Making the case for liberal democracy

Recent posts have considered the question of whether liberal democracy is stable, or whether the assaults on liberal democracy by the populist far-right are likely to further undermine democratic institutions and values. In particular, I have considered the question of whether democracy generates its own supporting political psychology (as Rawls seems to believe), with citizens in a just society coming to have the moral emotions necessary to sustain robust public support for democratic institutions and arrangements. I've been using the phrase "civic loyalty” to capture the ensemble of political emotions that might serve to reinforce the stability of a democracy.

But there is a prior question to explore before we get to esoteric reasoning about democratic social psychology: is liberal democracy an attractive ideal for most ordinary people? Do the institutions and values of liberal democracy hang together as a durable system that would give virtually all clear-headed people a reason to prefer democracy over available alternatives -- let us say, illiberal democracy or populist authoritarian rule?

Suppose we define liberal democracy as a political system in which there are strong protections for the rights and liberties of all citizens, including minority groups, and which embody effective institutions of electoral representative democracy and equal rights of political participation. Now the question is a relatively simple one: assuming this kind of political system is functioning as advertised, would citizens find these arrangements satisfying and fulfilling, and would they develop civic loyalty in their support? Are these institutions valued by the citizens who live in countries in which they are present? Would every citizen have an interest or inclination in supporting the continuing effectiveness of this set of constraints and institutions?  

The results of recent public opinion research are not encouraging. For example, a 2020 Pew Research study (link) based on a 2019 Global Attitudes Survey across many countries showed declining levels of satisfaction with democracy among citizens in numerous countries, with 59% of US respondents "not satisfied" against 39% of US respondents "satisfied". And the "not satisfied" numbers are comparable or worse for France, Spain, Italy, UK, Bulgaria, and Greece. The highest levels of satisfaction with democracy found in the study include Sweden (72%), Netherlands (68%), Canada (66%), Poland (66%), and Germany (65%).

These levels of dissatisfaction are surprising and disturbing. For most of the decades since the end of World War II the common assumption among observers is that the great majority of the population are satisfied and grateful for the freedoms and the rights of political participation that we have in the United States. It is surprising to discover in the past two decades, then, that satisfaction with this system of freedoms and political participation has fallen in the general population; and it is ominous to recognize that there are well-organized political movements in the United States and elsewhere -- right-wing populist movements -- that reject the premises of human equality and democratic participation that underlie our political system.

This seems to imply that liberal democracy does not automatically generate the political psychology it needs for stability — at least not in a super-majority of its citizens. Instead, maintaining the conditions of a liberal democracy is itself a problem of democratic politics and strategy. And very deliberate conservative, anti-liberal politicians have been making the opposite case for several decades in the United States. The undermining of confidence and faith in democratic institutions by the GOP and Fox News did not begin in 2016.

In other words, the program of supporting liberal democracy and the political rights and liberties it encompasses is now just one more topic of political conflict. The values of equality, liberty, and unity as a nation are now up for debate. Democrats advocate for the institutions and values of democracy, and right-wing populists actively advocate for a vision of the future in which those institutions and values play a diminished or even vanished role.

Democrats and progressives have largely believed that the political contest in the United States between "liberals" and "conservatives" is over specific legislative policies: taxation, environmental regulation, use of force by police, limitations on the extent of inequalities, and so on. But actually, it seems apparent that the contest now must also include marshaling support for our constitutional democracy itself: the integrity of elections, equal voting rights for all citizens, constitutional protections of individual rights and freedoms. We do not currently have a broad consensus about the value and inviolability of our constitutional democracy throughout the whole population. We seem to have evolved into a country which is divided between the party of democracy and the party of minority rule by any means possible. This must be addressed through political means. 

Parties, politicians, civic organizations, and citizens who favor the institutions of liberal democracy must therefore take an active role in building political consensus around our democratic institutions. They must persuasively make the case to enough of the rest of the population to maintain broad and deep commitment to the values of constitutional protections of our rights and the institutional fairness of our electoral processes. They must build the case through mobilization, communication, and leadership in ways that inspire millions to share their cause. They must persuade other citizens to support the agenda of liberal democracy and to resist the suasion of the illiberal parties, the authoritarians, and the hate-based parties. (This is the thrust of the very interesting report released this year by the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, Our Common Purpose: Reinventing American Democracy for the Twenty-first Century (link).)

