The paradox of small-scale democracy: Intellectual conformity in the self-governing community

“ Fellow citizens, this first recorded political act of our fathers, this tax assessed on its inhabitants by a town, is the most important event in their civil history, implying, as it does, the exercise of a sovereign power, and connected with all the immunities and powers of a corporate town in Massachusetts. The greater speed and success that distinguish the planting of the human race in this country, over all other plantations in history, owe themselves mainly to the new subdivisions of the State into small corporations of land and power. ”

“ The democracy of human misery and neglect is quite different from the democracy of affluence. Equal access to work, education, health care, and art, and equal access to drugs, murder, joblessness, ignorance, and disease are far from being similar. A small town-meeting in Vermont or one in a Swiss canton, effectively governing life in town, is quite different from the forms of political self-governance in countries where the central power effectively overrides any self-governance. The same can be said of the overriding power of other factors-the economy, for instance. ”

“ The problem, then as now, was not only to make "the world safe for democracy," but to make democracy, for which there is no alternative, safe for the world. The thirteen colonies in 1787, while small and relatively unimportant, were, however, a little world in themselves, and, relatively to their numbers and resources, this problem, which they confronted and solved, differed in degree but not in kind from that which now confronts civilization. ”

“ It is from within, among yourselves—from cupidity, from corruption, from disappointed ambition and inordinate thirst for power—that factions will be formed and liberty endangered. It is against such designs, whatever disguise the actors may assume, that you have especially to guard yourselves. You have the highest of human trusts committed to your care. Providence has showered on this favored land blessings without number, and has chosen you as the guardians of freedom, to preserve it for the benefit of the human race. ”

“ It is impatient of the utter confusion that results from local legislatures attempting to treat national issues as local issues. It is still more impatient of the impotence which springs from overdivision of governmental powers, the impotence which makes it possible for local selfishness or for legal cunning, hired by wealthy special interests, to bring national activities to a deadlock. ”

“ It has been assumed that where political rights were possessed by all, the liberty of all would be secure; but, far from this being the case, we can not fail to observe that, "where so-called political rights are possessed by all, rights properly so called are often unscrupulously trampled upon." For example, "universal suffrage does not prevent the corruptions of municipal governments, which impose heavy local taxes and do very inefficient work, . . . does not prevent citizens from being coerced in their private lives by dictating what they shall not drink ”

“ Intellectual provincialism of any kind is fatal to large and fertile thought, alike by limiting the range of our knowledge and sympathies and by inducing mental habits and implanting prejudices which prevent us from seeing things in wide relations and under a clear light. ”

“ Moreover, to imprison the city in the strait-jacket of uniform legislation checks its inventiveness, for it deprives it of the opportunity of wholesome experiment with municipal methods. It impairs its individuality, for it takes from it the chance to shape its own life and development. It lessens its sense of responsibility, for it relieves it of the responsibility of working out its own civic salvation. Common sense joins with the principle of local self-government in the demand that local institutions be permitted to conform to local conditions. ”

“ The author arrives at the conclusion that local self-government, pure and simple, has been proved inefficient, and that it is possible to establish a system of central administrative control which does not destroy local autonomy, but which secures efficient administration while not encroaching upon those ideas and principles for which Anglican institutions have so long been prized. ”

“ An examination of fact shows that where groups of the patriarchal type fall into regions permitting considerable growths of population, but having physical structures which impede the centralisation of power, compound political heads will arise and for a time sustain themselves through co-operation of the two factors, independence of local groups, and need for union in war. Thus, as Mommsen says, primitive Rome was rather an aggregate of urban settlements than a single city. ”

“ It does not promise well for the pacific character of unity, that we have a great civil war; but wherefore? An antiquated and misplaced institution—a relic of a more primitive and barbarous form of society—has led to the development of antagonism between two local divisions of our country. The war grew out of this antagonism: destroy the cause of sectional misunderstanding, and this cause of war will never more give us trouble.
But a difficulty is suggested: Our people will never become alike, never a homogeneous people; the differences of country and climate will forever prevent this. ”

