
12 Jul Schadenfreude and the Republic
I really hate to disappoint those of you (a wide majority of you, I’d guess) who are waiting with bated breath to read more about Voegelin, Gnosticism, and my Twitter/X timeline, but that will have to wait. Rather, today I have to discuss with you a moral quandary and the sense of shame I feel at my reaction to the ongoing developments in this year’s presidential campaign.
I know I shouldn’t feel this way. I know that it’s more than a bit grotesque and more than a bit childish. I know that I should be bigger than this, better than this. But I can’t help it. I am overwhelmed this week by schadenfreude.
To be clear, I am not enjoying what is happening to President Biden. As I’ve noted here repeatedly, I am, in fact, rather incensed at what is happening to Biden. I find it cruel and unkind. I am also not enjoying what Biden’s family is doing to him. Again, as I have written here before, I find this relationship abusive, and I think that the first lady and the first crackhead have a great deal for which to answer.
What I am enjoying is watching Biden’s fellow elected Democrats, the left-leaning media, and the Trump-hating celebrities of all stripes and varieties as they twist in the wind. I know it’s puerile, but I’m getting an enormous kick out of it.
For most of the last decade, these people have absolutely lambasted conservatives in this country. How can you allow Trump to do this to your party, they’ve asked incessantly. How can let him destroy your brand? How can you let him destroy your credibility? If Republicans would just stand up to the guy and tell him to buzz off, then he would have no choice but to do so. If anyone in the GOP had any guts, they’d tell the wannabe-dictator and convicted felon to take a long walk off a short pier and be done with it. The only reason Trump is still around is because Republicans are scared and feckless and spineless and racist and secretly in love with authoritarian kooks. Anyone who is still a member of the Republican Party is, by definition, a Trump supporter and therefore, also by definition a loathsome, democracy-hating cockroach who deserves to go to prison and die an ugly and painful death…yada, yada, yada.
Turns out, things aren’t so easy when the willful, self-centered, party-destroying candidate is on the foot (or whatever), is it?
For all their insults and derision and self-righteous prattling on about Republican weakness in the face of a difficult candidate/nominee, the Democrats have done no better in a similar situation. And for the record, the GOP has been struggling with a strikingly popular, multibillionaire whom everyone in the country has known for the last 25 years. The Dems, by contrast, are dealing with a worn-out has-been who literally has no idea where he or what he’s doing at least half of the time. And they still can’t force him to do what they want.
Of course, even if they could get him to listen to them, they’d still be no better than the Republicans they’ve scorned for years. Nearly five years ago, they intentionally and knowingly chose a man bordering on (if not yet fully in the throes of) senile dementia, specifically because they thought he was their best chance to gain and maintain power. Now that their craven plot has backfired on them, they will either have to run a candidate who is clearly incapable of doing the job or conduct a wholly undemocratic coup to steal his nomination – all in the service of something they can’t help but call “our democracy”™.
What’s not to love? Karma is, indeed, a bitch.
Unfortunately, there’s a catch. Despite the enjoyable and perfectly justified comeuppance being visited upon the Democrats and their media allies, the real losers here are, as always, the American people. As I say, no matter what the Democrats eventually do, no matter what Biden eventually decides, no one will get the chance to vote for the candidate of their choosing, much less the best candidate possible. They will all get to vote for whatever candidate the powers that be tell them they get to vote for.
Say what you will about Trump, but, at the very least, he won the nomination (all three times) on his own merits. It may be the case that he has some…“issues”…that make him a risky choice as commander-in-chief, but at least voters had a choice. They’ll get nothing and like it on the Democratic side.
All of this should serve as yet another reminder that the Founders had a pretty good idea of what kind of issues could destroy a country and, by extension, what kind of institutions should be established to prevent those issues from taking hold in their republic. Washington, Hamilton, and Madison all railed against the dangers of “faction,” and all warned that factional/partisan politics held the power to destroy liberty itself. Additionally, all three warned that such destructive partisanship would be the result of a poorly ordered and poorly run Union. As Madison noted, eliminating factionalism was a pipe dream at best, meaning that managing it was the only solution. And the means to managing it could be found in the construction and maintenance of solid republican institutions and the leavening power of federalism:
[I]t may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.
A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking. Let us examine the points in which it varies from pure democracy, and we shall comprehend both the nature of the cure and the efficacy which it must derive from the Union.
The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens, and greater sphere of country, over which the latter may be extended….
The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States. A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction in a part of the Confederacy; but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it must secure the national councils against any danger from that source. A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district, than an entire State.
In the extent and proper structure of the Union, therefore, we behold a republican remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government. And according to the degree of pleasure and pride we feel in being republicans, ought to be our zeal in cherishing the spirit and supporting the character of Federalists.
The source of our current malady, in short, is the Progressive spirit of the early 20th century that both altered the nature of our republican institutions and derided the notion of federalism. In turn, a remedy – to the Biden problem and many others – is to reinvigorate the institutions and reestablish a federal republic.