The election of 2020 has a clear lesson for people who care about democracy in America. We now need to actively build and mobilize mass support for our democratic institutions, across all segments of our population. It is an open question whether we will be able to succeed in doing that, and if we fail, the future of our democracy is in doubt.

But there is another important lesson about legitimacy that emerges from the recent fortunes of liberal democracy: that political justice -- constitutional protections of rights and liberties -- by itself is probably insufficient to generate strong satisfaction and civic loyalty among the great majority of citizens. People are concerned about economic justice and fairness as well as political rights and electoral democracy. American society (and perhaps French and British society as well) has fallen behind on issues of economic justice, with rapidly rising inequalities between rich and poor, declining availability of "middle class" jobs in an increasingly globalized economy, declining opportunities for social mobility for people in the bottom 50% or more of the economic ladder, and continuing discrimination and disparity across racial, ethnic, and gender lines. These are some of the factors that observers like Justin Gest have highlighted in explanation of "white working class disaffection" with the existing order, and it is hard to see how broad civic loyalty will be rekindled until there is a broader reality of social equality, equality of opportunity, and solidarity across all segments of society that would allow all members of society to believe that "democracy and wellbeing are for all of us". Protecting our liberal democracy means taking concrete, meaningful measures through legislation to increase the basic economic fairness of our market economy.

The moral force of the US Constitution

Why should we revere our constitution as the fundamental set of political and moral principles underlying our democracy? Is it simply because it was written and adopted by the “Framers”? Is it because it has legitimacy as a whole by having been democratically ratified through our history? Or, most fundamentally, is it because there are compelling arguments of political morality for various of the individual stipulations of the constitution and the Bill of Rights? This latter view is essentially the position advocated by Ronald Dworkin as a fundamental premise of constitutional interpretation in Freedom's Law: The Moral Reading of the American Constitution. Here is a clear statement of Dworkin's view of the moral interpretation of the US Constitution:

The book ... illustrates a particular way of reading and enforcing a political constitution, which I call the moral reading. Most contemporary constitutions declare individual rights against the government in very broad and abstract language, like the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, which provides that Congress shall make no law abridging "the freedom of speech." The moral reading proposes that we all--judges, lawyers, citizens--interpret and apply these abstract clauses on the understanding that they invoke moral principles about political decency and justice. The First Amendment, for example, recognizes a moral principle--that it is wrong for government to censor or control what individual citizens say or publish--and incorporates it into American law. So when some novel or controversial constitutional issue arises--about whether, for instance, the First Amendment permits laws against pornography--people who form an opinion must decide how an abstract moral principle is best understood. They must decide whether the true ground of the moral principle that condemns censorship, in the form in which this principle has been incorporated into American law, extends to the case of pornography. (2) 

Dworkin formulates this idea at the level of constitutional interpretation; but his view also extends to the issue of legitimacy and authority of constitutional provisions as well. 

Christopher Peters characterizes this topic as the problem of "constitutional authority" (link), and his major law review article on the subject is well worth reading. Constitutional authority is important because it is the feature that gives us a reason to consider a constitutional provision normatively and legally binding. Peters argues for a procedural theory of constitutional authority: a constitutional provision has authority if it was enacted in a procedurally correct way, and lacks authority if it was not so enacted (439).

I contend that the only plausible justification of constitutional authority is not substantive in this sense, but rather procedural: it requires obedience to the Constitution, not because of what it commands, but because of how it commands us—that is, because of the process by which constitutional commands are generated. (439)

He contrasts this with the "substantive" theory of constitutional authority exemplified by Dworkin, which he emphatically rejects. In particular, he argues for a condition of "content-independence" for constitutional authority: "An authority’s right to be obeyed also exists regardless of the moral content of what the authority is commanding.... A command possesses authority if it imposes a defeasible content-independent moral obligation to act as the command directs" (442, 446).