“ In a rural community, however, absolutely without amusements, where personal liberty resembles, as somebody has well said, "the desolate freedom of the wild ass," and so becomes absolutely irksome—where a man with a theory or a crank with a hobby is welcome as a diversion—it is necessary to burrow in unusual paths for a relaxation. ”

“ Spencer has well expressed it when he entitles his introductory essay From Freedom to Bondage. There is an undoubted danger lest, as he says, those structures in the body politic which make for regulation should gain such a development and such a preponderance as to leave but an insignificant measure of freedom to the social units, and thus, by cramping their activities, fatally impair their energies. We know what a torpor has crept over the Eastern nations through the stereotyping of customs and institutions multiplied beyond all reason. ”

“ As to the universality of its beneficent service, he was equally convinced, declaring not only that “free libraries are engines for creating the habit and power of enjoying high-class literature, and thus carrying forward the work of civilization which is commenced in the primary school,” but also that they are “classed with town halls, police courts, prisons, and poor-houses, as necessary adjuncts of our stage of civilization.” The experience of one community or one nation is repeatedly serviceable to another ”

“ Let us at the very center of the town’s mental and moral life erect an institution, which, having as its basal object the collection, preservation and popularization of the records of what has been worth while in the past, may serve also as a support to what is good in the present, and a ladder on which the community may mount to still better things in the future. Is this too large, too serious a view to take of the importance of the public library? ”

“ Added to this is a profound conviction that the common stock of intellectual enjoyment should not be difficult of access because of the economic position of him who would approach it, that those "best results of civilization" upon which depend the finer and freer aspects of living must be incorporated into our common life and have free mobility through all elements of society if we would have our democracy endure. ”

“ It is the inestimable privilege of the librarian of a small library in a small community to know her public, its wants, its needs, its abilities and its limitations in a way that is denied to custodians of huge collections.{150}
In closing, let me suggest the following “Don’ts” for selectors of library books:
(1) Don’t buy books that are intellectually far above your readers, in the hope of improving their minds; a man may walk up stairs, but he can’t jump from the sidewalk to the roof. ”

“ For instance, if the library is located in a rural section, there will be a big demand for publications relating to agriculture, and a larger proportion of such documents will be secured than for other subjects. If the students of the high school are interested in debating present day questions, the publications of the government relating to the existing political and economic conditions will be in demand. ”

“ Some librarians appear to object to works that are less than one century old; others are on record as discouraging the purchase of fiction less than one year of age. Some librarians have a prejudice against certain classes of books and an inordinate love for others.
The only things that should be considered by the librarian in buying books for his library are the needs of the community that he serves, the capability of the various books under consideration to satisfy those needs, and the financial ability of the library to secure what is needed. ”

“ No librarian thinks of circulating illegal literature; his only care is to exclude such of the allowable books as he believes should not, for any reason, be placed on his shelves. Here, sometimes, popularity and usefulness part company. The librarian may yield entirely too much to the wants—the demands—of the community and neglect its needs. His aim should be to bring the wants and the needs into harmony so far as possible, to make his people want what will do them good. ”

“ These might always coincide in an ideal community, but in practice no librarian thinks of paying attention to the one to the exclusion of the other. At the same time the demands of the readers should always be known and always considered even if they want what is unnecessary; and we must likewise try to ascertain what they need, even if they have no desire for it. The extremes in a community without library taste would be a library of trashy fiction and one of serious standard works at which no one ever looked. ”

“ First, the needs of the community. These are not necessarily to be measured by its demands, otherwise the librarian’s labor would be considerably lightened. Unfortunately, when a community needs a given class of books very desperately it is often serenely uncon{18}scious of the fact. To the librarian falls the task not only of determining what the need is and of filling it, but also of arousing a wholesome consciousness of it. In this educational work he may be, and often is, aided by the teacher, the clergyman, or even by the users of the library themselves. ”

