The Absence Of Deliberation, The Reduction Of The Person
In Aristotle’s Politics, citizenship is defined as a partnership of people who decide and deliberate on behalf of the polis, about the nature of good and evil, justice and injustice, and right and wrong. More than just a bundle of rights that belongs to those who are born or naturalized into a community, citizenship requires something of us, a way of behaving that demands deliberation, a cool, rational reflection on the most important matters of the day. A high calling, to be sure.
If Aristotle is right about this understanding of citizenship, how are we doing as citizens in contemporary America? What is the citizenship index in our country, if something like that can be measured? It turns out that citizenship, particularly the practice of deliberation, is at a low ebb in American political life, to the point where our very humanity may be in decline.
The first place to look for a deliberative politics is the United States Congress, a body whose Senate was once dubbed “the world’s greatest deliberative body.” However, when you cast even a cursory glance at this once respected institution, you see a body allergic to anything approaching the Aristotelian ideal. For example, take the widespread observation that members of Congress, like so many individuals in our culture, use the institution as a platform to build their personal brand rather than a site where a deliberative partnership can be fostered with their colleagues. As Yuval Levin argues, all people should ask themselves the following questions: given the institution to which I belong, how should I behave? What are the norms of behavior that govern me, that form me into the kind of person I am yet to be, but hopefully one day will be, given the purpose of the institution to which I belong? Just like a father asks how fatherhood should inform his behavior toward his children rather than as a platform to build his public profile, so a member of Congress should first ask how the institution’s history and structure inform his own role within it. Instead, just like fame-seeking Instagram influencers in the wider culture, members of Congress seek to transcend their institution and party by making a name for themselves, for no other end than just that — making a name for themselves, building their personal brand, and perhaps winning a higher office. What do Josh Hawley and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have in common? Not a reputation for deliberation, but rather being known as Josh Hawley and AOC, for being personalities, for being people who stand atop Congress as a platform rather than within it as a participant. They use Congress as a personal trampoline, not a workshop that prizes anonymity. What’s lost is a commitment to collectively weighing the merits of competing views on the most important issues of the day, a commitment to accommodation, cooperation, and discussion for the sake of the country. What’s lost is a devotion to the hard-won practice of deliberation.
Because all politics today is national (and not local), even state and local politics suffer from this same disease. Consider Anne Applebaum’s latest piece on the politics of Tennessee. Here you see a Republican Party captured by its Trumpist faction, with the characteristic posture of working to annihilate the state’s Democratic Party. But why would they behave any differently, given their perception of the world? As one party official put it, Democrats “are not our friends,” but members of a party who want to “destroy our republic and the foundation of who we are.” No partnership of deliberation is even on the table as an option when mortal enemies are on the other side. Complete destruction can be the only goal when political survival itself is on the line.
But the story in Tennessee is only an extreme outworking of the logic that frames politics across the country. Our main division today is basic. Not a difference in policy, but an antagonism borne from identity is the politics of our time, a visceral sense that those on the other side can never be reasoned with. How can you deliberate with the other side about the nature of good and evil when the other side actually is evil? If you’d rather your child marry someone from the same political party than from the same religion, how can you have a cool, rational discussion about right and wrong with all your neighbors in the public square? Deliberation in this environment is indeed a ridiculous thing to contemplate.
Finally, take a more philosophical perspective. Consider Alasdair Macintyre’s classic diagnosis from 30 years ago of political culture in the West. Even with its age, his dissection of our problem is still on the nose. Take any major issue of the day — war, economics, abortion — and ask yourself this question: is it possible to have a substantive discussion with fellow citizen-partners about the merits of the positions at play on these topics? Because of the reign of emotivism, the view that moral-political positions are nothing more than mere preferences, Macintyre argues that these debates cannot happen today. If you say you’re pro-choice instead of pro-life, pacifist instead of a just war theorist, laissez faire capitalist instead of a redistributivist, you may as well say you prefer chocolate to vanilla ice cream; the status of all moral, political, and ice cream assertions are identical. Citizens are reduced to preference-maximizers, debate is replaced by bumper sticker protest, and our deliberative public square is transformed into an ice cream parlor. The idea that citizens are those who partner with others to debate justice and injustice on behalf of the polis is an impossible, laughable proposition.
There are some who argue that deliberation is a naive ideal, at least for the vast majority of us who will never hold political office. Those who say this contend that civic education should mostly consist of training future voters in the task of responsibly selecting those who have the luxury of time to engage in real deliberation. Even if that’s right, though, what happens when our representative bodies no longer engage in the deliberation that is supposedly beyond the grasp of us commoners? Shouldn’t we all be led along in the deliberative process, even if we ourselves don’t need to be the ones to participate in it? Are we not being dragged down by our leaders into the anti-deliberative morass of platform building, political enemy hating, and preference protesting that our elites practice on a regular basis? And, to turn the tables a bit, are we not complicit in all of it if we tolerate this kind of thing from our lead citizens?
The payoff here should be clear. If even some of this approaches the truth, the sad implication is that very few of us engage in the duties of citizenship even if we enjoy the rights that come from having the status. What’s worse, though, is that our very humanity may be on the line as well. Aristotle’s view is that human nature can only realize its purpose in the political life, in a life of deliberation where we partner with our fellow citizens to use our reason and language to debate the great issues of the day. A human being who is greedy, not generous; cowardly, not courageous; impulsive, not temperate – this is not much of a human being at all. Can we say the same, with Aristotle, that a political culture indifferent and even opposed to deliberation actually threatens the human person? That seems to be what’s on the line in our contemporary moment.
