The Principles of History & Other Writings in the Philosophy of History by R. G. Collingwood, ed. & intro. by W.H. Dray & W. J. van der Dussen

In 1939, R. G. Collingwood took passage on a freighter bound for the Dutch East Indies (now
Indonesia).  He undertook this voyage because--at least in part--he was attempting to deal with his chronically high blood pressure, which would eventually take his life in January 1943 after a series of strokes. Medical science had no effective treatment for high blood pressure other than to recommend the rest cure. Collingwood, an amateur sailor, undertook the journey. Did he rest? While we may assume that he undertook no strenuous activity, he did write two books, one of which is The Principles of History. But he gave attention to the other book he wrote on that trip (An Essay on Metaphysics) and then turned immediately to writing The New Leviathan, which became the last book he published in his lifetime. After his death, literary executor, T.M. Knox, brought together several of Collingwood’s writings on history, including lecture notes and three chapters from The Principles of History, and published them through Oxford University Press as The Idea of History. And as I mentioned, it proved quite a success (at least according to the standards of its peer group.) Knox left out some papers, but the source was considered exhausted. Except it wasn’t.

In 1995, archivists at Oxford University Press discovered the (uncompleted) manuscript of The Principles of History that Collingwood has written during his 1939 cruise to Indonesia. The new materials didn’t reveal any startling new positions or arguments made by Collingwood, but they helped to complete his positions and to reveal his overall plan. He'd intended to publish two volumes on the subject of history. The Idea of History covered much of this area, but not all of it, nor in the manner that Collingwood had intended. The Principles of History helps to fill the gaps. Given the depth and significance of Collingwood’s thought, this book provides us with even deeper insights into his unique and compelling ways of thinking about history. In addition, Collingwood's widow Kate, in 1978, deposited thousands of pages of Collingwood manuscripts with the Bodleian Library at Oxford, which proved to be another treasure trove of Collingwood's work. Selections from those manuscripts pertinent to the philosophy of history are included in this volume. Indeed, some of the most interesting and revelatory parts of the present book come from these manuscripts.

Knox included less than one-half of The Principles manuscript in the text of The Idea of History (1946) for reasons not entirely known, but the editors speculate that Knox thought this material either unimportant or of insufficient quality--a mistake from either perspective. A great deal of the material included in The Idea of History came from writing that Collingwood undertook for lectures around 1935-36, while The Principles of History was written entirely in 1939. And while certainly the two works and two sets of writing are largely congruent, they do differ or address different topics in ways that reveal new aspects of Collingwood's thinking (which seemed always in flux). The editors of this work, Dray and van der Dussen, identify several important topics that The Principles elucidate: 

There are no parallels in his other writings,for example, to his stress in this manuscript on the idea of evidence as language; on the alleged analogy between the historical and the aesthetic imagination; on the different relations to human action of essential and inessential emotions; or on the radical unlikeness of history and biography. . . . [T]he new manuscript also contains valuable clarifications and extensions of his case against historical naturalism; his conception tion of the autonomy of history; his view of the specifically historical past; his idea of rationality; and his understanding of the concept of probability in its application to history as well as to other fields. 

R. G. Collingwood. The Principles of History: And Other Writings in Philosophy of History (pp. liv-lv). Kindle Edition. 

But this quote neglects one of the most puzzling (or tantalizing) differences between the two texts: The Principles does not mention "re-enactment," a term and manner of conducting historical thought that is central to the argument in The Idea of History (and Collingwood's Autobiography), a term that distinguishes Collingwood and one that, for some commentators, provides grounds for derision of this thought. Instead, Collingwood at one point uses the term "reconstruct" rather than "re-enact," which, at least to my ear seems a more felicitous term, perhaps (quite arbitrarily and unfairly)  because "re-enactment" rings of American Civil War re-enactment hobbyists or Monty Python's "Townswomens' Guild of Sheffield Re-enactment of the Battle of Pearl Harbor." I'm confident that Collingwood had neither of these examples of "re-enactment" in mind when he settled on this phrase, but the term "reconstruct" seems not to lend itself to quite so literal an interpretation, and it would seem to fit better the overall description of his project, which is, as it were, to get inside the heads of actors in history, with events and actions the expression of thoughts (broadly understood).

