At Defining Ideas, our colleague Mark Blitz poses an important question about deliberation and citizenship:
How, then, can we advance self-government beyond episodic, although welcome, citizen action? The central requirement is to reduce government’s scope and size, the number of issues with which it deals, and the technical complexity of these issues. There is no good reason for government to be as involved as it is with the details of health, housing, and finance. This reduction in scope would diminish the everyday economic stakes of politics—both nationally and in states so large that they often are more remote from citizens than the federal government is—and would reorient government to broader issues of security and regulation.
But how can we obtain this reduction, given the remoteness of government from so many? How, especially, can we obtain it given the prevalence and dominance of experts, bureaucrats, and judges?
There are two phenomena worth noting. The first is that however much specialized knowledge expands, we can still control government’s general direction because we can assess whether it conforms to reasonable ends and principles. Experts know these ends no better than ordinary citizens do.
There are two phenomena worth noting. The first is that however much specialized knowledge expands, we can still control government’s general direction because we can assess whether it conforms to reasonable ends and principles. Experts know these ends no better than ordinary citizens do.
Understanding our ends requires correctly grasping our broad aims of freedom, virtue, and excellence, and our more concrete or immediate goals such as security and health. Much vigorous public debate is about the meaning, rank, and relationship of these ends to each other. How much security of what sort should be risked by how much freedom of speech, care in trials, privacy in activity, and so on. How much health is worth how much funding? How much equality is worth how much excellence? How much safety is worth how much local control? How much military might is worth how much money? How much short-term economic difficulty is worth how much long-term fiscal stability?
These are questions that both technical experts and lay citizens can answer. These are not mere matters of arbitrary speculation; they can be discussed reasonably by all people. Yet, for such discussion we need a thoughtful public characterized by intelligent opinion and virtuous practices. We need a public that seeks to conserve our founding liberties.
The second point is that practical reason and common sense can place expert advice into a sensible context, and can evaluate it. The key is to comprehend how equal rights and limited government are connected. The major difficulty in controlling bureaucrats is not that the principles of liberty are abstruse, but that expertise becomes so powerful in its claims and, especially, in its legalistic and scientific discussions, that common sense and evaluation become very difficult. The counter to this is education about, and government directed to, equal liberty and the character that advances it. Voters and their representatives are equipped to grasp not just what the proper goals of government should be, but also the effects these goals have on actions and policies.
Representatives need to clarify more aggressively the concrete effects of economic, budget, health, education, and military policy. Two useful questions that they should ask to help control experts, and that citizens should ask to help control representatives, are these: does a proposed policy use and promote in its practices the virtues and freedoms it is meant to enhance and secure? Is the issue being addressed truly technical and/or legalistic, or is it a matter of common sense?
We will enhance self government and encourage the resurgence of civic activism that promotes individual liberty and limited government if, among other measures, we ask these questions, educate the public intelligently, welcome responsible partisan battles, and do not stifle the social and economic energy that government should be advancing.