For a variety of reasons, I like aspects of both substantive and procedural theories about the authority of constitutional provisions. There is a special force to provisions like freedom of speech or freedom of religion that goes beyond the force of merely reasonable institutional stipulations. So it is pertinent to ask about the moral status (as does Dworkin) of various constitutional provisions. We might say, most generally, that there ought to be consistency between our constitution and our best understanding of the requirements of a just society.

If we take the moral interpretation of constitutional authority seriously, we are faced with a potential problem. What if we discover for one or more stipulations, that there is in fact no underlying moral consideration for that provision? What if one or more constitutional provisions appears to be entirely arbitrary from a moral point of view? And in fact, when we consider this question, we find ourselves in exactly this position. Some provisions — freedom of speech and religion, procedural protections against search and arbitrary arrest — can be justified on the basis of a more fundamental conception of the requirements of a society consisting of free and equal moral beings. Other provisions may be justified as reasonable institutional arrangements — right to a jury trial, right to stand for president at the age of 35, which seem to derive authority from the kinds of procedural reasoning Peters describes. These are provisions that Peters describes as legitimate procedural specifications. But others — like the right to bear arms or form a citizens’ militia — have no such basis. They are morally arbitrary, much as might have been a constitutional right to live near a grocery store. And yet other provisions are now seen to be flatly immoral -- for example, the Fugitive Slave Clause (Article IV, section 2). The inclusion of arbitrary or immoral provisions in the Constitution, we might say, was a mistake on the part of the Framers, and it should now be corrected.

Peters considers the constitutional authority of the Second Amendment in extensive detail through the case of District of Columbia v. Heller, the controversial Supreme Court case concerning the constitutionality of restrictions on firearms in the District of Columbia. He believes that a constitutional provision without authority simply does not bind citizens or lawmakers: "The Second Amendment thus brings front and center the question, not merely of how the Court should interpret constitutional rights, but of why— indeed whether—those rights ought to bind us at all" (438). His most extensive argument about constitutional authority is flatly contradictory to the idea of a moral justification for constitutional provisions (Dworkin's position). So he considers instead whether there is a procedural justification for the Second Amendment.

The procedural approach requires showing that the provision reduces or resolves important public conflicts by reducing bias or entrenchment by powerful majorities. Applying this approach to the Second Amendment, Peters finds that, on the central public interpretations of the meaning of the amendment (individual self-defense and resistance to tyranny), there is no such justification. The first concern should be addressed through ordinary majoritarian legislation, and the second is self-contradictory. (How could there be a constitutional right to disobey the constitution?) Peters does find a procedural justification for the amendment, however, in Justice Stevens' dissenting opinion in the majority ruling. Stevens ties the amendment to the "public militia" part of the language, and argues that this entails that the amendment serves a narrow scope: to ensure that states are empowered to maintain their own armed "militia" forces. This interpretation would lend constitutional authority to the amendment; but it would strip the amendment of the implication that democratically elected legislators lack legal authority to regulate or limit individual ownership, possession, and use of firearms.

This line of thought leads to a fairly remarkable and simple idea: the citizens of the United States ought to amend or abolish the Second Amendment. We respect the Constitution as the law of the land, but we also stipulate a process for revising or amending the constitution. And we might hold that only those provisions that hold up as justified moral requirements should be sacrosanct. There is no moral basis for the right to bear arms, it does not express a reasonable institutional arrangement, and it has shown itself to lead to deleterious social effects.

