An Aristocratic Mass Democracy?

You can either have universal suffrage, or you can have only educated citizens vote, but you cannot have both.

Richard Hanania (L) and Ian Bremmer (R). These two aspire to be aristocrats. Would you follow them?

Earlier today, I came across this tweet by geopolitical expert Ian Bremmer:

the british didn’t understand what brexit meant for their economy.

but they wanted it, they voted for it, and they’ve gotten it.

now it’s the americans’ turn.

In case you can’t tell, Bremmer is referring to the massive slate of tariffs that went into effect at the command of President Donald Trump yesterday. For the most part, they were met with criticism, at least in the mainstream, as historically, tariffs not only raise prices, but are only effective if the country applying them has domestic industry of their own with which to at least maintain supply chains and keep the economy going.

The topic of tariffs is much too expansive and above my pay-grade, honestly. I have my own opinions on them, but we won’t get into them, not here. Instead, I want to address this attitude among supposed “elite human capital” who criticize people for not voting the “right way,” defined as how the elites would want them to vote.

We’ve heard a variant of this narrative for most of our lives from the establishment, primarily from the Left. It’s either that voters don’t know what they’re voting for, or they knowingly vote against their own interests. On the one hand, voters are either too ill-informed or too stupid to participate in the political process. On the other, voters know what they’re voting for, but are doing so irrationally against their own well-being.¹

The fact is, humans are rational beings. It’s that we confuse rationality with things like judiciousness and prudence, when rationality merely means that we make the decision which makes most sense to us. People make awful decisions all the time not because they think they’re “good” choices, per se, but because it’s the choice which aligned best to their worldview. This is how people end up voting for things like more crime and open borders. Nobody actually thinks they’re voting for these things, but they think they’re voting for the compassionate, just outcomes. It’s no excuse, of course.

When Britons voted in favor of Brexit way back in 2016, they did so because the majority felt they weren’t getting any benefit from belonging to the EU. It can be argued that Britain, in fact, did benefit from EU membership, but it can just as much be argued that only certain people did. There’s a reason why “Leave” votes predominated outside London, while “Remain” was the consensus in London.

My point is this: people have their reasons for voting a certain way. Which leads to my next, more critical point: if you support mass democracy, you cannot complain about the way people vote. If you choose to complain about the outcome, your stance on mass democracy must be revisited.

Richard Hanania

, who frequently utilizes the term “elite human capital,” said in his latest Substack:

At its best, democracy works by providing feedback to leaders. Government adopts an irrational policy, the market has a reaction, and officials hopefully take that information into account. If a politician runs on an anti-corruption platform but then ends up being more corrupt than his predecessors, that should be discrediting and cost him support.

Yet this entire process requires voters to be connected to reality. If they’re in a fake news bubble, then even the most obvious failures will go unpunished. There have always been a lot of uninformed people who are reflexively partisan. Yet the most successful populist movements in the West overwhelmingly rely on uneducated voters. With some notable exceptions, the general pattern holds across much of the rest of the world. The reigns of Chavez and Maduro have been characterized by concentrated support for the government among the poor, as was that of Bolivian President Evo Morales, whose program appealed disproportionately to rural indigenous communities.

I don’t disagree with any of this, not on principle. Democracy of any sort is predicated on the assumption that voters aren’t merely rational, they’re connected to reality.

Here’s where I diverge from Hanania:

The problem with a less educated support base is that it simply has a less accurate understanding of the world. In fact, I think the problem is much worse than a simple analysis of voting patterns by educational attainment would suggest. Populists not only often fail to appeal to college graduates as a broad class, but they do particularly poorly among the small slice of the public that is the most informed about policy and current events, like journalists and academics.

The problem is that the educated have proven themselves, time and again, to have a less accurate understanding of the world themselves. On a range of issues, the educated display an appalling degree of ignorance on not only major issues, but also on the assumptions they have about the world. The fact that taxing the rich is seen as a solution to our economic and financial maladies in spite of the amount of money the government spends is one example. Transgenderism is another example. There is such a thing as being “too smart for one’s own good.” Once a person hits a certain level of intelligence or knowledge, they start believing even the most insane ideas to be true, based solely on the fact they thought it up.

That said, we all agree that democracy can only function as long as voters are well-informed - that’s to say, educated - and connected to reality. So what’s the problem here?

If democracy only functions properly with educated, reality-based voters, this completely undermines the case for mass democracy. You can either have universal suffrage, or you can have only educated citizens (yes, they must be citizens, still!) vote, but you cannot have both. There’s no way to reconcile the two sentiments.

