Liberties There's nothing Artificial about our Intelligence

Democratic theory, like democracy itself, comes in various shapes and sizes. There are today two leading theories of democratic legitimacy. Realist theorists such as Joseph Schumpeter and Robert Dahl focus on actual political institutions such as voting, competitive elections, and party elites. These are regarded as not only the necessary but also the sufficient conditions for democratic societies. Idealist theories of democracy typically draw inspiration from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who focused on ways of enhancing citizen participation in deliberation and decision-making. A fully engaged citizenry, Rousseau believed, was a requirement for any theory of democratic legitimacy.  Each of these theories captures only a part of the truth. Realist theories of democracy correctly draw on the actual practices of democratic societies, but they are often indifferent to the ways that these societies are maintained and preserved. Institutions are not self-sustaining. Democratic institutions require democratic citizens who are trained and educated in democratic practices if those practices are to be sustainable. Without the proper inculcation of democratic values — tolerance, fair-play, a willingness to compromise, open-mindedness, a concern for truth — democracies are prone to degeneration and decay over time. Moreover, we have seen in places such as Turkey and Hungary how the rise of “illiberal democracies” are able to maintain the progressive patina of embracing competitive elections and political parties but have in fact tilted the playing field in such a way that the outcomes are generally predetermined. Idealist theories are prone to the opposite deficiency. Drawing on experiments in preference aggregation, such theories display a naive faith in the “wisdom of the crowd” as a means of arriving at the common good. They treat politics as if it were a debate society or a college seminar in which the “force of the unforced argument” — in Jurgen Habermas’ phrase — is supposed to win the day, but they fail to recognize that what is deemed the better argument by some may be a cause of further contestation and debate by others. Deliberative democrats also ignore the darker and irrational passions such as envy, resentment, and hatred, and the other negative dispositions that motivate human behavior. Such theories are often indifferent to the need for leadership and authority.  To be sure, democracy is about deliberation and debate, but it is also about decisiveness, authority, and command. Neither of these views pays sufficient attention to the actual founding of democratic societies. How regimes are founded will determine at least in part whether they will survive. There have been many foundings in history, but relatively few have stood the test of time. This is because successful foundings require far-seeing statesmen possessed of the qualities of vision, strength, wisdom, courage, and magnanimity. These qualities define the greatest statesmen — the fathers of the Constitution, as it were — that help to establish the permanent framework within which the right handling of changing situations can take place.  Just as important as institution building, the statesman’s art consists in the creation of the language by which a people understands itself. If Shelley was right when he said that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of mankind, statesmen are the acknowledged legislators of particular peoples. This requires the gift of rhetoric, an art that is largely neglected by modern political science and remains a singular cause for the debasement of contemporary political discourse. The statesman must be above all a “great communicator” capable of educating the public mind through the selective use of images and stories. In his book Leadership, Henry Kissinger commented on the importance of “deep literacy” as a background condition for successful statecraft. This only comes with the experience of careful reading. (Statesmen as readers – is this already asking too much?)  Nowhere was this example of deep reading given more profound expression than in Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Here Lincoln made the Declaration of Independence, and in particular its principle of equality, the centerpiece of his speech, proving himself to be a master reader of the hallowed text. At a time when appeal to the Declaration and its principle of equality was being dismissed as a “glittering generality” by one Senator and a “self-evident lie” by another, Lincoln restored the idea of equality to its