There is another moral consideration for the authority of existing constitutional provisions that has force -- the idea of loyalty to the constitution as the fundamental governing document of the United States' democracy. Our democratic obligations as citizens entail our commitment to the rule of law, and the constitution represents the most general framework of law in our system of government. Therefore we are morally or normatively bound by existing constitutional provisions -- which means that even though we may think that the Second Amendment is morally ungrounded and institutionally perverse, we are bound to accept its authority until amended. This does not mean we are compelled to accept the extreme reading offered by conservatives about the scope and implications of the amendment concerning unfettered gun ownership and carrying; this is precisely the question of interpretation that constitutional lawyers argue about. But the general line of reasoning has force; it is part and parcel of the idea of being bound by a system of law that citizens within a democracy are subject to the authority of laws (including constitutional provisions) that have been duly enacted. Individual citizens or legislatures do not have the legal option of picking and choosing the constitutional and legal principles that they will accept. And the remedy to constitutional provisions that we find morally or socially odious is clear; it is the mechanism of constitutional amendment (as the Thirteenth Amendment largely negated the Fugitive Slave Clause in Article IV, section 2 through its abolition of slavery throughout the nation).

Astounding assault on democracy

Donald Trump's attack on the electoral system has gone far beyond normal and evidence-based legal challenges to details about the election and the vote counting. There is nothing normal or inconsequential about the president's current tactics or the support he receives from influential Republican officials. Trump and his supporters are now undertaking to reverse the election results in several states by encouraging elected officials to "throw out" the voting results from their states and send a slate of electoral representatives to the Electoral College who will vote for Donald Trump and Mike Pence rather than Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the winners of the popular vote in their states. Senator Lindsay Graham has been accused by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger of suggesting that he should throw out votes from certain areas. (Citizens everywhere, not just in Georgia, owe Raffensperger deep gratitude for his integrity in the performance of his duties.) Donald Trump himself is pressuring legislators and local officials in Michigan to throw out the vote from Wayne County and to send Trump electoral representatives to the Electoral College. Shameful, and racist!

This is a truly horrifying, public, and shameless assault on the most fundamental institutions and values of a democracy: the voters decide the outcomes of elections. The fact that Trump would act in this shameful way is unsurprising, because he has a lifelong record of immoral and unprincipled behavior. He plainly cares nothing about our country's values, institutions, or citizens; he cares only about his own power and self-image. The fact that Republican elected officials fail to rise up and express -- clearly, strongly, and courageously -- their unwavering and unqualified support for our democratic electoral institutions is simply nauseating. They bring lasting shame upon themselves, and upon their party. Senators Ben Sasse (R-Nebraska) and Mitt Romney (R-Utah), thank you for your integrity and patriotism in publicly rejecting the president's effort at seizing authoritarian power. Your Republican colleagues in the Senate must join you.

In the state of Michigan, our most senior legislators -- House Speaker Lee Chatfield and Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey -- have been invited to the White House to be influenced by the president in their conduct of their sworn duties in Michigan. Speaker Chatfield and Majority Leader Shirkey, the citizens of your state demand that you reject this overture and clearly express the plain truth: Michigan voted decisively in favor of Joe Biden over Donald Trump, and the process will be governed by that fact. This is your duty. Anything less will be a permanent and unforgettable stain on your character. 

Let's be clear. None of the president's claims about voter fraud or fraudulent practices in vote counting have been supported by evidence. The legal cases have almost entirely collapsed; they were withdrawn in Michigan; they were meritless. Earlier this week the president's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, disgraced and humiliated himself in Federal court in Pennsylvania by making wild and unsupported claims that reflected mental confusion about the facts of his own case. He showed himself to be a dangerous, unprincipled clown.

The argument that some Republican politicians are making today, that Trump's efforts are certain to fail and that he is simply thrashing around like an enraged five-year-old child, completely misses the point. Attempting a coup is horrible and unforgivable, whether or not it is successful. And our leaders need to stand up and forcefully "pledge allegiance" to our institutions and explicitly reject the president's authoritarian power grab.

This is the time for all citizens and elected officials to declare themselves unambiguously. Do we support our democracy? Will we resist and refuse any effort to negate the results of the 2020 election? Will we express rock-solid support for the integrity of the vote that occurred and the equal weight of all votes -- black, brown, white, rich, poor, conservative, and liberal? Do we honor our constitution and our democratic freedoms?