However, there are basic concepts from which Collingwood doesn't vary in The Principles,  The Idea, or An Autobiography. For example, his contention that "all history is the history of thought," and his contention that res gestae--human actions or "deeds"--are the embodiment of thought and therefore the subject-matter of history, properly considered.  The variations between the newly discovered materials and the publications of his works up through 1946 (with The Idea of Nature) do not fundamentally alter our understanding of Collingwood's ideas about history, but they do provide more nuance and a just enough variety to suggest different paths of development that he might have traversed had his life not been cut off at the age of 53. 

This book also reinforces an important lesson: read the entire title of the work. In this book,  it's nothing quite so dramatic as a counter to the most widely discussed main themes of the book, but the details that are expanded upon that make the additional manuscripts quite important. As I alluded to above, these manuscripts reveal Collingwood's mind at work in ways that are quite suggestive and even provocative.

The most interesting of these pathways revealed are contained in the final section, "Conclusions to Lectures to Mind and Nature." These conclusions were discovered in 1995 along with The Principles of History manuscript. On their face, these writings belong more The Idea of Nature than the topic of history (although none of these made the cut by Knox for The Idea of Nature), but regardless, these "conclusions" show a train of thought that Collingwood touches upon in both The Idea of History and The Idea of Nature: that of process philosophy as exhibited in the work of fellow Brits Samuel Alexander (1859-1938) and Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947). These older contemporaries, along with Henri Bergson (1859-1941) brought time, events, and process into philosophy from the new physics of Einstein and the quantum thinkers. Although careful to maintain a line between nature and history (with history as the realm of human action), Collingwood very much admired and seems to adopt their line of thinking. Reading the last section, Collingwood reminded me of his younger American contemporary, Charles Hartshorne (1897-2000), who studied under Whitehead and who carried process philosophy into the post-World War II era. Had Collingwood lived long enough to have expanded upon his work, one avenue he might have pursued would have been to more explicitly blend his thinking about history with the process philosophy of nature put forth by Alexander, Whitehead, and (later) Hartshorne. (For another "what if" conjecture about Collingwood, I recommend Ray Monk's piece from 2019, "How the Untimely Death of R.G. Collingwood Changed the Course of Philosophy Forever.")

This is my second review of this book. My first review was written after my first reading of it in 2015, and I copy a bit of the introduction of this review from that one. But because of the depth and extent of this book, it has greatly rewarded my re-reading, and it certainly merits further consideration, which I hope to undertake with further study. But you may be sure that I could write a great deal more about this book and its implications than what I've merely touched upon here (and much more that I've not mentioned). 

Russia Supports Trump: The News That's Not New & Going Deeper

A wonderfully blunt news article from a mainstream media outlet (The Washington Post). Why does Putin favor Trump? The article provides some ready answers. If you want a deeper dive, read Timothy Snyder's The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America (2018) (my review: https://sngthoughts.blogspot.com/…/the-road-to-unfreedom-ru…) & Gary Lachman's Dark Star Rising: Magick & Power in the Age of Trump (2018) (my review: https://sngthoughts.blogspot.com/…/dark-star-rising-magick-…). Hold on a couple of months and you can dive even deeper into the enigma of Putin and Russian history and culture via Lachman's forthcoming The Return of Holy Russia: Apocalyptic History, Mystical Awakening, and the Struggle for the Soul of the World (release coming 5 May 2020). 

In short, there's a hell of a story here (the play on words intended). We can see the tip of the iceberg quite clearly, clearly enough to turn away, but will we? With deep background from the likes of Snyder & Lachman, and reporting like that of the article below, a true captain would turn away, but we have a crazed Ahab at the helm. Heaven help us.

