Aristocracy by Paul Elmer More

The demagogue paints himself. In a word you may know him by this single trait: he is one who, in the pursuit of the so-called rights of humanity, has a supreme contempt for those

Unconcerning things, matters of fact;

one who, by means of an hypnotic loquaciousness, is constantly persuading the people that they have only to follow their first impulsive emotions to be right and safe, and that as a consequence every institution should be swept away which in their wiser, calmer moments they have created as a bulwark against their own more variable nature.

Leaders there will be, as there always have been. Leaders there are now, of each class, and we know their names. We still call the baser sort a demagogue, and his definition is still what it was among those who invented the term: “a flatterer of the people.” Or, if that description seems too vague, you will recognize him as one who unites in himself enormous physical and mental activity, yet who employs these extraordinary talents in no serious way for the comfort and sustenance of the higher life of the imagination, but for running about restlessly and filling the public mind with stentorian alarms. He is one who proclaims ostentatiously that the first aim of government “must always be the possession by the average citizen of the right kind of character,” and then, in his own person, gives an example of identifying character with passion by betraying a friend and malignantly misinterpreting his words, as soon as that friend may be decried for balking the popular will–and balking the path of the decrier’s ambition. He is one who has been honoured as the leader of a great political party, and then, as soon as he is dethroned from its leadership, denounces that same party as the tool of privilege and the source of corruption. He is one who, in proclaiming the principles of this new party, has constantly on his lips the magical word “justice,” which he defines by the specious phrase “equality of opportunity,” yet in the end identifies justice with the removal of all checks from government, to the end that the desire of the majority may be immediately carried out, whether right or wrong. For “it is impossible to invent constitutional devices which will prevent the popular will from being effective for wrong without also preventing it from being effective for right. The only safe course to follow in this great American democracy is to provide for making the popular judgment really effective.”

To this end our exemplary demagogue would take away every obstacle between the opinion of the moment and the enactment of that opinion into law. Hence the initiative and referendum. Above the legislators is the Constitution, devised in order that legislation upon any particular question may be made to conform essentially with what has been laid down on deliberation as the wisest general course of government. It is a cheek upon hasty action, and implies a certain distrust of the popular judgment at any moment when passion or delusion may be at play. Therefore our demagogue will denounce reverence for the Constitution as a fetich. Blithely ignoring the fact that Constitution-making and remaking is one of the pastimes of some States, and that even the Federal Constitution can be amended with none too great difficulty when the opinion of the people is really formed (as in the recent ease of the election of senators), he will earnestly call upon the Constitutional Convention of Ohio “to provide in this Constitution means which will enable the people readily to amend it if at any point it works injustice”; and then, as if that provision were not sufficient to relax its mortmain, he will virtually abrogate its function of imposing any check whatsoever by adding “means which will permit the people themselves by popular vote, after due deliberation and discussion, but finally and without appeal, to settle what the proper construction of any constitutional point is”; and this construction is to be made, not legally, that is by an attempt to get at the actual meaning of the language used, but in accordance with the current notion of what is right.

But the full venom of his attack will be directed against the courts, because in them is impersonated the final sovereignty of unimpassioned judgment over the fluctuations of sentiment, and with it the last check upon the operations of the demagogue. The interpretation of the law in accordance with the conditions of life is to rest with the people. If necessary they are to have the power of recalling the judge who is recalcitrant to their views, and at the least they are to have opportunity to reverse any decision of the courts which seems to them wrong. In this way he thinks to ensure “an independent judiciary”! To enforce the need of the recall, he accuses the courts of “refusing to permit the people of the States to exercise their right as a free people.” Thereupon he cites what he calls a “typical” case in New York, in which the judges declared a workingmen’s compensation act unconstitutional.” In other words, they insisted that the Constitution had permanently cursed our people with impotence to right wrong and had perpetuated a cruel iniquity.” This tirade, followed by the most inflammatory appeals to the emotions, was uttered in 1912, at the very time when he was inveighing against the courts for perpetuating iniquity, the machinery was in train for amending the Constitution, and in less than two years that permanent curse was removed by the passage of a Constitutional law in full favor of the workingman. Such is the despotism of facts. And ever through these vituperative charges runs the high note of flattery: “If the American people are not fit for popular government, and if they should of right be the servants and not the masters of the men whom they themselves put in office.”

The demagogue paints himself. In a word you may know him by this single trait: he is one who, in the pursuit of the so-called rights of humanity, has a supreme contempt for those

Unconcerning things, matters of fact;

one who, by means of an hypnotic loquaciousness, is constantly persuading the people that they have only to follow their first impulsive emotions to be right and safe, and that as a consequence every institution should be swept away which in their wiser, calmer moments they have created as a bulwark against their own more variable nature. To complete the picture we need to contrast with it Burke’s portrait of the men of light and leading, with his sober statement of the law of liberty: “Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites; in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity; in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption; in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.” Or we may go further back and look upon Plato’s portrait of the guides who have earned the right to persuade others to temperance by the diligent exercise of that virtue in their own lives.

But the most notable example of demagoguery to-day, is not a man, though he be clothed with thunder, but an institution. There are newspapers and magazines, reaching millions of readers, which have reduced the art to a perfect system. Their method is as simple as it is effective: always appeal to the emotion of the hour, and present it in terms which will justify its excess. Thus, in times when there is no wave of international envy disturbing the popular mind, our journal will print edifying editorials on brotherly love and laud the people as the great source of peace among nations. But let some racial dispute arise, as in the months preceding our Spanish war or the Italian raid on Africa, and this same journal will day after day use its editorial columns to inflame national hatred–and increase its circulation. On days when no sensational event has occurred, it will indulge in the prettiest sentimental sermons on the home and on family felicities. Nothing so moral; it will even plead in lacrimose type against the evil of allowing babies to lie in perambulators with their eyes exposed to the sun. But let the popular mind be excited by some crime of lust, and the same journal will forget the sweet obligations of home and wife,–

That silly old morality,
That, as these links were knit, our love should be–

and will deck out the loathsome debauchery of a murderer and his trull as the spiritual history of two young souls finding themselves in the pure air of passion; or some sordid liaison will be virtually lifted above marriage by the terms “affinity” or “heart-wife.” And always, meanwhile, the people are to be soothed out of a sense of responsibility for errors and corruption by the skilfully maintained suggestion of a little group of men, entirely removed from the feelings and motives of ordinary humanity, sitting somewhere in secret conclave, plotting, plotting, to pervert the government. Our public crimes are never our own, but are the result of conspiracy.

___________________

Paul Elmer More (December 12, 1864 – March 9, 1937) was an American journalist, critic, essayist and Christian apologist.