Tocqueville and Democracy in the Internet Age

Conclusion

To conclude, here are ten more specific policy recommendations that I believe would help nurture the civic conscience of society. I formulated them with North America and Western Europe in mind, but many of these recommendations could be helpful in other parts of the world that are struggling to establish more or better democratic institutions and habits.

1. Combat extreme inequality: If expanding equality of social conditions was the necessary condition for democracy to take hold in America, obviously a severe and abrupt reversal of that trend—in effect a culture of extreme inequality—is the greatest threat to democracy. Recently two French economists have done more than most to play Jiminy Cricket and denounce the lie that America has been telling itself since the Reagan era, namely that income inequality doesn’t matter because there is socioeconomic mobility and equality of opportunity in America, anyone can get ahead who really wants to, etc. [342] While on salary at American universities, Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez did the grunt work into the history of income inequality between rich, middle class, and poor in developed countries over the past one hundred years and presented it clearly in a series of publications that have also exposed the meritocracy myth of high socioeconomic mobility in America. [343] Their findings have been relayed in major media by business journalists such as Adam Davidson and Eduardo Porter. Their research also put teeth into the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011 and fueled President Obama’s that’s-not-class-warfare-that’s-common-sense reelection campaign in 2012. [344] The thrust of Porter’s work is to present in layman’s terms the research that shows high inequality countries, as defined by the so-called Gini index, have more trouble sustaining economic growth and often experience “painful contractions.”

These statements echo Davidson’s paraphrase of the book-length treatment of the same subject by Acemoglu and Robinson in Why Nations Fail (2012). [346] Before his death in 2010, Tony Judt made the same case in Ill Fares the Land, borrowing a chart from Wilkinson and Pickett’s The Spirit Level (Ill, 15) that casts serious doubt on the standard Republican claim that high social mobility makes up for income inequality. [347] On the contrary, the chart shows that more egalitarian countries (Denmark, Canada, Germany, etc.) have much higher rates of social mobility (the possibility of moving between income quintiles during one’s working years) than do high inequality countries such as the United States.

It’s important to recall that political equality, not economic inequality, was uppermost in Tocqueville’s mind in the 1830s and that he did not live long enough to experience the Gilded Age in America or the conspicuous consumption during the Second Empire in his own country. It was clear however to anyone who did live through those times that economic inequality must be addressed simultaneously with political equality, as many Progressive Era academics, labor leaders, politicians, and judges, such as Louis D. Brandeis, consistently repeated. [348]

Other pro-democracy measures, many tributary to the fight against extreme inequality, would include the following:

2. Combat excess individualism, excess materialism, and exaggerated focus on the present: Go outside. Live one day per week without spending money, wearing headphones or a watch, or carrying your phone. If that’s too much, try it for one morning or afternoon per week. The preservation of the world may be in wildness…and occasional unwiredness.

3. Restore the sacredness of the electoral process and of elective office: Remember that serving in government is “an honor not a career” as Warren Buffett recalls in his “Congressional reform act 2011.” Other specific changes must include:

Election reform: encourage mandatory voter registration, early voting, uniform paper voting procedures, and tighter rules and limits on fund-raising and campaign advertising; discourage excess polling, exit polling, and cynical voter ID requirements that disguise a vote suppression tactic behind appeals to “common sense” and fraud prevention.

Congressional reform: term limits, accountability for conflict of interest violations, elimination of gerrymandering.

Judicial reform: no elected judges, long-term contracts, eighteen years, no life appointments.

Presidential/governor reform: campaign finance reform, term limits, clearer definition of powers and limits on power.

4. Combat isolation and immunity: Invest in public spaces (libraries, parks, museums, malls, festivals) that foster chance encounters, discoveries, and rediscoveries that get people out of their isolated niches and comfort zones once in awhile. Invest in public education. Reaffirm education as a public good open to all, not a private good reserved for those who can afford it. Invest in affordable public transportation (trains, tramways, buses, bicycles). Establish a flexible two-year mandatory national service requirement for men and women with military and nonmilitary options (avoid using the words draft and conscription with their negative connotations).

5. Combat corruption, crime, and low accountability: Defend the rule of law (transparency, accountability, consequences). Defend an open independent judiciary and the dignity of the legal professions.

6. Combat the worship of change and mobility: Underline the high cost, to individuals and communities, of homesickness, dislocation, relocation, and so-called creative destruction.

7. Combat the worship of get-rich-quick and get-something-for-nothing schemes: For example, governments should not associate their names with gambling and the “state lottery” and ought to devote a part of the tax revenues derived from state-supervised private gambling to public information campaigns about the risk of addiction and gambling addiction counseling. Tell citizens the truth about low socioeconomic mobility to debunk “rags to riches” daydreaming. Encourage effort and reward substantive achievements, not mere participation.

8. Combat the dogma that private is always better than public: Use public-private partnerships to fund, build, and maintain open, affordable access to institutions that enhance human wellness (sports facilities, libraries, museums, parks). Build and defend affordable public health care and health insurance systems as a human right (as per education). Build and defend affordable public transportation systems (on economic, ecologic, and civic grounds).