It’s this very contradiction which makes people like Bremmer and Hanania bad-faith participants in the political process. On one hand, they want everyone to vote. I’ve never seen either question the wisdom of mass democracy or call for restricted franchise. On the other hand, they want only elite opinion to prevail at the ballot box. It’s almost like they want to live under an aristocracy, doesn’t it?

The fact is, the surest way to ensure only educated opinions to win at the ballot box is to restrict the vote. There’s no other way. People are varied and complex, even more so in a multicultural, pluralistic society such as ours. Conflict will always arise, there’ll always be a dispute to resolve. Sure, maybe we could bring everyone up to the same education level and maybe we’ll achieve a level of fundamental consensus which allows democracy to function. But that’s not going to happen in our society.

For one, there’s no practical necessity to bring everyone up to the same education level. Bremmer and Hanania, no disrespect to them, work in fields which are not exactly necessary for the continuity of civilization. It’s not to say they contribute nothing - I’ve learned much from both in the past, though admitedly less these days - but a civilization can survive without a few political commentators. Yet they also need a lot of education to be able to enter and work in their respective fields.

The people who haul our trash? Drive our ambulances? Grow our food? Protect us while we sleep? Do they need to be highly educated also? It’d sure be nice if they were. But the incentive structure just doesn’t work out that way. Nobody needs college to survive in life, we go to college to benefit. There’s always going to be a conflict of interest because becoming an elite involves significant competition, both with other aspiring elites and those below the elite level. More important, humans are varied and complex, again. If anything, a smart, educated populace may find even more things to disagree on. Countries like Germany, which has a population more educated than the U.S., proves that schooling is no bulwark against political division.

I’m probably overstating the point, but while a more educated populace might restore some sanity to politics, it doesn’t guarantee that stark divides won’t occur. That’s because education isn’t the only determinant. It’s only the biggest determinant now due to ideological capture of higher education.

More important, how is a more educated populace voting similarly any different from an aristocracy where only those with a college education get to vote? The outcome is the same, either way. Maybe in the first instance, there’s more consensus and less conflict across the board, but again, are garbage collectors going to be college-educated, too? In both instances, someone’s going to win over the other. If you give everyone the vote, then everyone feels like they have something to lose. It’s this feeling that makes elections seem existential.

Which brings us to another important factor, perhaps the most important of all: democracy works best when only those who are actually invested in the outcome exercise the vote. There’s a difference between thinking you have something to lose and actually having something to lose. For example, a property owner has more at stake in the condition of a neighborhood than a renter does. This doesn’t mean the renter isn’t impacted any way, but the renter also has the last-ditch option of simply moving away. The choice isn’t as simple for the property owner. They’ve invested a lot of their own capital into purchasing, improving, and maintaining a property. They have far much more to lose if governance goes badly.

Several essays ago, I said:

In fact, one of the reasons why our political system has become so ineffectual at performing its most basic of tasks can be attributed to the fact that participation in the political process has become so divorced from any tangible consequences. In other words, if voting meant you risk losing your property, wealth, or even life, we’d all vote a lot differently than we do currently. We may opt not to vote at all. Anyone who believes humans don’t function along lines of incentive is either not serious or doesn’t know as much as their high-priced college degrees confer.

I could go on and on about this. Ian Bremmer and Richard Hanania would probably agree Americans could use a civics class, but I think Americans need a class in civic virtue, specifically. It’s not enough to know what our values are, how our government works. We have to understand why the system is set up the way it is, the nature of governance, what it means to exercise the vote. By fashioning voting as a mere civil right, a choice we’re all free to make, it has become cheapened, completely divorced from the realities of politics and consequence.

Though it attempted (and failed) to make a mockery of the novel it was based off of, I think this scene from the movie Starship Troopers summarizes civic virtue better than most college professors ever could:

The lesson is this: the vote determines where the state exercises its power, that power is force, and force is violence. Once you understand this, you understand the significance of your vote, that it’s not merely an indication of preference on your part. Once you understand that a vote is an exercise in violence, you ought to know why not everyone should be able to vote.

The thing is, Bremmer, Hanania and I are in full agreement - not everyone should be able to vote. It’s just that Bremmer and Hanania have to pretend like they support mass democracy, even though they really don’t, so they can maintain their status among the elites. However, Bremmer and Hanania also see themselves as the aristocrats in a mass democracy - the gatekeepers, the people whose job it is to tell everyone else how to vote and what to think. They’re so educated and right about everything; why won’t anyone listen to them?

The thing about aristocracy is this: Bremmer and Hanania’s greatest quality is their education. But education is a feature, not the definer, of aristocracy. All forms of governance eventually spoil, but what distinguishes an aristocracy from other forms of non-democratic governance, like oligarchy, is virtue. To be an effective aristocrat, you need to command respect. You need to give people a reason to follow you. If you need to browbeat and shame people into doing so, you’re no aristocrat; you’re a petty, wannabe tyrant.

