The speech that President Biden gave at Pointe du Hoc (Normandie, France) in celebration of D-Day echoed a naïve and widespread conception of democracy. The general theory goes like this: Democracy is a system where the voter is in power. He is well-informed and votes to express his interest in the public goods that the government proposes to produce. The politicians and the government bureaucrats are selfless public servants who faithfully respond to the electorate’s demands. If I may put a summary in Biden’s mouth: the result is freedom, the rule of law, and a government in the service of “the people”; democracy is good; we come together and do great things at great sacrifice.
In reality, to roughly summarize public choice theory, most citizens vote blind because each one’s vote has no impact of the election or referendum result. Many remain apathetic. Politicians and bureaucrats are ordinary self-interested individuals who occupy the public sector to further their own interests. When necessary, they will yield to special-interest groups. The (classical) liberal believes that democracy is a means to individual liberty, not an end, and that the government’s scope and power must be strictly limited to some essential functions in order to restrain its capacity to exploit part of the population.
The naïve conception confuses freedom with democracy and views collective choices as superior to individual choices. The collective is greater than the individual, and the latter must sacrifice for the former. Democracy is collectivism with a human face. Biden declared (see “Against D-Day Backdrop, Biden Puts Democracy at Center of Anti-Trump Pitch,” Wall Street Journal, June 7, 2024; and the C-SPAN video of the speech):
American democracy asks the hardest of things: to believe that we’re a part of something bigger than ourselves. So democracy begins with each of us … when one person decides there’s something more important than themselves … when they decide that their country matters more than they do.
Note in passing how the rhetoric goes from “one person” to the politically correct “they”—ostentatiously to avoid saying “him.” Intriguingly, Biden later eulogizes “the brave men who scaled these cliffs.” The real function of replacing singular pronouns by their plural is, I believe, to erase the individual.
Biden affirms that the American soldiers who took Omaha Beach,
are asking us to care for others in our country more than ourselves … to be part of something bigger than ourselves … to protect freedom in our time, to defend democracy … to be part of something bigger than ourselves.
At least, freedom is mentioned, but it appears to be a mere synonym for democracy, which is the central concept.
A free society is very different. Its government leaves every individual free to make the sacrifices he wants without imposing sacrifices on others such as conscripts in times of war. The incipit of Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom (1962) famously said:
In a much quoted passage in his inaugural address, President Kennedy said, “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” …. Neither half of the statement expresses a relation between the citizen and his government that is worthy of the ideals of free men in a free society. The paternalistic “what your country can do for you” implies that the government is the patron, the citizen the ward. … The organismic, [sic] “what you can do for your country” implies that government is the master or the deity, the citizen, the servant or the votary. To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them.
James Buchanan saw stronger relations between the citizen and a government created and limited by a conceptually unanimous social contract. But he stressed (along with his collaborators Gordon Tullock or Geoffrey Brennan, to mention only those) how the whole system was based on the absolute primacy of individual choices. The citizen is not viewed as a sacrificial lamb. There is no social or collective purposes, only private purposes. This liberty is of course worth defending.
Mr. Biden’s concept of democracy is closer to Spartan democracy, which was all about the power of the citizens as a collective, not about individual liberty. In Pointe du Hoc, he preached against the natural instinct “to be selfish, to force our world upon others, to seize power and never give up.” But isn’t forcing the world of some upon others exactly what any sort of collectivism means?
