the theory of has the same authoritarian structure as the theory of knowledge. Each starts off demanding a yes to no answer to questions like “who shall rule” and “what is the authority for knowledge” with options like the hereditary monarch, religious authority, the wise, the good, and finally the people. In epistemology we have options like traditional authority, sense experience, rational insight, etc.
Popper’s chapter on Leadership in the OSE is helpful, though it is important to note that he is mostly formalizing insights from people like Hume and the Scottish englightenment and von Humboldt, a great German precursor of John Stuart Mill on liberty (and limited government).
Anyway, to avoid boring busy people with long posts, until people get clear about the difference between majority rule and limited government, we will be in trouble. Indicative is the retort to critics of Obama and his administration “we won the election, so suck it in!”.