Think about the people you admire and respect in your life: why do you admire and respect them? Is it because of their accomplishments? Their credentials? Or because they lead their lives in a certain way, treat others a certain way, and believe in putting others before self? Not all aristocrats are like this, of course, but you’re never going to become one unless you can convince people you hold such values.

Put another way: why are military veterans so often viewed as having the traits necessary to become political leaders? That’s because the soldier is popularly viewed as being brave and virtuous. Obviously, this isn’t universally true, but don’t overthink it. The profession of arms has been viewed through its existence as a task requiring brave and virtuous individuals to carry out. The medical profession is also highly respected, but there’s comparatively less demand for a doctor to become politicians. That’s because doctors are respected for their expertise, not virtue.

The fact is, everyone yearns for leadership possessing civic virtue. What’s most ironic of all is that Americans may understand civic virtue better than the elites think they do. Look at what else Ian Bremmer had to say:

americans are the shortest term folks imaginable.

the idea that we’ll happily accept short term pain for something—anything—long term flies in the face of our national experience.

Bremmer apparently thinks this is a dunk on Americans. In reality, the willingness to accept short-term pain for long-term gain is actually quite virtuous. It’s the essence of sacrifice: I’ll suffer now so we’ll see better days later. Our ancestors suffered quite a bit; thanks to them, we want for so little today. The alternative is to kick the can down the road perpetually until things explode or implode. Then there’s nothing left to save. What’s so virtuous about that?

Bremmer and Hanania see themselves as the best society has to offer. They fashion themselves as a modern-day aristocracy, whether they know it or not. They’re educated, there’s no question about that. The fact that they think everyone should vote, but only their opinions should count shows they lack the honesty and integrity to be leaders.

The Leadership We Deserve

In closing, I want to share some thoughts on Trump himself.

I’ve never been “MAGA.” I’ve always been skeptical of both him and his presidency since the beginning. On my list of great leaders, he’s totally absent. I think there’s a tremendous amount of wishful thinking and reality denial that one must engage in to think Trump is in any way a great leader or even a great man. The fact is, his critics are right about him in more ways than one. The fact that the predominant leadership class is bad doesn’t make Trump the best president we’ve ever had.

I’ll go as far as to say that Trump is likely to end up as historically significant as Boris Yeltsin was. For those of who may not remember, Yeltsin was the president of Russia following the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, up until 1999. The 1990s were a tumultuous decade for Russia and Yeltsin isn’t remembered fondly for it. At the same time, it can be argued that he held the fragile federation together through a very tough time and set it up to see the 21st century. Still, nobody yearns for the days of Yeltsin. I doubt anyone will yearn for the days of Trump in 20 years.

Does any of this surprise you? I’m a right-wing radical and Trump is by far the most right-wing president we’ve ever had, how could do anything besides worship the ground he walks on? Perhaps it’s because I take my politics more seriously than the average Trump-supporter, and my expectations for leadership are much higher. It’s also fairly recently I’ve discovered I’m not a populist; the will of the people should be respected, but someone should always be firmly in charge.

That said, for all his failings, there are some nice things about Trump compared to those he stands opposed to. One of the biggest is that he doesn’t pretend to be a man of virtue. Sure, he pretends to be the smartest man in the room, but that’s not the same as claiming to be a good person. In fact, as a populist, Trump is an anti-aristocrat. He doesn’t profess to know what’s best for Americans, only that he intends to make life better for Americans. This makes his personal failings easier to digest. He doesn’t come off as a hypocrite the way other virtue-signalling politicians often do. During a crisis, the last thing I want to hear is someone lecture us about how we’re supposed to feel, think, and vote.

That said, one of the features of the end of empires is weak leadership. They’re both the cause and feature of a failing political order. This means it won’t be until after the crisis has passed that we’ll see some serious leadership. For me, serious leadership looks like our own George Washington or Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore. However, these leaders became men of their moment because the situation called for it. Right now, neither America nor the West has a demand for truly strong, decisive leadership. The day is coming, but for now, we’ll have to settle for Trump and aspiring aristocrats who think they know best just because they have college degrees.

Let’s talk. What do you think about what Ian Bremmer and Richard Hanania have to say? Is there a way to reconcile mass democracy and the desire for educated opinion to prevail? Are Bremmer and Hanania the kind of people you’d see as aristocrats?

Talk about it in the comments.

Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.

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1. Historian Thomas Frank famously explored this phenomenon in his 2004 book What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America.