We have a problem. It seems our politicians, from both sides of the isle, have an odd view of us. Nancy Pelosi seems to think of protesters on her lawn, and presumably web authors and those who call or write their Representatives to praise or lambaste them for whatever reason, as merely activists to be negotiated, whereas they (the representatives) are the leaders who try to do what can be done. The front page has recently informed us that the chief of staff of Congressman Joe Knollenburg thinks we're not "real" American citizens. Apparently, besides being born in this country, paying taxes and voting, a further requirement for citizenship is unquestioning loyalty to the Republican agenda.
Of course, neither is correct, but while we might think that these misconceptions are their problem, and not ours (after all, if they keep it up, we'll make sure they find themselves out of a job, until they land the cushy lobbying position) the truth is that we are largely responsible for this mistake, and only we can correct it.
In the course of the several millennia of recorded history, our conceptions of government, and thus of the people subject to that government, has changed pretty radically. In order to understand this change, we need to make three pretty simple distinctions between citizens, subjects and advocates. Citizens are those who control, govern or otherwise direct their government. Their power can be direct or indirect, and their number can be large or small. Subjects are those who are subject to the power and authority of a government. They may or may not be citizens. Advocates, as a class, are not independent of citizens or subjects. They are, as the name suggests, advocates for some sort of change in the policy of the government. They are not necessarily or even essentially citizens, though they work to persuade and otherwise influence them, and they usually are subjects of that government, for otherwise they would have no reason to advocate for change. Advocates, as they seek change, are rebels to the status quo, and rebellion is a constant threat to the stability and sanity of a society, stability which government is supposed to protect. This makes advocates natural enemies of the government, and even if the citizenry can keep their government from wiping out all the advocates, they will have a hard time preventing a natural animosity and distrust between the keepers and officers of government and advocates.
So we can see that all the historical forms of government can be classed in terms of the relations between citizens, subjects, and advocates. Monarchies are governments with a citizenship of one, the king, and all the other people in the kingdom are mere subjects. The King's (or Queen's) court comprises the set of advocates, and nearly all of these are wealthy subjects or those subjects who have struck the King's fancy, as well as (usually) a few foreign dignitaries. But the King, while he is the only citizen of his kingdom, is not typically a subject. No government constrains him (just ask Henry VIII) and no legal authority can stop him.
Oligarchies are governments that are one step beyond the monarchy, the King's court, comprised of advocates (who, we have noted above, are natural enemies of their government, and thus their king) deposes their king and makes the court the set of citizens. Once again all others are mere subjects to this court, but the court itself rules fairly democratically. This is not to say that they listen to their subjects, but that they listen to, and negotiate with, their fellow oligarchs in order to set policy. But since they have appropriated citizenship for themselves, they can no longer keep their role as advocates, at least, not for very long. Instead, groups of subjects, especially wealthy subjects, become advocates, and the most effective form of advocacy employed becomes bribery and corruption. The largest change from monarchy is not that subjects become advocates, for this is what happens in a monarchy as well, but that the citizens become at least partial subjects of the government. The king is not the subject of his government, but the oligarchs are, at least somewhat. If they violate the law or subvert the government through too strong advocacy, they can be held to account by their oligarchic peers.
Democracies are the step beyond oligarchies, and as the courtiers of the King deposed him and adopted the mantel of citizenship for themselves, the advocates and subjects in an oligarchy depose them and take on the role of citizenship for themselves. Ideally, in a democracy, the citizen is identical with the subject. Of course, in the real world it is impossible for every subject of a government to participate directly in controlling and shaping that government. Most democracies are representative democracies where the control of the citizen is indirect and exercised through a proxy who also represents several other citizens. This representative is accountable to the citizens through elections and recalls, and while they may enjoy some limited immunity, they are typically subject to the same laws and restrictions as the rest of the citizenry.