As citizens, we must face a crucial reality: our democracy is under terrible threat. If any votes are cancelled or overridden by Republican-dominated legislatures -- in Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, or any other state -- we must soberly realize that we have passed the point of letter-writing and quiet disapproval. Only massive civil disobedience, pro-democracy demonstrations, and courage and persistence will do. The citizens of Belarus and Thailand have shown the way; we must follow their example. The president's current efforts at reversing the votes in key states must be firmly rejected; and, if he were to succeed in retaining power, we must steel ourselves for a very long period of non-violent civil protest and disobedience.

The difference between "apartheid" and apartheid

I am spending several weeks in one of my courses on the struggle in South Africa to bring the apartheid system to an end. This is a struggle many of us remember well from the 1970s and 1980s, largely because it became a leading issue for activists in the United States as well as many other places in the world. But -- as I've come to understand about the Holocaust and other atrocities of the twentieth century as well -- the ideas that many Americans had about the evils of apartheid were vastly oversimplified and uninformed. The apartheid regime was racist, it was neo-colonial, it was oppressive, and it was violent. But these descriptions, though true enough, fail to capture the human reality of the system of apartheid. And for that reason, even well-intentioned advocates tended to fail to understand the human evil that this system represented. 

It is possible that every instance of widespread injustice and suffering has this same problem. The plight of Syrian refugee children is horrendous, and it is horrendous for each child and parent in a very specific and poignant human way. And yet we subsume this vast human situation of suffering under a single phrase, "the refugee crisis". What is needed in order to allow distant human cousins to deeply empathize with these suffering children, and to commit to substantial, meaningful ways to steps that would ameliorate or end the circumstances that bring about their suffering? What is needed in order to come to a more adequate human and historical understanding of circumstances like these?

In the case of the apartheid system, one important step is to learn more exactly about the magnitude of the suffering: the vast numbers of black South Africans whose liberties and lives were truncated, the depth of poverty and hopelessness created in each family in a black "homeland" or shanty-town, the shameful differences in wages between white and black workers, the health disparities and childhood mortality rates -- in short, the full range of circumstances that flow from oppression and exploitation. And it is crucial to understand the fundamental racism that underlay the system, the fundamental assumptions of white European superiority. 

This is where history comes in. Historians help us understand these human realities in more than the shorthand ways that we often navigate the world. They help us increase the scope and complexity of the moral frameworks within which we understand the world -- of the present as well as the past. They educate and deepen us by providing some of the important facts about various historical events, some of the ways that those events were experienced by the men, women, and children who lived through them, and some ways of asking the question, why? Why did apartheid arise? Why did Stalin and the Soviet regime engineer the mass starvation of the Ukrainian peasants? Why are millions of innocent people from Iraq, Syria, or Palestine forced to trudge away from their homes to find refuge somewhere else? Why and how did the Nazi regime undertake the murder of Europe's Jews? When people read history they come to think and understand differently; one would like to think they become more fully human in their capacity for compassion and understanding.

This seems to be one of Marc Bloch's central contributions in his reflections about "the historian's craft": historians have the task of understanding human beings as actors in time, and in uncovering the nature of human experience in dramatically different times and places. Consequently the Annales school took the subject of the mentalité of people in the past very seriously as an object of investigation. Here is a brief description from an earlier post:

Historians of the Annales school gave special attention to the task of reconstructing the mentalité of people and groups of the past. Durkheim's ideas about the social world seem to be in the background in the focus offered by Marc Bloch or Jacques Le Goff on this aspect of history's tapestry -- though the Annales approach seems to be more psychological than Durkheim would have preferred. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, for example, sought to capture the mentalité of the peasants of Montaillou in his book of that title, offering substantial commentary on their attitudes towards death, sex, and religion. Lawrence Stone writes of Le Roy Ladurie's "sheer brilliance in the use of a unique document to reconstruct in fascinating detail a previously totally unknown world, the mental, emotional, sexual, and religious life of late thirteenth-century peasants in a remote Pyrennean village" (review by Lawrence Stone). (link)

Mentalité is not exactly the same as "lived experience", but the two concepts have a great deal in common. And if we can come to understand the mental frameworks and meanings of the actors during these periods of intense human experience, we come much closer to having a genuine human understanding of the historical event as well.