To Trump's frustration.

WASHINGTONPOST.COM

Analysis | In one incident, a series of realities about Trump’s presidency seem to be confirmed

To Trump's frustration.

R.G. Collingwood: Bad Science & Bad Psychology Lead to Bad Ends--or Do They?

R. G. Collingwood, philosopher & prophet

A prescient thought from R. G. Collingwood, writing in 1935, ten years before nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima & Nagasaki to begin the nuclear age. As someone who grew up with the (very real) fear that we could all end-up being flash-fried in a nuclear holocaust and who can now add (alas, not replace) that fear with the thought of an Instant Pot slow-cook (global warming) to threaten our collective future, I take Collingwood's observation and (implicit) admonition very seriously. We'd damned-well better learn to act rationally ("our honour") and put our faith in that path ("our nerve") or we'll end up in the other place.

The situation is . . . that science has taught us how to manipulate nature; it has given us extraordinary technological powers and enabled us to make anything we please in any quantities we like; and at the same time it has not only failed to give us that instructed wisdom which might be based on a true self-knowledge, but it has taken away the unreflective virtue and simple faith in ourselves which we possessed before psychology dispelled our belief in our own rationality. We have therefore, directly through the work of science, lost at once our honour, or habit of acting rationally, and our nerve, or belief that we can so act. Every increase in the power which science gives us over Nature has been attended by a decrease in our ability to use that power wisely; and if the process could go on long enough it is hardly to be doubted that mankind would all but annihilate itself in a series of mutually destructive wars, while the scientists stood by lamenting over the folly of human beings. 

R. G. Collingwood. The Principles of History: And Other Writings in Philosophy of History (pp. 175-176). Kindle Edition.

Same song, second verse. Lyrics by R. G. Collingwood:

What the scientist fails to understand, when he finds himself an impotent spectator of movements he can neither control nor arrest, is that the folly and wickedness which he deplores, the Mephistopheles of this rake's progress, are of his own creating; it is he that raised the devil by inventing psychology and teaching man that he is neither virtuous nor rational but a mere bundle of instincts with nothing in himself either to respect or to obey. But this is understood strongly enough, though confusedly, among mankind at large; and that is why, among the various movements of the modern world, none is more widespread and more characteristic than a certain anti-intellectualism, irrationalism, hatred of thinking, which is simply the revolt of man against the modern scientific tradition. 

R. G. Collingwood. The Principles of History: And Other Writings in Philosophy of History (p. 176). Kindle Edition.

N.B. Collingwood is not in the least "anti-science." His understanding & appreciation of modern science is without question. But what this quote and others like it reveal, is that he wants to put modern science in its place, as it were. Science is different from history; they are complementary ways of knowing. One (science) studies patterns of behavior; the other, the particularities of human action. The criteria that govern the human mind are established by the fields of logic, ethics, and aesthetics. These are "criteriological" (normative) fields of thought established to guide the human actor. Most (lab & social) psychology seeks to study patterns of behavior in the field, as it were, which is, in Collingwood's view (and mine), a step down. Perhaps useful and insightful, but dangerous if taken as establishing norms.

Also, to what extent can ideas about modern science, and psychology, in particular, be shown to influence popular opinion. Collingwood was able to look about his world and see the rise of Hitler and the Nazis in Germany and Mussolini and the Fascists in Italy, but to what extent can we blame the irrationality and anger underlying these movements upon subjects of academic thought? Collingwood is far from alone in making this type of accusation; Pankaj Mishra, Brad Gregory, and Patrick Deneen pop to mind as others who've made similar sorts of allegations about social and political theories influencing popular behavior. Is there a way to demonstrate this? How do we discern any connections that can be accurately said to cause changes in attitudes and behaviors as opposed to mere accusations of such? Such accusations are popular with American conservatives and reactionaries, and they no doubt come from the left as well. How do we sort the gold from the dross in this field of cultural and intellectual history?

