Embrace the Arena

There are two models for how democratic politics is supposed to work. One is good and reflects the American conception of democracy. The other is at war with it.

There are two models for how democratic politics is supposed to work. One is good and reflects the American conception of democracy. The other is at war with it. The second model is winning. We need for it to lose.

THE FOUNDERS’ IDEA OF POLITICS AS THE ARENA

When America’s Founders created this republic, they believed in The Arena. The Arena is a model of how politics is supposed to work—it’s a place citizens come together to debate and battle over the things we want and need. We hold elections to select champions and send them into The Arena to fight on our behalf. When they arrive, our champions meet the champions of other groups across America. Then they battle it out, reaching a consensus we all accept.

Nobody ever wins everything they want in the Arena. The goal is a result everyone can live with.

The Arena recognizes we’re a nation with three hundred and fifty million people. None of them sees the world exactly the same way. My perfect utopia, to the other three hundred and forty-nine million nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand Americans, will always seem an unjust prison. Your utopia will seem a prison to me. If anyone is getting everything they want in a democracy, something has gone seriously wrong.

The end goal of The Arena is consensus—a result everyone can accept. It’s a system in which nobody fully loses, but also nobody wins. We end up with everything we genuinely need, some of the things we want, and nothing we absolutely can’t accept. This creates a stable nation in which nobody is an oppressor, we’re all free from oppression, and we’re all unshackled to pursue a life in which we can become the best versions of ourselves.

The genius of the Arena is it creates a government in which everybody is slightly disappointed but nobody gets oppressed. I can never fully oppress others in the Arena. Nobody can ever truly oppress me. I never get everything I want. Nobody gets to force anything on me I truly can’t accept. It isn’t a system maximized for efficiency. It isn’t guaranteed to always get the best outcome. It’s not meant to always elevate the best people and punish ones who are wrong. It’s supposed to ensure that everyone can live with the outcome. That’s the only way three hundred and fifty million clashing souls can live in harmony and cooperation.

It’s hardly a surprise that America’s Founders sought to design a political system around The Arena. They just freed themselves from an arbitrary king. Their principal worry was crafting a system in which nobody could oppress anybody else again. This is why they created a complex republic with separations of power. They created checks and balances. They carefully balanced institutions and offices so nobody could truly rule. They knew this would sometimes be inefficient and clumsy, but also it wouldn’t allow anyone to abuse anybody else. The end goal was a stable system that could outlast ages without the abuses that power inevitably brings, so millions of free people could cooperate, build, and thrive.

Unfortunately, there’s another model of democracy knocking about. It’s based not on The Arena but around seizing control of the Levers of Power.

THE ALTERNATE MODEL OF DEMOCRACY AS LEVERS OF POWER

The alternate model says democracy a mechanism about who gets control. This model holds government and society contains an array of powerful institutions. Each of these institutions is a Lever of Power that somebody is going to control. Democratic politics is a scramble to grab as many Levers as possible for “us,” while denying as many as possible to “them.” Democracy means winning power at the ballot box to seize enough Levers to get our way.

The Lever model believes The Arena is a polite fiction. It believes political compromise is a game for naïve fools. The Levers are valuable and somebody is going to control them. Politics is a zero-sum game to seize control of as many Levers as possible through elections, so control of society goes to us and never them.

This view that democracy is a zero-sum game to control the Levers of Power is popular these days. Many people are genuinely shocked when you tell them there’s any other view. Of course, they say, democracy is about winning elections to gain power. Of course, they say, if you want to protect yourself and influence the world, you need to grab as many Levers as you can. Power is about forcing other people to bend so you can get your way. That’s the only way to change the world to make it better, and it’s the only way to stop the bad guys from doing bad things. From this perspective, it’s childish to hold democratic politics could ever work any other way.

The politics of Levers is about winners and losers. Winners get control. Losers get nothing and must bend to the will of those who win.

This Lever model, however, is at odds with the ideas of America’s Founding. America’s Founders cared about avoiding tyranny. Tyrannies come in flavors. There are tyrannies of solo dictators, but also tyrannies of groups. A cabal or junta can be a tyranny, such as in some military dictatorships. A party can be a tyranny, like the Communist Parties of one-party states. A bureaucracy can be a tyranny, like modern China. So can a majority of citizens cooperating to manipulate and control a democracy.

As Edmund Burke said of the French Revolution:

Of this I am certain, that in a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority, whenever strong divisions prevail in that kind of polity, as they often must; and that oppression of the minority will extend to far greater numbers, and will be carried on with much greater fury, than can almost ever be apprehended from the dominion of a single sceptre.

There’s little use in trading an abusive king for citizens who band together collectively to act like one. To the minority getting pushed around, it feels the same. Majority tyranny was among America’s Founders’ great fears.

