democratic and anti-democratic

Sun Oct 30 13:39:11 PST 2005

Although you have denied it, you, in fact, are being presentistic. We live under the 1787 constitution because the Democratic ritual as it was created and birthed in this society approved of the new creation. You are not debunking a myth; you are creating one. Besides, I think your empirical assertion is incorrect. If you are going to argue that today's standard of universal suffrage would have produced a different result back then, have you included universal suffrage for all Americans of African descent and for women? Given that the Anti-federalists largely opposed the constitution on the ground that agrarian ideology would lose its hegemony (not true until Lincoln), it is probably correct to assume that Americans of African descent in the south would have been more for the union. Also, if today is your benchmark, why not factor in today's knowledge of what for them would be the future? I mean, if democratic perfection is what you want, why not assume that they could see, !
 like we
 can, the way the voyage would go? You might have it be unanimous under that standard.

I tell you what: let's not be presentistic at all. Let's just recognize that mass participation was incredibly high for its day and that this was the first great electoral ritual of our time. A contest that included far many more than history to that point had allowed, and a contest that adequately captured the pluralistic competition between the relevant power centers in the polity -- which, after all, is really all that pluralistic democracy can ever do (if we are not going to be foolish about what democracy as a concept entails).         

Malla Pollack <mpollack at uidaho.edu> wrote:

I am not “imposing” any standard on anyone, especially the long dead “founding” generation. I am debunking the halo given their actions by using a modern, positive-connotation word, “democratic”, to mis-describe their actions.  The current population of the US lives under the 1789 Constitution (as amended) because no one has summoned the political will to try and do a better job.  The document is not a particularly well written one (remember the odd failure to separate votes for president and vice president).  However, as Hobbes recognized, civil war is not a very attractive alternative.  I am not in favor of violent overthrow of the current government.  But I object on historical, political, philosophical, and moral grounds to the claim that the current written document is any more than the legacy of a long-dead power play.  Most (if not all) governments start with violence.  The US is not a sainted exception.

Malla Pollack

Professor, American Justice School of Law

Visiting Univ. of Idaho, College of Law

mpollack at uidaho.edu

208-885-2017

-----Original Message-----
From: Sean Wilson [mailto:whoooo26505 at yahoo.com] 
Sent: Sunday, October 30, 2005 1:13 PM
To: Malla Pollack; 'Scarberry, Mark'; conlawprof at lists.ucla.edu
Subject: RE: democratic and anti-democratic

I don't understand how you can use ideal democracy as a yardstick to measure ratification anyway. The founders created a post-aristocratic, pre-democratic society. They did not support universal suffrage. Suffrage was still thought of as a function of the virtuous. Property qualifications prevented voting in many states and so did the fact that, in some states, you would have to ride on horseback for days to get to the polling place. Wasn't it New Jersey that only had four polling places for the entire state? Hell, they didn't even have the secret ballot for all of the elections yet.

Remember, voting was just getting started for crying out loud. If you wanted to vote for Jefferson after the 1776, you had to attend a barbecue on the day of the "election," eat, drink like a pig, and then go to an area and pronounce your vote orally. Basically, whichever Planter had the bigger pow-wow would be the winner. That was "democracy" in Virginia back then.    

Given these limitations, ratification was as democratic as it could be. You are being entirely presentistic to ask that today's standard of democracy being imposed on an election of 1787. My god, the fact that they bypassed the sovereign governments of their time (the states) and made the ratification go to so many hundreds of thousands of colonists was itself quite a "democratic" accomplishment.

Malla Pollack <mpollack at uidaho.edu> wrote:

Sorry, even if you ignore that no one now governed by the Constitution was
given a chance to vote against it, the best scholarship available makes
clear that the 1787-89 ratification was not democratic. 

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