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Organicist democracy and the old king, by DALL-E with his gratitude to Thomas Hobbes and your humble blogger
READER COMMENTS
Craig
Jun 11 2024 at 2:45pm
The neocons like to use D-day to bolster public support for perpetual foreign interventionism. After all there is no blacker hat evil than Hitler and naturally Americans tend to be proud of the effort to liberate Europe from Nazism. Sadly the neocons still reign ascendant in the US. The fact that generation did what it did is impressive, but it doesn’t make me any more willing to sacrifice my son on the altar of Ukrainian territorial integrity. I’m just not interested in making the world safe for democratic socialism. No thanks. #americafirst #outofnato
Pierre Lemieux
Jun 11 2024 at 5:54pm
Craig: I think there is no justification for military conscription. Conscription exists only because the conscript is paid less than he could otherwise earn: that is the standard economic argument. If a free society could not survive the Putins of this world, there is a justification for taxes that would compensate the soldiers’ opportunity costs and thus incite individuals to take the job voluntarily. This justification can be Buchananian (every individual presumably agrees to a constitutional rule to that effect in his own probabilistic interest) or Hayekian (the maintenance of a liberal spontaneous order requires it). Of course, an anarchist would reject these arguments.
In the absence of conscription, you would not have to “sacrifice your son,” because he would decide himself, once he becomes an adult, whether he wants to “sacrifice” himself. If he does sign the contract, that would not be a sacrifice for him as he would have determined that the costs (including the probability of death or injury) are lower than the benefits (money, perks, adventure, and any moral compulsion he decides to satisfy) for him. And there seems to be no reason your daughter wouldn’t be free to enroll too.
steve
Jun 11 2024 at 5:04pm
You are judging Biden based upon some speeches which will largely be rah, rah go team vs Bushana et al based upon their scholarly writings. I guess that is good if you want to win an argument. To be fair someone, when he is not running for office, should ask him what he think democracy means. I think that if you ask real political scientists or even non-libertarian economists they will provide a much different view about democracy than you extract from Biden’s speech which will largely come down it has lots of problems but its better than everything else we have tried.
As an aside, having listened to hundreds of speeches and help kids adjust their speeches people often use they to avoid having to say “him or her”. I would also note that he was giving a speech to honor the thousands of people who died so that you people could talk about the difference between democracy and freedom. It was a collective effort so I would expect his speech to reflect that.
Steve
Pierre Lemieux
Jun 11 2024 at 6:14pm
Steve: If “it has lots of problems but it’s better than everything else we have tried” is the only argument for democracy, I would say, with due respect, that it is the naïve, unexamined conception–especially if “it” and “a lot” are not explained or perhaps if “they” and “we” have tried other regimes and have other opinions. Note also that a large number of political scientists and economists have been influenced by rational-choice analysis and public-choice economics. If what you mean is what William Riker or Friedrich Hayek or James Buchanan say about liberal or constitutional democracy, I agree with you. That will not change my opinion on the reigning naïve conception, though.
Pierre Lemieux
Jun 11 2024 at 6:18pm
Steve: I should have said “I don’t think this will change my opinion on the reigning naïve conception.” You never know when you often travel to Damascus.
Kurt Schuler
Jun 11 2024 at 8:17pm
Name for me the free countries that have remained free never resorting to conscription. If that is too difficult, name for me the independent countries of any kind that have remained independent never resorting to conscription.
Atanu Dey
Jun 12 2024 at 2:38am
Kurt, I believe that India, an independent country but which is far from free, has never resorted to conscription.
Pierre Lemieux
Jun 12 2024 at 10:50am
Kurt: That’s an interesting argument. It’s often used in the form, “Name me a free country that has never had X.” One problem with the argument is that the sample is small: in the sense of modern liberty (see Benjamin Constant), there have been free countries only for three centuries or so. History is not over. Moreover, what counts as a “country”? Were Medieval city-states “countries”? What about Monaco, which has not had conscription for the last century and a half? What about the case mentioned by Atanu? What about the troubling argument that universal conscription did not exist before the modern nation-state (see Bertrand de Jouvenel)?
Greying these questions and replacing “free” by “rather freer than less free,” we can take another track, but we will still face big problems. Replace X by “restrictions on freedom of religion,” or on “freedom of speech,” or on “the right of individuals to start a business,” or on “the right of ordinary people to own or carry arms,” or on “the right of ordinary people to travel as they want,” or on “the right of individuals to trade as they want,” or on “the right of ordinary people to marry as they want,” or “on the right of individuals to leave their tribes,” etc. The point is the following: before any specific liberty was tried, it seemed obvious that it could not work. Before Adam Smith showed that a spontaneous order can work (at least over a certain range), it seemed obvious that it couldn’t.
steve
Jun 12 2024 at 4:07pm
Wouldn’t the real question be which countries that have been at war in the last X number of years have not had conscription? You have little need if you never go to war.
