This morning, I was watching this late-April clip featuring MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow when I was reminded of an old moral conundrum. Which is worse: evil or stupidity? You can fight evil. You might lose, but you can fight it. Stupidity is something else. How do you fight stupid people when the more you fight them, the stupider they get?
What stupid people?
Consider Washington state, where that state’s Republican Party held its convention two months ago. Rachel Maddow presented footage of a speaker who, in no uncertain terms, said that democracy is bad, not good. The speaker seemed to be saying the quiet part out loud, thus validating allegations against Republicans by liberals such as Maddow.
“We do not want to be a democracy,” the speaker said. “Originally, congressmen were elected by a direct democracy, senators were elected by state legislators and presidents are elected by the Electoral College. We are devolving into a democracy, because now congressmen and senators are elected by the same pool, a direct democracy. And with the national popular vote coming, we’re going to be electing a president by a direct democracy, too. Bad idea.”
This isn’t the stupid part. I’ll get to that in a second.
First, this is a misunderstanding.
There is no direct democracy in America. A direct democracy is one in which citizens make laws directly. We don’t do that. We elect people to represent us, who then make laws in our name. We are not, and never have been, a direct democracy. We are representative democracy.
It’s true, however, that America has become more democratic. As the speaker said, while voters always chose their representatives, they didn’t always choose their senators. Until the 20th century, state legislatures did that. The 17th amendment, ratified in 1913, changed the US Constitution. Voters now pick their state’s US senators directly.
The other misunderstanding is about the Electoral College. While state electors do technically “elect” the president, state electors are bound by that state’s laws to “elect” whoever the majority of that state’s voters choose. They are not free to choose whomever they please. They must obey, by law, the democratic will of that state’s majority. (Also: the national popular vote is not coming. Don’t get scammed.)
Though it’s a misunderstanding, it’s not stupid. It’s not even a stupid misunderstanding. After all, what the speaker said makes a kind of intuitive sense. And to be sure, what she said was disgusting and deeply and dangerously authoritarian. It’s not stupid, however.
Lots of Americans, especially white Americans, don’t like democracy when “democracy” means sharing power with people whom they deem undeserving of their natural rights. It’s terrible, perhaps even evil, for an American to say in public that “we are devolving into a democracy.”
But it’s not stupid.
Maddow then cited reporting by the Seattle Times that said that convention delegates stood up to argue that the United States should repeal the 17th Amendment. Their resolution passed. Then they voted to encourage Republicans to substitute, when speaking, the words “republic” and “republicanism” whenever they mean “democracy.”
That, too, isn’t stupid.
It’s part of an old, and rather tired, debate over the difference between a republic and a democracy. That debate has historical roots that are interesting but no longer relevant. These days, the difference is so minor as to be invisible. You can say republic, argued Jonathan Bernstein in 2019, I can say democracy. They are the same thing.
The difference is in what Republicans mean.
When they say that “it’s a republic, not a democracy” – or when they encourage us, as they did in Washington state in late April, to substitute “republic” for “democracy” – what they are really saying is that democracy as it currently stands should be less democratic.
Again, that’s disgusting and deeply and dangerously authoritarian. It’s not stupid, however. It’s an expression of ideas and beliefs about society that some of us believe are illiberal and anti-democratic.
Here’s what’s stupid: When you say “democracy,” people think “Democrats.” So democracy is bad. So is the word “democracy.”
According to the Seattle Times, delegates to the Washington state GOP convention argued that when “democracy” is used favorably, it puts the Democratic Party and its democratic policies in a favorable light. Since the Republicans oppose the Democrats and their democratic policies, Republicans should substitute “republic” for “democracy,” with the presumed added benefit of “republic” sounding like “Republican.”
Again, this is stupid. It’s politics that’s been shorn of values, history, context and basic facts. It’s politics that’s been reduced to a level of branding so simplistic as to be warped beyond recognition. It’s politics that has ditched rhetoric in favor of magical incantation. It’s politics that flatters the half-wit, telling him only he knows “the real truth.”
Fact is, both parties are democratic.
One of them wants more democracy for more people. The other wants less democracy for fewer people. One envisions a future in which America is a truly multiracial democracy. The other envisions a future that restores the “natural order” on which the republic was founded. One is liberal. The other is illiberal. Both parties are small-d democratic.
But that’s missing in the don’t-say-democracy thing. It’s as if saying “democracy” somehow promoted the Democrats by way of subliminal messaging. It’s an idiot’s idea of what a smart person would say. And for Republicans who believe it, there’s no argument, no set of values, no set of facts that anyone can use to change their minds.
Maddow seemed to think this was a gotcha moment. She said the Washington state Republicans “would this year take a stand against democracy. I do not mean this as a metaphor. I am not performing political analysis. I am literally describing what they literally said.”
It might be a gotcha moment if these Republicans had exposed their real intentions. After the don’t-say-democracy thing, however, I’m not sure these Republicans know what their real intentions are, except perhaps that whatever the Democrats are for, they are against.
I’m not sure how to fight this either. You can fight evil. You can meet illiberal politics with liberal politics, and you can hope to win. I don’t know how you can even hope to defeat stupidity. I could explain that, actually, the Republicans are also democratic, just not as democratic as the Democrats, but that’s not going to move people who fear they will inadvertently help their enemies by understanding the truth.