Douthat & Cassidy: Decadence and No-Growth--Preliminary thoughts

NYTIMES.COM

Opinion | The Age of Decadence

Cut the drama. The real story of the West in the 21st century is one of stalemate and stagnation.

For those wanting to take a deep dive. This longer article (essentially an excerpt from his forthcoming book), Ross Douthat wrestles with the protean concept of decadence. I used to think this term, decadence, the purview only of cranky conservative-types who thought contemporary America (and I'm thinking back to the 50s and 60s) was beginning to embody the decadence of Roman decline or fin-de-siecle France--languid debauchery. But Douthat, following the lead of Jacques Barzun, looks at decadence through a wider lens, political and economic as well as cultural. Perhaps, given my age, I've come under Saturnine influences, but I find that Douthat provides some compelling insights. Are we stuck in neither the best of times nor the worst of times? And if we don't like where we are as a nation, as a global civilization, how might we proceed? More to come! (See the following.)

I offer this article (a bit longer than the usual newspaper column) from John Cassidy of the New Yorker. I find that it compliments the Ross Douthat article that I posted immediately before this one. In this article, Cassidy asks what has seems to me (for a very long time running) the question of whether economic growth can continue indefinitely. My admittedly rudimentary sense of biology tells me that Nature doesn't allow unlimited growth to continue, that at some point, constraints will appear, either internal (structural ability to incorporate new growth) or external (inadequate resources to allow further growth). Indeed, the fall from growth, whether it's in a Petrie dish or an entire civilization, often occurs quite abruptly and--if humans are involved--catastrophically.

Does this mean that we're doomed? Does this mean that we'll inevitably suffer a decline in standards of living? No, to both questions. Of course, a level of material prosperity is necessary for a good life. Squalor and poverty don't make for a good life, But then after meeting the basics of material prosperity in Maslow's hierarchy, money, our measure--imprecise as it is--of economic well-being, doesn't matter all that much. (That some have a seemingly infinite lust for more money is a pathology, not a virtue, as our society often seems to believe it is.) In fact, the challenge is to have a comfortable, secure material life with the potential for intangible well-being that need not be constrained by material circumstances. Possible? Why not? Change--big change--is coming because of the imperatives of Mother Nature, but we can guide that change to our collective ill or our collective betterment. A great challenge by which we can escape our decadence (read the Douthat article).

The critique of economic growth, once a fringe position, is gaining widespread attention in the face of the climate crisis.

NEWYORKER.COM

Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

The critique of economic growth, once a fringe position, is gaining widespread attention in the face of the climate crisis.

Pete Buttigieg: First to the Post in Iowa & the BIG WINNER

Big winner

On one hand, a candidate and his (in this case) supporters declaring a victory in the Iowa caucus is like saying that your horse won a race by nosing-out the closest contender at the first pole. Nice, but the race has a long way to go, and the other horses are still running hard and expect to close the gap.

Bernie Sanders claims that he received the most votes (I've seen no press reports to confirm that), but this is the thinking that brought us President Al Gore and President Hillary Clinton--oh, wait, that's not how the system works (disliked it as one may). Neither does the Iowa caucus work as a candidate plebiscite (although that's the way its portrayed). Iowa Democrats and Republicans choose delegates to go on to county conventions and then to the state convention, which then selects delegates to the national convention. Indeed, the horse race isn't even over yet in Iowa! (But the media hates to have to deal with subtlety.)