Steve
Jose Pablo
Jun 12 2024 at 8:01pm
Following Kurt’s reasoning you would never go to war if conscription was effectively banned from the face of Earth (conscription should have been prohibited by the Geneva Protocol).
Wars are an atavism, a reminder of the animal “we” once were and, it seems, some of us still are. The worst possible reason to remain an animal is because other people remain animals.
Kurt Schuler
Jun 12 2024 at 10:07pm
Thank you for the example of India, which I did not previously know.
Most people are unwilling to fight voluntarily even for their own freedom when it is in danger. So, the choices are: be the world’s most populous country, able to raise a large army simply by recruiting one in every thousand persons; be a country that exists only at the sufferance of others, such as the world’s microstates; impose conscription in time of need; or get taken over by country that does impose conscription. Raise your hand if you think that South Korea would survive with an all-volunteer army, funded by bake sales.
Pierre Lemieux
Jun 12 2024 at 11:01pm
Kurt: There were recent reports that the Swedish army is flooded by volunteers. Whether one is willing to be a fireman, to clean nuclear power plants, to walk on high-tensions lines, or to fight a war depends on one’s preferences and the incentives offered.
Atanu Dey
Jun 12 2024 at 2:44am
Indians routinely conflate freedom and democracy. I just tell them that there can be perfect (however defined) democracy without any freedom. The inmates of a prison can be given the vote to democratically elect the prison warden without having any freedom at all.
But what’s worse is that India’s democracy is a “cargo-cult democracy.”
Craig
Jun 12 2024 at 3:39pm
“But what’s worse is that India’s democracy is a “cargo-cult democracy.””
Hmm, interesting reference, made me look it up. I am just curious, not being familiar enough, what makes you write that about India?
Thomas L Hutcheson
Jun 12 2024 at 10:19am
The points made about the naïve view of democracy are well taken. Next step is to deduce what the optimal policy of each participant (voter, policy advocate, politician, civil servant) should be.
Personally, I continue to be disappointed that the those who understand Public Choice Theory do not use it to advocate for better design of policies.
Pierre Lemieux
Jun 12 2024 at 11:08am
Thomas: I appreciate your attempts to bring our (or at least my) feet back to earth. For the general case you mention, though, I think that constitutional political economy, a derivative of public choice economics, provides the answer. Buchanan (and Tullock, Brennan, et alii) would argue that the problem is not the design of policies, but the design of a constitutional framework (a framework of general rules) that would properly constrain policies.
Jose Pablo
Jun 12 2024 at 8:03pm
to deduce what the optimal policy of each participant (voter, policy advocate, politician, civil servant) should be
Don’t worry. They know.
Roger McKinney
Jun 12 2024 at 10:57am
Allied bombing around D-Day killed 50,000 French civilians, mostly women, children and old people.
General MacArthur said he would court martial the SOB who planned that disaster.
Pierre Lemieux
Jun 12 2024 at 11:14am
Roger: I share your indignation.
Warren Platts
Jun 13 2024 at 12:19am
To be fair, that was long before the era of “surgical strikes” we have now, right? You shoulda seen the airborne operation that night. All over the place, nowhere where they were supposed to be.
Jose Pablo
Jun 13 2024 at 11:59am
Do you mean like the “surgical strikes” in Gaza, Iraq, or Afghanistan?
we know that between 280,771 and 315,190 have died from direct war related violence caused by the U.S., its allies, the Iraqi military and police, and opposition forces from the time of the invasion through March 2023.
From the last year of the Obama administration to the last full year of recorded data during the Trump administration, the number of civilians killed by U.S.-led airstrikes in Afghanistan increased by 330 percent.
