I continue to believe that democracy is the best form of government there is, and that healthy democratic deliberation is not just a pipe dream, despite having spent years reading the neighborhood mailing list.
Democratic deliberation isn’t perfect, as I know from studying times it goes very, very wrong, and, unhappily, the ways it goes wrong are perfectly represented in my neighborhood mailing list. Those ways aren’t the consequence of bad people on the list, or the moderators doing a bad job, or some people being stupid (or brainwashed). They’re the self-reinforcing ways we think about politics, political decision-making, and political deliberation.
First: marathons, values, and fairness
One of many reasons I wanted to move into this neighborhood is that marathons came through it. For the first two (or three?) years we lived here, the marathon ran right in front of our house, and I thought it was fun to cheer people on. While I’m not a runner, I think it’s great that the city promotes running. I could try to argue that by promoting a healthy activity it is promoting a public good, and that’s more or less true, but, really, I just like having a city that promotes marathons, and I liked having the marathon run down our street.
There were opponents, of course. One of the most vocal opponents of the marathons is a very nice neighbor who lives down the road. She’s the kind of neighbor who would show up with a casserole if she heard that something bad happened to us, who spend a lot of her time doing volunteer work, and who is active in her church. She said marathons on Sunday mornings made it hard for people like her to get to early service at church, and, therefore, they should be moved to a different day, different time, or different route.
She argued that going to church was a selfless and essentially good act, but running a marathon was selfish, and, therefore, public policy should favor her behavior over others. She was thereby making two really interesting assumptions: first, that there is one right policy to be determined as far as marathons in our neighborhood on Sundays and, second, that policy should be determined as to what was best for good people.
She didn’t want to ban marathons, and she was open to various other policy solutions, such as not having marathons on Sundays. But, when it was pointed out that having marathons on Saturday mornings created much worse traffic problems than Sunday mornings, she emphasized that what she was doing was a public good, whereas marathon-running was only a private one.
This is one way of thinking about public policies, and it’s an unhappily common position in democratic discourse—because I am motivated by ethical considerations, and what I am doing is good for the community, I am motivated by a sense of public good. People who disagree with me are arguing from their special interests. And, since the public good should also be privileged over special interests, my policy should be privileged.
From within this world, to say that my policy cannot be enacted in its purity is to say that the public good must be watered down by special interests.
This tendency to think in terms of the public good (my preferred policy) v. special interests (all other policies) isn’t restricted to any place on the political spectrum. Many marathon runners made exactly the same argument as to why their position should be privileged over people going to church: running is an ethical action, because it’s healthy, promoting a healthy community is a public good, so marathons represent the public good, whereas going to church only benefits those individuals–that’s a private good.
In other words, opposing positions invoked the binary of the public good v. a special interest, and I think they did so perfectly sincerely.
When distributing public lands, the government saved spaces for churches, schools, and libraries because so many people believed that those three kinds of spaces contribute to the public good. Some people believe that attending churches makes people more ethical, some believe that a godly community will not be punished by God, some people believe that church attendance correlates to healthier living. I’m practically positive that my very nice neighbor (and she is nice) sincerely believed that all those people running marathons would benefit the community more if they went to church instead.
I’m equally sure that the marathon runners thought she should be running a marathon instead of attending church. It is, after all, true that a healthy community is a public good.
If you can identify a public good that your policy furthers, then you nab the position of being the group arguing for the public good, and that means everyone else is arguing from a place of special interest.
I’ve seen this same presentation of public good v. special interest when there were arguments about what to do with the roads, with cyclists, runners, dog walkers, people with strollers all each claiming that their position was the one grounded in public good. When there was a proposal for increasing funding for public schools, there were people who argued that reducing taxes serves the public good, whereas the only people who wanted more funding for schools were teachers and administrators, and they were just looking to line their own pockets–they were a special interest.
It’s fine that we disagree; that’s what democratic deliberation requires. It’s actively good that we feel passionate about getting to church, having a marathon, ensuring emergency vehicles can get places, wanting low taxes, wanting good public schools, and various other legitimate perspectives that come from ethical concerns. The problem is not that people are passionate, nor that people argue and sincerely believe that the policy they prefer (that happens to benefit them) is a public good.
Democracy is based on the premise that people legitimately disagree, that there are multiple legitimate points of view (but not all points of view are equally legitimate—a different post), that we come to a better decision when we argue together. Such a view assumes that there is not the public good, but a lot of public goods, and they’re inherently in conflict.
Something can be a public good and yet not the public good.
When we choose to support or compromise with a position that is not ideal for us, it is not because we are watering down the obviously right course of action with some amount of the obviously wrong course of action–the public good with what special interests demand–, but because we recognize that our world benefits from diversity, and that means a diversity of points of views and needs and goods.
That doesn’t mean we have to be nice to people who disagree with us; that doesn’t mean we have to speak to or about them in a measured tone; that doesn’t mean that passion, outrage, and anger have no place in our deliberations. That doesn’t mean we have to say “both sides are just as bad” or say something bad about this side if we say something bad about that side. Nor does it mean that we have to say that all positions are equally valid. We can, and should, argue vehemently for why our position is right, and even why some positions aren’t. But it does mean that none of us is, in fact, imbued with universal vision, that there is not only one possible right solution to our problems, and only one set of concerns that is legitimate.
In a healthy community, good people really disagree.