The "winner" by the official count is Pete Buttigieg, by a whisker over Sanders. But in the larger sense, this outcome (for all the fuss about the speed of learning the results) proves a huge win for Buttigieg and a real political earthquake. He just beat (to the post, as I said) three sitting Senators and a former Vice-President. Sanders, his closest rival, has been in Congress since 1991 and campaigning for the nomination since 2015. Sanders has a lifetime--a long lifetime at 78 years of age--in politics and a committed core of supporters. Indeed, Sanders is more a prophet (of democratic socialism) than he is a politician. (On this distinction, see this post that channels Garry Wills on the topic.) One even discerns that Sanders has more faithful than he does supporters. And, of course, Biden, too, at 77 years of age and decades in the Senate (1977-2009) and eight years as vice-president, has the greatest name recognition, and he's still the leader in national polls (which count for nothing in this process except as another form of bragging rights). Yet, Biden finished a distant fourth. Senator Klobuchar from neighboring Minnesota finished a distant fifth. And Elizebeth Warren, from Massachusetts, which Dems seem to love (Kerry, Dukakis, and--a winner by a whisker--JFK (thank you, Mayor Daley)) finished about 8 percentage points (with less than half the delegates) behind the leaders Buttigieg and Sanders (who essentially tied in delegates).

And this is not to mention those who either didn't get out of the gate or who scratched from the race completely. How in the heck did Buttigieg, whom almost no Iowans had ever heard of before 2019 (or even 2020) get to the top over such well-known and well-funded rivals? Name recognition, piles of cash, and long-standing connections usually carry the day.

Let me quote from Storm Lake Times (Iowa) newspaper editor Art Cullen, who wrote in the Washington Post about Buttigieg's perhaps not-so-surprising success in Iowa:

Pete Buttigieg surged from nowhere to the top of Iowa’s caucus race, fair and square, by working places most candidates forgot or wrote off.
In late January, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., took his rural Rust Belt revival message to places like Orange City, Iowa, a place where books about homosexuality had been burned. He drew a crowd of more than 200 in that deep-red town of 6,000 in a county that voted 6 to 1 for Donald Trump. They had seldom so much as seen a Democrat before. 

Mayor Pete stumped Storm Lake, my town of about 10,500, four times. He twice called me for interviews, in which he candidly discussed his views on race and owned the actions of South Bend’s police department. He talked about how immigrants had revitalized both his Indiana town and Storm Lake. About how agriculture could lead the way out of our climate crisis by capturing carbon. About how we can treat each other with decency. 

That’s how you win Iowa. You show up. You understand the issues and you press the flesh in 99 counties. You meet real people and hear about real concerns (not that much about impeachment). And then you organize.

The horse race is far from over, but this 38-year-old from South Bend may yet pull off an upset over his more established rivals. The Iowa Democrat Caucus gave us the first woman to receive a major party nomination (and winner of the popular votes for president, the participant's trophy) and it gave us our first African-American nominee and president. It may prove to have been the first marker for our youngest president (among his many other potential firsts). Wow!

Why Students Dislike History: R.G. Collingwood Understands

R. G. Collingwood, philosopher & historian

As someone who became infatuated with "history" as a kid, I was often puzzled about why so many of my classmates found the subject--and history classes in particular--boring. The following quote, by one of the most profound persons to have ever written about history as a discipline and as a subject, provides a concise statement that I believe identifies the source of the problem. We (and often history teachers) don't know what history is "about" and what (rightly done) it attempts to accomplish. Professor Collingwood:

A man [sic] who was taught history badly when he was at school, and has never worked at it since, may think there is nothing in it except events and dates and places: so that wherever he can find events and dates and places, he will fancy himself in the presence of history. But anyone who has ever worked intelligently at history knows that it is never about mere events, but about actions that express the thoughts of their agents; and that the framework of dates and places is of value to the historian only because, helping to place each action in its context, it helps him to realize what the thoughts of an agent operating in that context must have been like. 

R. G. Collingwood. The Principles of History: And Other Writings in Philosophy of History (pp. 61-62). Kindle Edition.

N.B. Any lawyer who prepares a case for trial engages in a quest similar to that of the historian.

Two Modest Propositions About Caucuses & Elections (and Iowa)

Iowans participating directly in politics. Messy, but that's sometimes how democracy works

In light of the Iowa Democrat Caucus last night--the results of which we don’t know as I write this--let me make a couple of observations that should prove less radical than Jonathan Swift’s “modest proposal” but that may upset you. I only ask that you forebear judgment until I make my case. 

