I’d like to continue our meditation on Lincoln’s “formula for democracy” in the Gettysburg Address, “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” The prior posts in this series are here and here. We’re looking at the formula from end to beginning and started with government “for the people,” so today, let’s look at government “by the people.”

Government by the people introduces a function specific to democracy: the participation by the people in their own governance. It articulates the people as author and operator of the government; as the Declaration says, the government derives its “just powers from the consent of the governed.” This might be accomplished directly, as in legendary New England Town Hall meetings, or by representation, as are virtually all democracies, of course.

Why does government by the people matter? If a just and righteous monarch can deliver on goverment for the people, why should we not be satisfied? Why should we want to author our own governance?

Let’s consider two reasons, a prudential one and an existential one (or, if we want to be more philosophically technical, a consequentialist reason and a deontological reason).

The prudential reason is that only government by the people can sufficiently guard against the potential — indeed, over time and in aggregate inevitable — abuses of power by the ruler. “If men were angels,” Jame Madison said, “they would have no need of government.” The corollary is, since men are no  angels, we cannot wholly trust one or a few of them to shepherd the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of the many. Bach’s beautiful aria, quoted in the previous post, conveys the sense of protection, the sense of security, that good government provides its people. The Declaration focuses on the need for government to secure “safety and happiness.” But in the absence of democratic government b  the people, such protection is more subject to manipulation. The fewer the levers of power, the easier it is for an individual ruler, or a cabal of oligarchs, say, to ignore or control the people. In an authoritarian regime, the people have little recourse should the autocrat forgo protection of the people in favor of his own gain.

The existential reason for government by the people is that it is the proper form for the existence of beings that have human dignity, freedom and equality — the self-evident truths of the Declaration. Writing in Germany at about the time our Revolutionary War was ending, Immanuel Kant spoke of “man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage” (or immaturity) that the Age of Enlightenment was witnessing. By tutelage he meant the “inability to make use of one’s understanding without direction from another” — a childlike state inappropriate for an adult. And Kant located this self-incurred tutelage not in a failure of reason but in a failure of courage, an abdication of one’s fundamental human liberty.

When the authors of the Declaration wrote of self-evident truths, they were writing very much in this vein. The truth of equality and unalienable rights can be known by anyone, if they have the courage to see it and act on it.

Government for the people that is not also by the people is by its nature paternalistic and condescending. When Bach’s aria appeals to “what makes countries happy” as a criterion of good governance, we might ask, who is to be the judge of that? Who determines what is the “happiness” of the country, its flourishing, its well-being? The prophets of the Old Testament, the Aztec priests, the brahmans of India, would have answers. Such answers are not and cannot be our answers. For one thing, we live in a state of diversity and plurality not easily envisioned in those societies. For another thing, human dignity requires that we the people be the judges. We can take advice from the prophets and brahmans but not direction.

In other words, we must consent to our governance, and if we give up our consent, we have chosen tutelage. And of course, consent is not only a matter of voting. It is a matter of the entire apparatus by which government is transparent to and accountable to the people. Government that is not transparent is not government by consent, and if we accept the premise of the Declaration, it has no “just powers.”

Today, our consent to governance is under assault from many sides, which is another way of saying our democracy is under assault. We the people are being denied consent on a daily basis: 

• Executive order after executive order, of unprecedented scope, with little or no explanation, has moved us into a government by dictate.
• ICE acts as a lawless arm of the Donald Trump regime, murdering and brutalizing American citizens, shooting “suspects” virtually at will, with no transparency and almost no repercussions.
• Trump tries again to ban media from the White House because he doesn’t like the coverage, he sues an Iowa newspaper for the same reasons, he seeks total control of information and the creation of a propaganda machine that even his informal machine, Fox News, can’t stomach. Fortunately, the courts seem to be holding firm.
• Mike Johnson shuts down the House before the midterms to avoid dealing publicly with a host of difficult issues. Indeed, we could not ask for a clearer example of “self-incurred tutelage” than the Republican Congress.
• SCOTUS, under cover of a dramatic expansion of the shadow docket, enhances Trump’s unchecked powers without explanation.
• Gerrymandering has reduced competitive districts — one measure of transparency and meaningful consent — to a handful.
• MAGA works overtime on voter suppression, seeking to deny consent to a significant portion of the electorate.

Fortunately, we still do have the power of the vote, the ultimate backstop of consent, to work with — so please do everything you can to turn out the vote in the midterms. Get involved with the upcoming No Kings Day of Action. Join a Protect the Election effort. We have obstacles to overcome. But we can still exercise our consent; we can still author our government.

There is much more to be said about government by the people, so I hope to do a second post along that line, before turning to government of the people.