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Bucky

(53,805 posts)
Mon Apr 8, 2013, 10:19 PM Apr 2013

According to Baron Montesquieu, this country doesn't want to be a republic.

You should learn a lot about Charles-Louis, Baron de Brede et Montesquieu (Chucky for short). In your civics class, he's taught as the guy who identified the three basic functions of government--legislative, executive, and judicial--and who had a powerful pull on the Founding Conventioneers in Philadelphia in 1787. He's more important for the Constitution than John Locke is. Locke more inspired the Declaration, but it was Chucky who inspired both the three branches scheme and laid the philosophical groundwork for maintaining a federal, instead of a national, structure to the Old 13. However Chucky had some other, more pertinent observations about how men & their governments interact. He identified the governments of the world as falling into three types: Republic, Monarchy, or Despotism. Yes, he always thought in threes. Like any Frenchman, he spent a good deal of time worrying about how size matters. And Chucky didn't think a country, like ours, nearly the size of a continent was quite suited for republicanism. There are dangerous signs he was rights.

In his view, a true republic requires a public and culture that has a love of virtue, that is, a society in which people (particularly leaders) put their love of country and the welfare of the community above their own personal needs. Think about everything we revere George Washington for and now compare it to, say, Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, that clown from Alaska, or Rand Paul. But this character must exist among a nation as well. When a people lose virtuousness, they begin to lose their republican form of government. We pause now for this important commercial message.

Now back to Bucky's rant.

We're in post-democratic America. According to ol' Chuck Montesquieu, it's not just the character of the people, but also the size of the state itself, that encourages or prevents certain forms of government. A small state tends toward Republic because the rich and poor are neighbors; they see each other at the market or one works for the other, person to person. There is shared commonwealth because they see one another's person & thus one another's rights. A medium sized nation tends toward monarchy; when you lose neighborliness with your fellow countrymen, you lose common-feeling. You need a strong man to enforce the law so that all have an equality of (now reduced) liberty as allowed by the unifying state. But a large nation, an empire--a Russia or a China--will never be a true democracy. The size of state itself requires a despot to hold united all the conflicting interests of a vast land. Even with elections, Putin is still a strong man, a crowd manipulator and a godfather to racketeers who kill inconvenient journalists for him. An iron grasp has always unified Russia; when Gorbachev loosened that grasp, the factions tore the nation apart.

But let's look at the mote in Uncle Sam's eye. For two generations we've bemoaned the imperial presidency--tho mostly when there's a Republican in office. On the other talon, our compatriots at RedState.com only seem to gin up their love of the non-Second Amendments during the Clinton and Obama presidencies. These are two nice data points of what losing one's virtue looks like. Not as pretty as losing one's virginity, is it? When it's not the president taking over legislative functions, it's the Congress thrusting legislative decisions onto his desk. Remember all those pass-the-buck sequestration proposals the Republican caucuses came up with? They were dodging their responsibilities (just like with fobbing on the debt extension votes) because experience showed the members of Congress lacked the discipline, the capacity to compromise, in a word, the virtue, to pass a budget that split their differences.

Judges, too, demonstrate at least a check-and-balancing expression of despotism. Activist judges on the left and right assume more and more power... but this mostly happens when the most representative branch of the people, the legislative, fails to handle its core responsibilities. It is a failure of republican governance (small-r), demonstrating a failure of public virtue. Congress doesn't deliver it because the people don't demand it. And the people don't demand it because they want their MTV more than they want their communities serviced by their public servants.

We've not lost our republicanism yet. We may never lose it in full, but against Ben Franklin's possibly apocryphal advice, we're not really keeping it up lately.

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According to Baron Montesquieu, this country doesn't want to be a republic. (Original Post) Bucky Apr 2013 OP
Thanks, Bucky. elleng Apr 2013 #1
+1 freshwest Apr 2013 #4
you have a misunderstanding of virtue SlowFlowPro Apr 2013 #2
With all due respect, SlowMo, you trying to correct Montesquieu on virtue is ridiculous Bucky Apr 2013 #3

SlowFlowPro

(4 posts)
2. you have a misunderstanding of virtue
Mon Apr 8, 2013, 10:35 PM
Apr 2013
love of virtue, that is, a society in which people (particularly leaders) put their love of country and the welfare of the community above their own personal needs. Think about everything we revere George Washington for and now compare it to, say, Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, that clown from Alaska, or Rand Paul.
love of country and the welfare of the community is best accomplished by those who can provide both to the community. free trade has proven itself to be the best method of accomplishing both goals

the point of trade is to serve society and give society what it wants, at the most reasonable price. the capitalist serves society, which allows society to advance and the welfare of the community to increase. it is illogical to care whether he benefits from serving society so efficiently. if his self-serving behavior raises society, then i thank him for his service and hope that he benefits as such

if you want to talk about a lack of virtue, removing the freedom of people to use their own property and forcing the opinions of some elite to rule over all shows a complete lack of virtue (and a lot of selfishness)

Bucky

(53,805 posts)
3. With all due respect, SlowMo, you trying to correct Montesquieu on virtue is ridiculous
Mon Apr 8, 2013, 11:18 PM
Apr 2013

I was explaining Chucky's use of the term "virtue" - a term used by lots of Enlightenment & Renaissance thinkers. If you seriously want to throw out the definitions used by Montesquieu, Locke, Hobbes, Alighieri, and Machiavelli... may I suggest you get the fuck off the internet and go get a college degree first?

love of country and the welfare of the community is best accomplished by those who can provide both to the community. free trade has proven itself to be the best method of accomplishing both goals

Um, I don't know what free trade has to do with Montesquieu. I think you're just wedging a pet issue into a conversation. But I gotta thank you for the phrase "love of country... is best accomplished by those who can provide..." as if only some people are entitled to love their country. You wouldn't be alluding to our job creating heroes on Wall Street would you? You should know that smooching their pedestals in this forum won't actually get you a job at the Ayn Rand Institute, right?

if you want to talk about a lack of virtue, removing the freedom of people to use their own property and forcing the opinions of some elite to rule over all shows a complete lack of virtue

I like how you talk about "the elite" with such scorn and the freedom of the wealthy from paying their fair share of taxes with such doe-eyed admiration, as if they weren't same people. It's adorable how Dr. Paul's little "Aynsteins" denounce any tax as "removing freedom to use their own property" as if businesses weren't the main beneficiaries of public infrastructure spending and as if large businesses didn't drive small mom & pop shops out of business quicker than any government ever did and as if those big businesses didn't then turn around and squeeze tax credits out of local governments to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.

The very logic of capitalism, a system that I happen to admire and approve of, is based on the idea that in the competition for markets, there will be winners and losers. Where you and I part company is that I'd like to see a few ground rules put in place to make sure the competition doesn't at the expense of a civil society and that we humanely provide new opportunities for those who, inevitably, don't end up on the positive end of the zero sum game. You, on the other hand, seem to want to make a "virtue" out of kicking to the curb anyone who ends up on the backside of the bell curve. This is the kind of me-first blindness that created class warfare and turned Marx into a hero for the working class. Sorry, but you're not going to sell the notion of "turning a big profit for myself" is a service to the community.

Success and ambition are good things, if done in moderation. But they aren't virtues and they aren't substitutes for compassion. You're a silly man SlowMo. I hope you outgrow your adolescent ideas soon.

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