The Lever model essentially embraces majority tyranny. It views the purpose of democracy as forming a majority that can seize total control so we can give ourselves everything while punishing our enemies. It just wants to ensure the tyranny belongs to us and is denied to them. Instead of a model in which nobody oppresses anyone and everyone can live with the result, it celebrates one in which passionate groups fight to oppress their enemies to get everything they want.

THE LEVERS OF POWER ENCOURAGE YOU TO CHEAT

Once you embrace the Lever model, you don’t just justify acting like an elected tyrant. This model also creates inevitable pressure to cheat democracy.

People don’t voluntarily hand over power to someone who will likely use it to destroy them and all they hold dear. In The Arena, disputes were clashes over interests you could work through to solve problems in way good enough for everyone. With Levers, disputes are clashes over total control, right, and wrong. When you lose with Levers, you get nothing while your opponents get full power to do anything, even things that violate your most sacred values and beliefs. You’re not just halting your ability to implement good, you’re empowering your enemies to do evil. You’re likely to wind up impoverished, banished, or possibly even dead. It’s morally and rationally permissible to do anything in your power to ensure that never happens.

So you’re allowed to cheat.

We tend to think about cheating in a democracy as just stuffing ballot boxes, banning political parties, or jailing political opponents. Those are just the most severe options available when nothing less overt will work. Many other ways of cheating democracy exist. You can seize control of important media channels to spread lies. You can push opponents out of influential institutions. You can silence opponents through government or pressure on private media to cut off access. You can harass opponents, combing through their taxes or using petty regulations. You can use influence to harass opponents through private entities, cutting off business opportunities or closing off access to finance to neuter their pocketbooks. These are all classic tactics dictators and tyrants around the world use regularly to engineer elections to ensure they never lose.

These methods are cheating at democracy because they’re means to win outside The Arena. You’re not winning because your ideas are right. You’re not winning because people support you. You’re not making your best case, negotiating, making deals, or compromising. You’re using the power of the Levers to rig the system in your favor. These efforts may be legal and invisible but they’re cheating none the less. They’re ways to get around The Arena. People justify them because the cost of losing control of the Levers is an existential crisis which cannot be allowed at any cost.

Once people embrace the Lever model, a race begins to the end of genuine democracy. First, we manipulate the Levers we control to make sure we don’t lose power. Then they do something a little worse in response. That then justifies us to do something more severe. So it goes, until democracy is gone. This is how to Roman Republic fell, with a long decline in norms in the late Republic as the ambitious fought to retain power under the existential threat of losing Levers and possibly their lives, leading to Caesar’s march on Rome.

The Levers aren’t just stupid and immoral. As America’s Founders and other Enlightenment thinkers all understood, but we have now forgotten, they’re the death of democracy itself.

REDISCOVERING REPULICAN VIRTUE

America’s Founders believed passionately in an idea they called republican virtue, meaning the qualities of citizenship necessary to sustain a democratic republic. Sometimes today we call it civic virtue. A monarchy can thrive with a wise aristocracy, from which it selects wise rulers. A republic depends on the quality of its citizens because, in a democratic republic, the people are the government. If the people make good decisions, the democratic-republic succeeds and thrives. If the people made poor and stupid choices, the democratic-republic splinters and fails. A republic without wise citizens willing to do the work will stumble until it shatters.

This is what the Founders meant by republican virtue—citizens willing to put the long-term interest of the republic before their personal interest. Citizens must not treat their electoral power as only a means to secure their interests, punish enemies, and loot the system for their benefit. The must always put the stability of the republic first. They must respect the republic’s norms, honor the interests of opponents, and govern for the benefit of everyone not just those who voted for them. The primary interest of citizens must always be behaving in ways that respect and reinforce the republican form of government, even when it means leaving on the table personal benefits they could get. As James Madison said, “To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.”

Republican virtue means embracing The Arena. In The Arena, we cannot oppress our opponents, and in turn they cannot oppress us. In The Arena, we can’t use our power to take everything we can get, leaving our opponents nothing. Most of all, in The Arena we must be willing to let our opponents sit at the table and sometimes win. The Arena needs to be a fair game with rules in which nobody gets to cheat. None of us ever gets our way entirely in the Arena, but its results will always be ones we all can live with.

In The Arena, we get everything we need, some of what we want, and never have to fear our opponents forcing anything on us we genuinely cannot accept. This is the idea behind American democracy.

Why are so many American now abandoning The Arena. Why is republic virtue slipping? Why are we embracing the ethic of politics as war? Why do so many Americans increasingly believe losing power is such an existential crisis it justifies them to cheat? What does this all mean for the long-term fate of our democratic-republic?

I believe some of this has to do with our increasingly moralizing of non-moral questions, turning questions of interest and implementation into false battles of good and evil. Under the spell of this false moralism, too many Americans give themselves moral permission to cheat.

I intend to write more about that issue next.

What do you think about the clash between The Arena and the Levers of Power? Join the community in the comments.