Russ Roberts: But, a lot of politics–I was going to say in America today, but of course it’s true through most of history at any democracy. It’s certainly true here in Israel. There’s 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’s 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 the United States will no longer be the United States. It’ll be some disgrace, some failure of what should be its mission.
And, I often describe that as: there’s no longer shared narrative. I don’t know if that’s a useful way to think about it. But, when a country is divided and each side sees the other side as effectively treasonous, it’s very hard, one, to get anything done, which is part of what your book writes about; but it also means there’s a cultural failure, it seems to me, and a political failure that go together as you write about 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 do think that in a sense we’ve reached that point. I think that reaching that point–I think it’s possible to recover from that kind of condition, because our political tradition does give us a lot to work with on this front.
So, I would say that the sense that people have that the stakes are absolute is a function of a misunderstanding of how democracy works.
And, it’s a misunderstanding that’s rooted in the way that some democracies fail. And, the extraordinary thing about the American Constitution is how aware it is of that danger.
So, democracy is rooted in the sense that majority rule is essential to political legitimacy. I think that is absolutely true. And, the Framers of the Constitution in the United States began from that premise.
There is a democracy at the bottom of everything. Everybody is ultimately accountable to a voting public.
And yet, there is another fact about democracy: which is that majority rule can be very oppressive. And that it creates a fear in minorities. Because, if everything is up to the majority and if whatever the majority does is deemed legitimate, then if you’re not in the majority, you’re in big trouble. And, an election is a moment when a society decides who is in the majority and who is in the minority. And, that means that if everything is up for grabs at every election, then the stakes are extremely high and therefore it really is a fight to the death.
The American Constitution intentionally creates a set of restraints on majorities even as it empowers majorities.
Now, it has to be said, this is actually what we find frustrating about the Constitution. And, a lot of the critics of the Constitution are essentially majoritarians. And they say, ‘Look, a majority of the public voted for this party and yet they can’t get anything done because they have to negotiate with these other institutions and with the other party in the institution.’
And, it’s true. Everybody who wins an election for President or for Congress sooner or later in the United States finds themselves saying, ‘Look, didn’t I win the election? Why am I still dealing with these people?’
The reason you’re still dealing with these people is that the Constitution is keenly aware that majorities have to be restrained before they are empowered, or at the very least, that in order to be genuinely legitimate, they have to be broad and durable majorities and not narrow and fading or ephemeral majorities.
So, the system creates a bicameral legislature where the two houses are elected in two different ways. It creates these branches of government that are constantly in each other’s way. It creates an executive that’s elected in a very peculiar way and has to constantly account for himself to the Congress.
All of these things are there to make sure that it’s not simply the case that if you’re in the minority, then you’re screwed. That’s not how American life should work.
And, in a way, the competing, interacting majorities that the system creates is a way to make sure that everybody is in the minority sometimes–or at least can imagine themselves being in the minority–and therefore has to worry about how minorities are protected from majority power.
And so, how to balance majority power and minority rights is a challenge that every democracy has to face.
I think the American Constitution is actually distinctly good at doing that, but that’s also why it’s so frustrating to narrow majorities, which are the only kind we’ve had in 21st-century America.