History can have this effect on us. But so can literature -- novels, poetry, and theatre that creatively seek to inspire in readers and viewers some of the understanding and pity that we often lack in our everyday lives. Novels are not the same as historical books; they have different standards of "authenticity" and truth; but they have the capacity to take the reader into a world very far from home. And this ability of literature and fiction to create a vivid experience of a different world for readers is profoundly deepening for each person who engages with Rufus in Another Country, or Strelnikov in Dr. Zhivago, or Joseph K in The Trial. 

But here is the really hard question for anyone who cares about education: how is that deepened understanding of the past, and the human significance of some of the horrible events in our history -- how is that understanding supposed to come about for young people in the United States? In practical terms, what intellectual and educational experiences can children, adolescents, and young adults be expected to have that will lead them to deepen their understandings of the history of our world, and our moral place in that world? How can they be expected to come to see the difference between "apartheid" (the label to which they have been exposed very superficially) and apartheid (the human reality and fundamental injustice that a system of racial oppression represented)?

Thirteen years of Understanding Society

This month represents the end of the thirteenth year of publication of Understanding Society. Since 2010 the blog has received 11,874,515 pageviews. (Pageviews increased quickly through 2018, and have declined and stabilized in 2019 and 2020.) So far the blog has published 1,340 posts and about 1.3 million words. (That's about the length of thirteen normal academic books -- the better part of a bookshelf!) It is quite amazing to me to look back on the many topics, books, and intellectual figures that have come in for discussion here on Understanding Society over these years. In 2007 I described this undertaking as a form of "open source philosophy," a kind of lab notebook that allowed me to work on some of the topics and ideas that interested me without waiting for a sabbatical to write a book. As I formulated the idea of the blog at the very beginning, "It is an experiment in thinking, one idea at a time." It has proven to be just that.

During these years I can see that my interests and ideas have evolved almost continuously. In 2007 I would primarily have identified myself as a philosopher of social science, interested in ideas such as microfoundations, causal mechanisms, contingency, and social plasticity. These topics continue to interest me. But now I consider myself (perhaps immodestly) as a philosopher who contributes to the social sciences. My emphasis has shifted a bit from philosophical reflection to an effort to make concrete and useful contributions to substantive issues of social concern to all of us. In recent years I have come to focus on more concrete problems in the social world that we share -- for example, organizational causes of technology failure, the risks to democracy created by radical populism, the systemic causes of government failures, and the persistence of systemic racism in our country. Just now I described this as a shift of disciplinary perspective on my part; but maybe it is better to simply describe it as a non-disciplinary attempt to understand various things about the social world.

In fact, I have come to realize that these substantive topics, though not contained within traditional definitions of philosophical inquiry, are all areas where a philosopher can make a substantive contribution. It is certainly true that there is a crucial empirical and sociological dimension to each of these topics that cannot be treated in the apriori way that philosophers often approach subjects. Nonetheless, if a philosopher is willing to make the effort to learn in some detail the empirical and theoretical issues that each of these topics involves, it is possible to contribute to better understanding of the nature of these complex social phenomena. Here is a post where I try to show how philosophy is relevant to the subject of technology failure; link. The results are not "pure philosophy", and neither are they novel empirical discoveries based on original sociological investigation. Instead, we might describe the results of this kind of work as integrative and exploratory. Work like this is integrative because it is cross-disciplinary and allows the engaged philosopher to see connections from one field of research to another that are sometimes more difficult to perceive from within the parameters of a single discipline. It is exploratory because philosophy encourages us to think about topics like these in ways that are perhaps somewhat more angular and idiosyncratic than traditional experts in these fields might take.

Consider the wide range of topics considered in the blog over the past year: the threat to democracy posed by right-wing populism; new thinking in the philosophy of history; new analysis of the social causes of technology failures; racism and police abuse towards young black men; genocide and the Holocaust; agent-based models of social phenomena; the philosophy of technology; and the social ontology of organizations. There is a pleasing diversity in this range of topics. But there is also a surprising degree of continuity over time with respect to some topics -- for example, safety, organizations, democracy, populism, and racism.  Since the beginning I've used "category labels" and keywords for each post, to allow the reader to quickly filter the posts on a given topic. (For example, here are dozens of posts on "democracy and hate"; link.) This way of organizing the blog is found in the right sidebar, under the label "Themes", and all the labels can be found under "Labels".

