"Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people." — Harry Emerson Fosdick.
"The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please; we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations." — Edmund Burke.
It is a small book filling only 168 pages. Written 1983, it is now out of print. Statecraft as Soulcraft by George F. Will began as a series of Godkin Lectures, delivered at Harvard University in 1981. In the volume, Will outlines what he argues is a defect in the American political structure. By identifying the defect, he hopes to alleviate its consequences.
When the Founding Fathers assembled the political structure embedded in the Constitution, they faced a challenge. Until that time the common wisdom was that democratically-based governments could only exist in small communities. Such communities share a commonality of interest that makes democracy possible.
James Madison turned this assumption on its head arguing that extensive democracies are the most stable. A large country contains a variety of interests that compete against one another. The large number of such interests, Madison argued, made the possibility of single interest or temporary alliance of such interests capable of imposing tyranny a small one. Madison argued that we did not have to assume good motives, but "Ambition must be made to counteract ambition."
Madison did not persuade everyone of this view. Thomas Jefferson was concerned about American character. Jefferson deliberately opposed a National Bank and other institutions that make mercantile transactions possible. He believed that qualities of self-reliance, hard work and thrift nurtured in an agrarian society were necessary qualities for government by assent to function.
Will sides with Jefferson on the importance of collective character on maintaining a free and democratic society. He argues that government cannot be indifferent to the inner lives and qualities of its citizenry. The Libertarian argument is that whatever the people choose by way of free markets is, by definition, good. Will argues:
"Conservatives rightly defend the market as a marvelous mechanism for allocating resources. But when conservatives begin regarding the market less as an expedient than as an ultimate arbiter of all values, their conservatism degenerates to the least conservative impulse, which is populism."
The solution to maintaining a polity capable of self-government is not so clear. Education is necessary, but there is more to it than that. Knowledge is important, but not sufficient.
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