“ Could anything be more un-American, to use the current word, or hostile to the spirit of a free democracy?
In the intellectual domain politics works a greater havoc than in the social. Politicians can no more tolerate independence in thought and action than Charles V or Louis XIV or Napoleon I. "I have never had confidence in political movements which pretend to be free from politics," said the Governor of New York at the close of the campaign that restored Tammany Hall to power in the metropolis, showing that the intolerance of this form of warfare does not differ from that of any other. ”

“ In many of our universities to-day the doubts of the weak are crushed out of existence, while the resistance of the strong to a system of passive intellectual oppression breeds a spirit of rebellion. High ideals can not be maintained in an atmosphere where the value of intellectual honesty is not appreciated, or where the advice is not infrequently given, "Do not express your doubts in public." ”

“ Unfortunately in faculties where complete harmony exists the dangers of the growth of the spirit of mutual admiration becomes a menace to healthy mental activity. The objectionable spirit of partisanship is frequently more marked in the professional schools (theology, medicine, law) than it is in the academic departments of the universities. Eternal vigilance is the price to be paid for intellectual as well as political liberty. ”

“ But now, knowledge at the source is restricted, classified, forbidden, secret—to protect the damned atom bomb. My government, as a security measure, has cut off my inquiry into God, my power to extend my own religion, my equivalent of your faith, my access to truth. Perhaps I'd never even manage to persuade anybody that the time has come to connect instinct and energy by theory. But the right that I hold most valuable has been taken from me. And from you. And from everybody—if they stopped to think. Freedom—that precious necessity—is actually freedom for the mind. ”

“ The unfriendliness of the ecclesiastics and other intellectual authorities to investigation, and the dire consequences to the individual of a movement towards intellectual freedom, served to repress the natural desire of the human intellect for a knowledge of itself and the universe. ”

“ Howls of derision and certain defeat await the suitor for popular favor that neglects to burn the incense so pleasing to the many, and dares to say that they not only do wrong but often do most grievous wrong; that universal suffrage, however lauded as a cure for political and social ills, never insures the choice of the most fit to rule; [28] that there is a deal of ignorance and crime that masquerades under the name of democracy. ”

“ Under the very laudable endeavor to transform our people into a democratic community, quite a long stretch of the road is being traversed that leads to plebeian conditions. The intellectual aristocracy seems to be on the decline at home.... ”

“ It is not difficult to see why the timid temperament—which is very far from involving lack of courage [5] —should be especially associated with intellectual aptitudes. It causes a distaste for social contact and so favors those forms of activity which may be exerted in solitude, these latter, again, reacting to produce increased awkwardness in social relations. ”

“ These cases seem to be fairly typical of a certain group of the celibates in our list; a passionate devotion to intellectual pursuits seems often to be associated with a lack of passion in the ordinary relationships of life, while excessive shyness really betrays also a feebleness of the emotional impulse. Even in many cases in which marriage occurs, it is often easy to see that the relationship was rooted in the man's intellectual passion. ”

“ Intellectual culture not being transferable must become parasitic and a cause of mental disorganization when it fails of application and usefulness in the life of the individual. Illustrations are to be found in the over-refinements of culture in academic communities, in the nervous instability frequently met with among educated men and women, and in the religious and social vagaries and perversions that crop out in the older and more highly cultivated centers of population. ”

“ But it must not be forgotten that the antithesis of freedom is compulsion, that hateful thing that does violence to our nature and crushes with iron hand these same activities. The freedom which poets have sung, and for which men have died, has no more to do with indeterminism than has the Dog, a celestial constellation, with the terrestrial animal that barks. ”