9. Defend an open, affordable Internet: An Internet that is not focused merely on commerce and exploitation but devoted to expanding user access to products, services, knowledge, and experiences that build trust, love, fun, and ordinary empowerment. Defend Internet freedom while pursuing abusers and Internet criminals.

10. Defend individual rights as listed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Many of these recommendations are not new, and some, such as the bill in favor of “Universal National Service,” have languished in the U.S. Congress for years. Others, such as the “Stop Online Piracy Act,” have been met with swift opposition that has forced both sides back to the drawing board to come up with better solutions to strike the proper balance of a free but regulated civil society, including the Internet. Despite these setbacks, however, serious discussions and actual work on all of the above ten recommendations continues. And there is more constructive criticism of democracy’s strengths and weaknesses going on around the world, as well as concrete reform proposals being hammered out and implemented, than ever before. Perhaps most visibly, the “Occupy” movements have raised awareness that democracy is unsustainable without a robust middle class. Many cities in Europe and America have strengthened their commitment to public transportation systems (including low-cost bike rental networks), as well as to quality public education and health care. France curbed its long-standing attachment to a monarchical style presidency by instituting term limits and reasserting the limits of presidential immunity. In the United States, just as most people eventually accepted seat belts and motorcycle helmets, the country seems to be coming around slowly but surely to the idea that it’s not okay for fifty million of its citizens to have no health insurance, and an important provision of a major health care reform act that requires individuals to take out health insurance was recently upheld by a 5–4 vote of the U.S. Supreme Court. [349] The right to “marriage equality” has been granted in many countries recently (e.g., Spain, Argentina) and is making progress in many others. To get around the inconvenience and voter suppression of Tuesday voting, user-friendly early voting procedures have been established in many American states—a development that significantly enhances voter dignity by allowing for less rushed and more thoughtful voting, combats the delegitimating effect of high abstention rates by facilitating higher levels of participation, and therefore strengthens representative democracy. Many Internet media have incorporated “reader comments” as a standard supplement, and those “threads” have become an integral part of the news cycle that in some ways is as important as the “news” itself. Canadians have recently pushed back against the privatization of their higher education system, and France too has so far resisted following Britain’s experiment with sharply higher university fees that risk lowering access and narrowing educational paths and career options as students take on more debt. The “unmaking of the public university” in the U.S. over the past forty years has been met with increasing opposition in California and elsewhere, and there are many signs that real actions are being taken to save American colleges and universities, put the focus back on knowledge and know-how (instead of on sports and socializing), and make higher education both affordable and valuable for the middle class.

My point is that there have been many small victories on the democracy and dignity fronts on every continent in the last twenty-five years, even though it would be incorrect to exaggerate their importance and impact at this early stage. The “specter of inverted totalitarianism” (Wolin), “the forty-year assault on the middle class” (Newfield), and “the culture of extreme inequality” (Ehrenreich) are real, cannot be wished away, and will likely take at least one or two generations to undo. If Tocqueville is right when he asserts that mores, not laws or geohistorical circumstances, are the most important factor in maintaining the democratic republic in the United States (DA I, 2, 9), it must be remembered that mores are deeply ingrained customs and habits that reflect long-standing value judgments, and as such they don’t change quickly or without resistance, even when groups of individuals might express a desire for change.

It is clearly democracy’s gradual drift into nondemocracy that has Rahe, Heimonet, Wolin, and many other democracy auditors worried…and working in different ways around the world to reverse. Democracy skeptics, of course, don’t mind the “managed democracy” that has gripped not just Russia but civil society in the U.S., Great Britain, France, and elsewhere. Many have been angling for it all along, and they are quick to assert, usually from a stable perch of power and privilege, that “there is no alternative” and “it could always be worse” (i.e., gridlock or corruption is better than, say, mass starvation or genocide). Indeed things could always be worse, which is why Tocqueville was willing to express understanding for the “soft despotism” of managed democracy even though he held out hope for something better.

But no society, whether democratic, partly democratic, or outright authoritarian, can exist without an us, and it is generally acknowledged today, based on the last three centuries of various experiments in governance, that dignity-based democracies—not oligarchies—have the advantage of forging the most authentic and least phony or hypocritical us. And they often turn out to build the most fun, prosperous, and sustainable societies as well. The U.S., starting with its famous, “We the people,” has demonstrated this to the world more successfully throughout its history than any other country, though not without some serious challenges to the union (and its civic conscience) along the way, such as in 1781–1787, 1850, 1860–1865, 1876 (the disputed election of Hayes), 1886 (the Haymarket affair), 1963 (the March on Washington), 2000 (the disputed election of George W. Bush)…and now!

Therefore, if there is one thing to take away from reading Tocqueville’s Democracy in America today it is that the defense of human dignity and the conservation and practice of healthy democratic mores are still worthwhile pursuits in the Internet Age.