But first, the elephant in the room: the lack of a final result last night and into Tuesday as I write this in the early afternoon. To this situation, I must say, “So what?” I know, I know.  I, too watched last night in anticipation of results, but I went to bed without a result. I slept soundly. I learned in the first election that I recall, Nixon-Kennedy in 1960, that despite my parents sending me to bed with the result still in doubt, the result would come without me and I’d find out soon enough to go to school and carry on with life. So, now, too. The glitch or glitches are unfortunate, but not very important. Yes, I thought Wolff Blitzer was going to have a meltdown, he kept murmuring “in 2016 we had the results by now.” The reporters and politicos used the opportunity to bad-mouth the caucuses for various reasons (more on that below). All the candidates declared victory and moved on. Their supporters will get on with their campaigns and going about their lives. We have every reason to believe that life, the campaign, and the news cycle (“all hail the News Cycle!”) will go on. We’ll get the results and will have every reason to believe that (in part) because of the time and delay that the reported results are accurate. (If not, then a whole lot more than the Iowa Caucus has big problems.) The whole episode has been a reminder of the American infatuation with instant gratification and how the demands of news organizations have come increasingly to dictate the conduct of our electoral system. Now to my modest propositions. 

1. We should expand the caucus and delegate system of party candidate selection. 
2. Voting is the least important--albeit essential--element of a democratic system. 

Let me explain these heretical propositions before your hair catches on fire. 

 First, about voting. In a democratic system going back to the ancient Greeks, the essence of a democratic system is decision-making by means of speech in which all stakeholders have a right to express their opinions should they choose to do so. As problems arise in a polity, responses are considered by collections of individuals who express their knowledge of relevant facts and share their opinions based upon those facts. In a perfect environment, all of the relevant facts are available to the stakeholder-decisionmakers, and they can express their opinions freely and fully; i.e., subject to neither necessity or coercion. Persuasion is the order of the day. But persuasion isn’t a one-way street; the mode of persuasion occurs with the dialectic of dialogue--or perhaps more accurately, multi-logue. Only after all perspectives and options have received a fair hearing that will winnow-out undesirable options and merge related options, will the decision-makers reach a decision about any action to undertake. And, the best (rational and fair) way to reach a decision is via a vote. This serves to ratify a decision, to make it conclusive, rational (at least in some measure), and legitimate (all will accept it as based on the perception of fairness and rationality). 

Let me hasten to note that I realize that the description of the decision-making system that I set forth above is at once both eutopian and utopian--both good and yet ideal beyond the reach of mortal humans. But the goal should be to approach the ideal. In modern mass democracies, we tend to be satisfied by providing the mass of the decision-makers, the electorate of eligible voters, with candidates and decisions that have been framed by elites (normally working through established institutions). These decisions (in the U.S.) tend to present voters with a binary choice. The key ingredient of democracy is reduced to a simple mark on a ballot for Candidate A or Candidate B. Sometimes, as in a primary election, there may be more than two candidates (or only one), but the principle of minimizing the expression of a decision-making choice reduces speech to the simplest possible expression. All of this may be necessary at the national and state-wide level, but why do we always want to push the system to the lowest common denominator? Why do we keep pushing towards plebiscites? Also, as you consider this, you realize what hooey any talk of a “mandate” is in a presidential election, which is most often a simple binary choice with occasional noteworthy third-party distractions from time-to-time; e.g., Ralph Nader, Ross Perot, George Wallace.  