One thing that has become clear to me is how valuable it is for me personally to take the time to try to express a certain idea or topic while it is fresh. Spending an hour or two formulating, researching, and testing an idea in one thousand words is a great way of further developing the idea; but even more fundamentally, it is a great way of capturing the idea. For example, the post I wrote about "Responsible Innovation" (link) resulted from a serendipitous invitation to a publisher's book party in Milan while I was there in January 2020. One of the book's editors, René von Schomberg, talked with great conviction about the book. I then read a number of chapters and wrote the post. I identified some of the ways in which this European initiative on technology parallels developments in the philosophy of technology in the United States -- as well as ways in which it is distinctly different. But in hindsight one thing is clear to me: I now realize that if I hadn't put these ideas on "paper" at the time, the details and insights would have escaped me by now. That is the value of a "philosopher's lab notebook".

It is interesting for me to think about the specific experiences that led me to focus on the particular questions I've taken up over the years. In the past year or so, returning to full-time teaching has been very stimulating for me, and many topics I've considered in the blog have arisen as a result of preparation for my courses. For example, designing a course in the philosophy of technology in 2019 led me to think about how technologies of flood control on the Mississippi River illustrate many of the key problems in the philosophy of technology; thinking about Eichmann and Bonhoeffer in an honors class has led me to do a lot more reading and to think differently about the Holocaust; and teaching a course about democracy and the politics of hate has led me to think (and read) about current theories about authoritarian personality. Another source of stimulation comes from interacting with colleagues in other places, including Milan, Tianjin, Paris, and British Columbia. My accidental friendship with Thai Professor Chaiyan Rajchagool led to some interesting thinking about "global history" -- I met Chaiyan at a philosophy conference at Nankai University and I then read his history of the Thai monarchy, which I liked very much. And right here in Michigan, leisurely conversations with George Steinmetz during his recovery from a bike accident have led to many new insights into studying the Holocaust. Interactions with smart, interesting people have always given me new ideas to explore in the blog.

When I began the blog I thought it might gain a regular following. And in a limited sense, that has turned out to be true -- on any given day there are a few hundred "returning visitors" who visit the blog on a regular basis, and there are several thousand followers on Twitter and Facebook. But it's not the New York Review of Books! The vast majority of pageviews are generated by search engines, bringing visitors looking for some information or commentary on topics like "social structure", "power", "assemblages theory", "Steven Lukes", or hundreds of other search terms. Visits are therefore highly random. In the past few minutes, for example, visitors have opened pages on "Epicurus's philosophy", "The rise of Austro-fascism", "Methodological individualism", "Causal narratives about historical actors", and "Hofstadter on the American right". (Another growing source of visits is the learning platforms like Blackboard and Canvas, as instructors have increasingly linked to specific posts as reading assignments in their courses.) In the past twelve months the top posts have been:

• Lukes on power (15K)
• Liquid modernity? 14.5K)
• Sociology as a social science discipline (10.6K)
• Dynamics of medieval cities (9.3K)
• The global city -- Saskia Sassen (8.7K)
• Power and social class (8.0K)
• A modern world-system? (7.8K)
• Akerlof and Kranton on identity economics (7.7K)
• Social science and social problems (5.5K)
• Philosophy and society (4.7K)

I'm glad the blog has survived through four presidential elections, one pandemic, a massive global recession, and so many other social and political events that are worth reflecting about. I hope to continue writing and posting for years to come. What do they call a twentieth anniversary when it comes around in 2027?