But a problem exists for democracy. We see through the evolution of government that citizenship and advocacy are very nearly antithetical. Under both monarchies and oligarchies, only subjects can sustain their role as advocates. Subjects are not responsible for government, and in a real sense, the order and stability of a society is imposed upon them; they have no innate loyalty to it. Successful and sustained advocacy requires these qualities. Advocates advocate something, and whatever it is they advocate, it is something which does not currently exist in society. Advocates require change and change is, by definition, inimical to the status quo and to the stability of society as it currently exists. This poses no real problem for the subject-advocate, for the subject has no loyalty to the status quo and is not responsible for whatever stability a government may provide. But the citizen is responsible for the government, and thus has a loyalty to the stability it creates and to the status quo. Citizens cannot sustain their role as advocates, even if they side with advocates in policy disputes or even adopt the role of an advocate to press for policy change, because doing so requires that they deny their role as citizens. They must eschew loyalty to the status quo and stability of society as it exists and implicitly affirm that they do not control their government. If they did, they wouldn't need to advocate. Whatever sort of advocacy is open to citizens, it is limited and transitory.
But advocacy is a necessary part of government. It is virtually a truism that the policies of government must change over time to reflect the changes in the environment and in the beliefs and attitudes of the people it rules. But in a democracy, it seems that no one can be an advocate. The greatest advances in government in the last century have been a result of advocacy: the women's suffrage movement early on and the civil rights legislation towards the middle. Both sets of these advocates have come from those who were not, in practical effect, full citizens, and they leveraged the fact that they were not full citizens to effect the changes they sought. In effect, prior to these movements our government was not a full democracy: there were subjects who were not also citizens. But in the 21st century, the vast majority of these exclusions have been overcome, and this creates the problem for democracy in the 21st century.
As we move into the new millennium, we are approaching the democratic ideal of the identity between subjects and citizens. But as subjects become citizens, they must give up the role of advocates. What can this mean? As we have already noted, citizens are those who are responsible for their government, they control and direct it, and as such they are responsible for and loyal to the social character and stability it creates. The monarch rules his government according to his whims, his personal beliefs and desires. It is a wise and selfless king who institutes a policy that does not materially benefit himself. His laws and orders will reflect his prejudices and weaknesses. The power of citizenship is undiluted and unchecked in a monarch. Whatever the king thinks is the best thing to do is what is done. The oligarchs must share the power of citizenship amongst a group. As such, the idiosyncrasies of their prejudices and personal beliefs are tempered by the different prejudices and beliefs of their citizen-peers. The policies will be less oriented around their personal beliefs and convictions, and no one person gets to decide what the government should do based on what he, and he alone, thinks it should do. The power of citizenship is diluted, but still powerful. The policy opinions of the individual citizens still holds a great deal of sway.
But in a democracy, the power of citizenship is diluted to the greatest possible extent. The opinion on policy by an individual citizen has almost no sway on the outcome of policy-making. Advocacy becomes the practice of grouping citizens according to their opinions on policy and whipping citizens into joining a group. Democracy itself becomes a mere popularity contest where the largest group of citizen-advocates (always a contingent feature of the body of citizens) makes the policy, rather than a rational decision making process that unites citizens through what they all have in common. Representatives are chosen based upon their advocacy for or opposition to these contingent groups of citizen-advocates. Their political power, which is always derived from the power of the citizens they represent, is based on this division, and the continuation and consolidation of their power depends upon the continuation and deepening of the division between the groups of citizen-advocates. Always fearful of the true power of the whole citizenry, they gerrymander districts and legislate perks which give incumbents enormous advantages, advantages which are gained by manipulating the divisions between groups of citizens, making sure their group always has the majority in their district, and by giving themselves unique tools to whip the citizenry into taking sides. It is no coincidence that both Republican and Democratic partisans, as well as the so-called independents and moderates, all hate gerrymandering, unless, of course, if it's their own. Citizens object to being forced into artificial political camps, and they recognize the inherent unfairness of a substantial portion of the citizenry always being unrepresented in a district.