So what does any of this about the limited (but essential) role of voting have to do with keeping, let alone expanding, the caucus system? Here I must admit that I’m an NRI (non-resident Iowan), having spent about 55 of my 66 years growing up and then raising our family in Iowa. I’ve participated in both Republican and Democratic caucuses and conventions. (I’ll save my confession of a misspent youth for another time.) Not having resided in Iowa full-time since 2012 and now in Brooklyn, I also have some outsider perspective also. In my experience (reinforced by press reporting this year), Iowans take the caucus system and their place in the nominating system very seriously. It’s like voluntary jury duty--it’s a pain in the rear for most folks, but if you’re going to do your civic duty, you’re going to try to do it right. (My experience with about 30 jury trials over more than three decades has informed my respect for most jurors.) Especially this year, with the abdication by the (Republican) Senate of its role in defending the Constitutional order in the face of an autocratic president, Democrats in Iowa have been especially concerned to select a winning, qualified presidential nominee. We don’t know who will prove the most popular choice yet, and opinions varied greatly, but make no mistake that the responsibility was taken very seriously by Iowa Democrats. And make no mistake, while Iowa isn’t the closest match to the national demographic picture, its track record in selecting Democratic nominees is exceptional. In 2000, Iowans preferred Al Gore, winner of the popular vote in 2000. They preferred the first woman nominated for president by a major party and the winner of the popular vote in 2016, Hillary Clinton. (Yes, yes, we know that winning the popular vote isn’t worth a warm buck of spit, but for that’s not the fault of Iowa Democrats.) They preferred John Kerry, the eventual nominee in 2004, and they preferred (and provided lift-off horsepower) to the first African-American nominee and president, Barack Obama, in 2008 and 2012. So remind me again why you believe the Iowa Democrat caucus is so off-kilter? 

Ah, yes, the caucus is not an election, and so the participation rate is much lower than would expect if we asked Democrats to only fill out a ballot at some point in the nominating process. This assertion is undoubtedly accurate. This way, perhaps via a regional primary, we could by-pass all the neighborhood discussions and maximize TV advertising (such an effective medium of one-way communication) and rely on the totally reliable--but for Russian bots and doctored tapes and conspiracy theories--social media platforms. In other words, Iowa (along with New Hampshire) emphasizes retail politics. Think how much better democracy would be if we all candidates would hold only Trumpeque “rallies” consisting only of the faithful. No messy questions (and, yes, candidates receive some really whacky questions in the coffee and handshakes systems of Iowa and New Hampshire). An only primary election system would be so much easier and lucrative for campaign professionals and media consultants. People (let’s not call them citizens) wouldn’t have to waste their precious time talking directly to candidates and neighbors. They could simply sit at home and have only the most wholesome, honest, and accurate information fed to them by their televisions and computers. That many--perhaps most--people would prefer this does not negate my point. The encouragement of political laziness should not be the goal of a republican democracy.

And in selecting the nominees for office, why shouldn’t the faithful of the political parties have the greatest say? That interlopers, like Trump among the Republicans and Sanders among Democrats, have done quite well in party contests doesn’t negate this argument. (Trump most definitely; the Sanders effect yielded a mixed record in 2016 and remains an open question in the present election.) Some argue that the party faithful tend to be more extreme in their views, toward the left (Democrats) and the right (Republicans), but this largely because of the political polarization that we’re currently experiencing. And even in Iowa this year, the final results, as well as ancillary polling, will reveal that defeating Trump is more important than the candidacy of any particular individual. When newcomers or minorities gain control of presidential nominations, the results have proven disastrous: Goldwater (GOP 1964), McGovern (Dem 1972), and Trump (GOP 2016). (The admitted exception is Mondale (Dem 1984), who had the misfortune of encountering the popular Reagan with the economy in an upswing while Democrats were continuing to wander in the wilderness seeking their identity.) While I’m not advocating a return to the smoke-filled rooms, I am arguing that the initial decisions be left to those committed to the party and what it stands for. This is an ever-changing and relatively self-selecting elite that should be perfectly consistent with democratic equality. And, returning to my point about the relative unimportance of voting (necessary but not sufficient for a democratic system), the more self-selective caucus system promotes speech, the political conversations that are the taproot of a realized democracy. Any change we make in our electoral system should emphasize real political communication at the grassroots level. 

So two cheers for the Iowa caucus system! It’s far from perfect, but I don’t see a better alternative.