The 2020 election

There is something encouraging about the health of American democracy on Election Day, 2020. That is the passion for our democracy that so many millions of US citizens have shown in coming out to vote — either through early voting or in-person voting on November 3. This is not an apathetic electorate this season; rather, men and women of all ages and races are engaged in very personal ways in this crucial election. Our fellow citizens care about the stakes in this election — government incompetence and inaction in this time of pandemic, horrifying signs of racism and authoritarianism in the president's speeches, tweets, and actions, rising economic inequalities and limited economic opportunity, and the president's visible disdain for the values and institutions of our democracy itself. And, by their determination to make their vote count, they express also their patriotic commitment to our democratic institutions and history. Current projections suggest that this week's voter turnout, currently projected at 66.3%, is the highest we have seen for decades. These are indeed echoes of the "mystic chords of memory". 

Also reassuring is the fact that Tuesday's voting appears to have been calm and peaceful in virtually all parts of the country. This is a happy development given the concern many Americans had about the possibility of voter intimidation, armed "poll watchers", and civil unrest. No National Guard, no menacing truckloads of Trump supporters driving around on the highways, no Proud Boys. But of course that is before the final results come in.

The amazing number of early-voting ballots, including vote-by-mail, drop-box, and in-person early voting in many states is also an important development. This surge is a response to the pandemic, but it also suggests the possibility of a more permanent shift in voter behavior. It is the more remarkable in light of the full-court press mounted by President Trump and his supporters to undermine confidence in vote-by-mail ballots. This can be a very important shift in voter behavior by broadening voter participation and reducing some forms of voter suppression. Broader voter participation enhances democracy. 

Also noteworthy is the calm competence of state election officials around the country, persisting in their rigorous, fair, and legally governed work of counting ballots. This is part of the sinews and skeleton of our democratic system, and officials throughout the country have demonstrated their integrity and competence in carrying out the work of democracy. Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson has been especially noteworthy in her calm and judicious oversight of the highly pressurized work of ballot counting in Michigan.

What is grossly repellent, and yet clearly telegraphed weeks in advance, is Trump's brazen refusal to accept the legitimacy of the electoral process, still underway, and his groundless demand early Wednesday morning that he has won the election. With millions of votes still to be counted, this insistent and ungrounded assertion -- repeated still several days later -- represents a fundamental assault on our democracy. And to assault our democracy is not only to dismiss the democratic rights of all Americans who had already voted and whose votes must be counted; it is to assault all Americans. Every citizen -- whether Republican or Democrat, Libertarian or Green -- has a fundamental interest in the integrity of our electoral institutions. The president's lies and his continuing efforts to undermine public confidence in the voting process show him to be truly antagonistic to all Americans, including his own party's supporters. Can any person be said to be patriotic and loyal to our country when he commits such brazen, purely self-interested acts of sabotage against our most fundamental democratic institutions? Surely not. And the fact that at least two US Senators have supported the president in these claims -- Senator Cruz and Senator Graham -- will follow them with shame into the annals of history. Their support is craven; they surely know better.

The election is still unresolved as of this hour, though the signs point strongly toward a Biden victory. Biden currently leads Trump by 4,102,000 votes in the popular vote, and he is favored to win enough undecided states to win the Electoral College vote as well -- a very strong mandate for change. The control of the Senate is unresolved, and depends on run-off elections in Georgia for two Senate seats in January. The Democrats' majority in the House of Representatives has narrowed, but it looks as though it will be sustained. So the coming years of government, especially in the circumstances of global pandemic, out-of-control spread of the disease in the United States, severe and very unequal economic harms to be addressed, looming crises having to do with global climate change, and international relations in shambles, will be challenging and unpredictable. But many Americans today are ready to take some greater optimism from the fact that the current incumbent is likely to lose his power to do further harm. 

Also unresolved is how the incumbent president will behave in the next two months. His anger at the increasing likelihood of losing the election seems unhinged at the moment, his desire to lash out seems strong, and he plainly has no awareness of the way that history will remember him: as a petulant, mendacious, hateful, incompetent, and authoritarian president who put American democracy into its greatest crisis in one hundred sixty years. Where is the statesman who cares more about his duty to the Constitution and the whole citizenry than about his own political power? There has been no such person of that description in residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for four years. And now, it seems very likely, there soon will be.