And this forcing of the citizenry into artificial political camps has further deleterious effects. The politicians, having successfully forced the citizenry into competing and mutually exclusive advocacy groups, cease viewing their citizens as citizens at all, and begin seeing them as mere advocates. As the citizen becomes the advocate, he also loses his citizenship and becomes once again a mere subject. The true citizens become the leaders of the advocacy groups, those who select the nominees that will run in an election whose outcome is all but predetermined anyway. In effect, we are left once again with an oligarchy, with the danger that what mechanisms for democracy remain can be co-opted by a popular and forceful individual who can use them to take government all the way back to monarchy. Thus a democracy which views its citizens as advocates, as individuals with policy preferences, and that it is those preferences which must be represented, cannot survive as a democracy. It builds a house on a divided foundation, and collapses in on itself to a more primitive form.
This is the problem of citizenship in the 21st century. Our traditional views of what a citizen is and how a citizen should be represented and thus have an impact and control over their government must be re-evaluated. We are not Republicans, Democrats and Independents. We are not pro-choice and pro-life. We are not for single payer health care and a multi-payer and free-market system. We are not pro-war and anti-war. We are citizens, and as citizens, we cannot be divided. But the need for a unifying conception of citizenship is not enough, we must also take practical matters in our consideration.
Kid oakland had a recent diary on the Recommended List that talks about how Bush managed to increase the proportion of urban voters and families with children who supported him from the 2000 election to the 2004 election. Many people discussed possible reasons for why the Democrats didn't manage to connect as well with these voters, everything from the single college-student liberal elitism phenomena, to the fact that families with children are more likely to be church-goers, and thus more likely to vote for those bastions of family values, the Republican party. But almost no one mentioned what I believe to be the single biggest factor for why these voters leaned toward the incumbent: time. When you have kids, not only does your social life go out the window, but also your ability to keep up with the news and follow important political stories in detail. College students and single and childless people can relatively easily accommodate some minimum level of political involvement and awareness, but once you've got kids, other things (quite rightly) override. When you don't even have a spare half-hour to watch a Presidential debate, when and if you make it to a voting booth, your vote will more likely be an unsophisticated one and will be more likely for the incumbent, especially in a time of vague and general uncertainty. Only a downward change in your standard of living will tend to make you hostile to the powers that be, and by 2004, such a change was yet on the horizon, not looming over us as it is now.
While families are probably that class of citizens most pressed for time, such limitations are being felt by all classes of citizens. Many have little interest in politics as they are currently practiced (and who can blame them) so what free time they have is spent in other pursuits. Whatever expectations and requirements we have for a new conception of citizenship, it must take these pressures into account. Being a citizen must be as natural and easy as breathing. It must be something we are capable of living in every moment of our lives so that we are not required to take time out and educate ourselves on the issue of the day in order to make an informed decision, because too many of us simply do not have that time.
Moreover, there are an abundance of issues out there to make decisions about. Everything from health care to military organization to tax structures, spending and research appropriations, the list goes on and on. Our politician oligarchs try to make it easy on us by grouping positions on these issues into two camps, Democratic and Republican, but how many of us express dissatisfaction with some aspect or other our our party's platform? On top of this, such easy grouping reduces the power of the individual citizen even more. In order to make a reasonable decision about which party to support, one needs to either pick an issue or small class of issues on which to decide or become an expert in nearly every issue out there. How can one decide which issues are most important to them? One would practically need a PhD in economics in order to be able to understand the complexities of the tax system, and to understand where and how it needs to be fixed, and yet, the structure of our tax system profoundly affects us all. If it takes too much time for these independents to pick between Democratic and Republican platforms, how much more time would it take for them to make their decisions based on the individual issues?
This is the challenge of the 21st century, and it is a challenge I leave to you, my patient reader, to meet. Our conception of citizens as advocates and activists is bankrupt, and we need a new idea of what it means to be a citizen. I have my own thoughts on that subject, but I'd rather hear what you have to say.