I like democracy. Churchill famously noted that it’s the worst form of government other than all the other forms that have been tried. Yet there’s no better way to decide who should be in charge, since people are constantly trying to undertake that responsibility all on their own. Everywhere you look, there’s some new effort by individuals and their affiliates to impose their ideas and prescriptions for behavior on everyone else.
Plato, who admittedly had some pretty interesting concepts, thought philosophers were the ideal rulers, since they knew a lot, which he believed meant they possessed greater honor and virtue. Okay Plato, you might be right about the first part, but not so fast on the second. While I had some excellent philosophy professors, nothing distinguished them as particularly virtuous. I mostly recall bad haircuts and idiosyncratic choices in clothing. Moreover, they hardly ever agreed on anything, and could easily come to blows over the relative merits of Apollonian vs. Dionysian principles. Partisan battles pale in comparison.
Some
believe fervently that the government should stay out of the bedroom, which I
think is a fine idea since it’s hard enough to get a good night's sleep without
sharing the space with a bicameral legislature.
But there are lots of conflicting opinions about who should be doing
what behind closed doors, and so far democracy has done a pretty good job
sorting that out.
Many, like Jefferson, believe the best government is one that governs the least. Except for those things they think should be governed. George W. Bush told us he was “The Decider”, a chilling thought. Much better to throw it open to everyone for a vote.
Since
this forum’s pre-occupation is writing and publishing, it’s important to note
that readers are the constituency. They
vote with their eyeballs and wallets. Naturally,
there are plenty of editors and publishing outfits who believe there are books
that people ought to be reading, and would love nothing more than to
enforce their preferences. Worse, there
are politicians and advocates who are heavily invested in what ought not be published. They believe they are
doing this to guard us from harmful subject matter or points of view. Well then, who is going to guard us from
them?
It's only relatively recently that the complicated, frustrating and messy democratic process has delivered us a reading culture that encompasses Mein Kampf, The Communist Manifesto and Tropic of Cancer. But it’s no time to be complacent, because that could all disappear if we let it.
If
you’ll permit me to paraphrase a line misattributed to Voltaire, I may think
your writing stinks, but no one should stop you from writing it. You might believe this a noble thought, but
it’s also the height of practicality.
Censorship, either political or commercial, is the slipperiest of all slippery
slopes. Freedom of expression protects
all of us from the biases and preconceptions of some theoretical decider. To me, this is such self-evident genius, it’s
breathtaking that anyone would argue to the contrary.
I
know for some it’s a professional responsibility, but I will never give a book
a bad review, at least not publicly. To
paraphrase another bit of wisdom, if you can’t say something nice, put a sock
in it. Mind you, I think the world would
be a better place if everyone loved my books.
It would certainly be a better place for me and my self-esteem. But aside from questioning a reviewer’s taste
and good sense, a one-star review is the price of doing business. I just don’t want to do such a thing myself.
As Churchill said, democracy isn’t perfect. Mistakes happen. Hitler, Hugo Chavez and Hamas were democratically elected. But I agree with William Buckley that “I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.” Or for that matter, The Christian Coalition of America. I also don’t want them to decide what we should write, read or publish. Same goes for The Association of Nobel Laureates in Literature (if it existed), or the head of the National Endowment for the Arts.
Libertas perfundet omnia luce.
