Will Wilkinson: The Anti-Majoritarian Mistake
https://modelcitizen.substack.com/p/the-anti-majoritarian-mistake
This Dispatch piece by Jonah Goldberg is extremely useful in illustrating the centrality of anti-majoritarianism on the right. Jonah has been a consistent critic of Trump and the GOPs loony, violent, authoritarian turn. However, even the most reasonable, principled, philosophical conservatives tend to be wary of majoritarian democracy, as Jonah illustrates in his case against what he calls democratic supremacy. He doesnt exactly define it, but the idea comes across clearly enough: political legitimacy and liberal justice require that the preferences of the majority generally prevail. Jonah rejects this because hes of the opinion that a liberal society can be just with remarkably little democracy.
In my opinion, this claim is both false and dangerous. Moreover, I suspect that neither the Trump presidency nor the GOPs authoritarian, illiberal, anti-democratic turn would have come to pass if not for the fact that most conservatives were already convinced that democracy is at best an incidental, instrumental aspect of a free society. Jonahs articulation of the standard, traditional conservative view is worth digging into precisely because hes a normie, pre-Trump fusionist throwback.
Now, Jonahs plainly right that large swaths of the center-left these days are somewhere between mildly and extremely obsessed with what might be called democratic supremacy. And hes right to see this commitment to democratic supremacy behind left-leaning criticisms of the Electoral College, the small-state bias of the Senate, the filibuster, other procedural hurdles to decision-making through simple majority votes, and the partisan bias of the Supreme Court. However, his criticism of proposed reforms in each of these domains are weak and fail to engage standard liberal arguments for the role of democracy in securing freedom and authorizing power.
Jonah begins with a response to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezs argument that theres something wrong with a system that allows nine judges (five, really) to overturn popular legislation that managed to survive the demanding gauntlet of the American legislative process. He notes that the lefts most prized political baubles, such as Roe v. Wade, were imposed by Supreme Court majorities, suggesting that Democrats are fine with judges legislating from the bench except when Republicans do it.
*snip*