[Queoted from the Watson Institute International and Public Affairs at Brown University]
And the 50 thousand French killed was not the worst episode. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians were killed in a “nuclear surgical strike” in 1945.
And the extreme cruelty of the Red Army at the doors of Warsaw, sitting there for days just to allow the “almost defeated” Germans to exterminate the Jews rebelling in the Warsaw ghetto.
And all these were the “good guys”. The bad ones were fighting on the other side!
And yet we, somehow, manage to stick to the unfounded belief that there is something epic or even glorious about wars and armies, that they can be, somehow, related to human dignity or freedom or justice.
No, they can not. They are just about the biggest abomination the human mind is capable of. Even when the “good guys” are involved in it.
Pierre Lemieux
Jun 13 2024 at 4:20pm
Jose: I am sympathetic to most of what you say. But this does not abolish the right of self-defense.
Jose Pablo
Jun 14 2024 at 11:42am
I have the feeling (but not the ability to verbalize it properly) that every army is built with the right to self-defense in mind and yet, used in practice to attack and invade other countries. So, only the killing of innocent civilians by the thousands can be expected in reality, from this proclaimed right to self-defense. At this point in human evolution, it would be worth trying something new.
Hamas is self-defending against the aggression of settlers, Russia is self-defending against the aggression of having NATO forces deployed in its frontier with Ukraine, Japan was self-defending against the oil blockade that was chocking the country, the Chinese are self-defending their capacity to manage internal affairs in their own way by building military capabilities on the South China Sea, was the US “self-defending” when annexed by force the Mexican territories of Texas and California?
I think that the statements “I have built this army because I have a right to self-defense” and “I have built this army to attack other countries that I subjectively feel as a menace” are, in practice, indiscernible statements, and, following Leibniz, should be considered exactly the same.
Jose Pablo
Jun 14 2024 at 11:47am
Even for Hitler’s Germany, the Lebensraum was a non-renounceable requisite of German “self-defense” against disappearance.
Roger McKinney
Jun 15 2024 at 12:15pm
They didn’t need surgical strikes. MacArthur lost fewer men in dozens of amphibious landings than they lost at Anzio alone. MacArthur said he found where the enemy was and landed somewhere else. Eisenhower’s strategy was to attack where the enemy is strongest. Churchill wanted to invade southern France where there were fewer Germans. The allies landed some there and they found little resistance.
Warren Platts
Jun 17 2024 at 4:28pm
There used to be this old Avalon Hill game we used to play: “D-Day” The South of France tactic never seemed to work!
D-Day (game) – Wikipedia
Roger McKinney
Jun 15 2024 at 12:21pm
I just realized your comment was about the civilian deaths in the bombing. The Allies knew how inaccurate their bombing was. They estimated that about 2% hit their targets. So why keep it up? They simply didn’t care about civilian deaths. They targeted civilians in Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Dresden.
Warren Platts
Jun 17 2024 at 4:31pm
That’s a little unfair. The U.S., at least, was seriously trying to cripple the industrial capacity of both Germany & Japan. And the strategic bombing largely achieved it’s goals..
Jose Pablo
Jun 12 2024 at 8:08pm
The Germans were hiding the French railway junctions behind civilian towns
Jose Pablo
Jun 12 2024 at 8:11pm
a system where the voter is in power
which one of them?
There are 161.42 million people registered to vote in the US. Which one of those is “in power”?
Certainly not me. This I know for sure.
Jose Pablo
Jun 12 2024 at 8:19pm
American democracy asks the hardest of things: to believe that we’re a part of something bigger than ourselves. So democracy begins with each of us … when one person decides there’s something more important than themselves … when they decide that their country matters more than they do.
I do believe there are things bigger than myself. And I decide a lot of things. But none of them are the things Biden is talking about.
I strongly suspect that Biden refers to things I am “forced” to do when he refers to the “decisions” one person (I think I qualify for that category most days … but not all days) makes. That’s not the definition of “decision” in any English dictionary (AFAIK).
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