“ What's more, to the extent that copying becomes cheaper and easier, it is necessary for us to strengthen intellectual property rights. We must meet the greater danger of copying with more expansive rights, harsher penalties, and expanded protections, some of which may indeed have the practical effect of reducing rights that citizens thought they had, such as fair use, low-level noncommercial sharing among personal friends, resale, and so on. Without an increase in private property rights, in other words, cheaper copying will eat the heart out of our creative and cultural industries. ”

“ In fact, in many cases, the reality is even worse: there appears to be a complete ignorance about the value of the public domain. Property's opposite, its outside, is getting short shrift. 47
To paraphrase a song from my youth, "how did we get here?" Where should we turn to understand the role of intellectual property in the era of the Internet and the decoding of the human genome? We could turn to the cutting edge of technology or to economics or information theory. ”

“ LEARNING FROM ENVIRONMENTALISM 23
I have argued that our policies are distorted not merely by industry capture or the power of incumbent firms, but by a series of cultural and economic biases or presuppositions: the equation of intellectual property to physical property; the assumption that whenever value is created, an intellectual property right should follow; the romantic idea of creativity that needs no raw material from which to build; the habit of considering the threats, but not the benefits, of new technologies; the notion that more rights will automatically bring more innovation ”

“ It has preached this doctrine in its schools, it has propagated it in its writings, it has moulded its art and science to the same purpose, it has thrust its beliefs into every hole and corner—like a pious Englishwoman, who slips tracts under the door,—and it has done all this so successfully, that to-day we behold the issue in the detestable fact, that, at the very moment when the spirit of turbulent criticism is re-awakening, men who long for freedom begin the attempt to obtain it by entreating their masters to be kind enough to protect them by modifying the laws which these masters themselves have created!
But times and tempers are changed since a hundred years ago. ”

“ Freedom, equality, and fraternity are no longer the same things they were in the days of the guillotine of blessed memory. This is what the politicians will not understand, and therefore it is I hate them. These people demand only special revolutions, revolutions in the outside world, in the sphere of politics. But all this is sheer nonsense. What is really needed is a revolting of the human spirit...."
No one can fail to discern in this letter the historic optimism I have indicated in Ibsen. ”

“ The incapacity for freedom can only arise from a want of moral and intellectual power; to elevate this power is the only way to counteract this want; but to do this presupposes the exercise of that power, and this exercise presupposes the freedom which awakens spontaneous activity. Only it is clear we cannot call it giving freedom, when fetters are unloosed which are not felt as such by him who wears them. But of no man on earth — however neglected by nature, and however degraded by circumstances—is this true of all the bonds which oppress and enthral him. ”

“ You are enlarged by sympathy with your work, your country, and the universe, until you are no longer conscious of the least distinction between the Creator, the state, and yourself. Your compulsory service then becomes perfect freedom.
For liberal freedom, for individualism, these philosophers have a great contempt. They say a man is nothing but the sum of his relations to other things, and if he should throw off one after another these constitutive bonds, he would find his private residuum of a self to be a mathematical point and a naked cipher, incapable of willing or of choosing anything. ”

“ As nature has uncovered from under this hard shell the seed for which she most tenderly cares - the propensity and vocation to free thinking - this gradually works back upon the character of the people, who thereby gradually become capable of managing freedom; finally, it affects the principles of government, which finds it to its advantage to treat men, who are now more than machines, in accordance with their dignity. ”

“ Let their faculties have room to unfold, and their virtues to gain strength, and then determine where the whole sex must stand in the intellectual scale. ”

“ Our voice may be as that of one crying in the wilderness, but we cry with conviction when we call for more individual liberty, with its correlative individual responsibility. There is something wrong, something vicious, in the application of compulsion where freedom of choice is indicated by all the natural conditions of the case. Force should be reserved for cases in which force is required, where nothing else will serve the purpose, and where the purpose is vital to the life of the society. ”

“ During this course of administration, and in order to disturb it, the artillery of the press has been leveled against us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare. These abuses of an institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to be regretted, inasmuch as they tend to lessen its usefulness and to sap its safety. ”