Finance
How the Constitution Can Bring Us Together (with Yuval Levin)
Russ Roberts: But a lot of politics – I was going to say in America today, but of course it’s been true for most of history. each democracy. This is certainly the case here in Israel. There is a fear that the political process is a zero-sum game. That if the other side wins, we lose, and we lose in a particularly devastating way.
I’ll stick with the United States. I think there is a view in the United States that if the left wins, the United States will no longer be the United States; and if the right wins, the left’s view is that the United States will no longer be the United States. It will be a shame, a failure of what his mission should be.
And I often describe that as: there is no longer a shared story. I don’t know if that’s a helpful way to think about it. But when a country is divided and both sides see the other side as equally effective treacherousFirst, it’s very difficult to get anything done, which is part of what your book is writing about; but it also means that there is a cultural failure, it seems to me, and a political failure, which go together as you write in the book. Do you think we’ve reached that point in the United States, and is your book in some sense an antidote to that disease?
Yuval Levin: I think in a way we’ve reached that point. I think reaching that point, I think it is possible to recover from such a condition, because our political tradition gives us much to work with on this front.
So I would say that the sense that people have that the stakes are absolutely high is a result of a misunderstanding of how democracy works.
And it’s a misunderstanding that has its roots in the way some democracies fail. And what is special about the American Constitution is how aware it is of that danger.
Democracy is thus rooted in the sense that majority rule is essential for political legitimacy. I think that’s absolutely true. And the Framers of the United States Constitution started from that premise.
Over there is a democracy at the basis of everything. Everyone is ultimately accountable to a voting public.
And yet there is another fact about democracy: namely, that majority rule can be very oppressive. And that it creates fear among minorities. Because if everything depends on the majority and if everything the majority does is considered legitimate, then you are in big trouble if you are not in the majority. And elections are a moment when a society decides who is in the majority and who is in the minority. And that means that when everything is up for grabs in every election, the stakes are extremely high and therefore real is a fight to the death.
The U.S. Constitution deliberately creates a series of restrictions on majorities, even as it gives majorities power.
It must be said: this is actually what we find frustrating about the Constitution. And many of the Constitution’s critics are essentially majoritarians. And they say, ‘Look, a majority of the public voted for this party and yet they can’t get anything finished because they have to negotiate with these other institutions and with the other party in the institution.”
And it’s true. Everyone who sooner or later wins an election for president or Congress in the United States says, “Look, didn’t I win the election? Why am I still association with these people?’
The reason you’re still dealing with these people is that the Constitution is well aware that majorities must be restrained before they gain power, or at the very least that to be truly legitimate they must have broad and sustainable majorities. and not limited and fading or short-lived majorities.
The system thus creates a bicameral legislature, in which the two houses are elected in two different ways. It creates these branches of government that are constantly getting in each other’s way. It creates an executive branch that is elected in a very peculiar way and that is constantly accountable to Congress.
All of these things are there to ensure that it’s not simply that if you’re in the minority, you’re screwed. That’s not how American life should work.
And in a sense, the competing, interacting majorities that the system creates are a way of ensuring that everyone is sometimes in the minority – or at least can imagine themselves in the minority – and therefore has to worry about how minorities are protected from majority power.
And so balancing the power of the majority and the rights of minorities is a challenge that every democracy must face.
I think the US Constitution is actually clear about that Good to do that, but that’s also why it’s so frustrating to have small majorities, the only kind we’ve had in 21st century America.
