The Politics of Peace
Because American society is pluralistic, what I have called in these pages the "politics of unitary vision" is deeply problematic: It tends to violate the freedom and political equality of citizens who do not support whatever vision is being pursued. To avoid this very problem, the American founders designed a constitutional structure that limited government's ends to a handful of enumerated powers conducive to the common good. At the heart of their design was a method of pitting interest groups (factions) against each other to prevent them from exercising power except in cases where their aims were widely supported. For the founders, rule by faction was tantamount to tyranny — a violation of the ideals of liberty, equality, and the pursuit of happiness for which the American Revolution was fought.
But today we see that the founders' "faction theory" was not entirely sound. In practice, it succeeded in ensuring that no faction or party would stay in power permanently. But it failed in preventing factions from rising to power and using public resources for partisan ends, often beyond the original scope of government. The history of American politics is thus, frustratingly, not one of factionless government but one of shifting and ever-evolving factions in government.
THE PROBLEM OF FACTION REVISITED
Some readers may be disinclined, at least initially, to see this as a problem. Haven't we had a relatively stable political history? Don't we enjoy as much (or more) freedom as any country in the world? Aren't we wealthy and comfortable, relatively speaking? Actually, the problem of faction bears negatively on all these questions. Our political history has not been so stable. We have endured massive upheavals, from the Civil War to the protests surrounding the Vietnam War, from the civil-rights movement to the social revolutions of the 1960s, and on up to the political turmoil of our own day.
Nor has American freedom been faction free. Instead, proponents of rival visions of freedom have fought fiercely for, and often secured, the prize of political power, and used it to "lord it over" their rivals nationwide. The recent history of the Democratic and Republican parties is a case in point. Moreover, while America is indeed remarkably wealthy in the aggregate, vast inequalities of wealth yield significant disparities of power. Nonstop factional clamoring for federal funds has resulted in a debilitating national debt. We are not as stable, free, or wealthy as we may seem.
Beyond this, the presence of ever-changing factions in American government means that we all must suffer, at some time or another, the indignity of seeing our nation move in directions we find wrong, inimical to our own purposes, perhaps even morally abhorrent. To watch a clique of political zealots take over the collective resources of our nation and use them to pursue ends we detest is to experience a special kind of injustice. It is not simply to suffer a wrong, it is to be forced into collaboration with it: Our wealth, our government used for disagreeable purposes, with our national reputation on the line. Factional politics does not, therefore, strike me as unproblematic. On the contrary, it strikes me as a flagrant violation of our moral freedom and political equality.
Here then is the question we must take up: Is there a way of practicing politics that might decrease rule by faction while still allowing government to pursue public purposes tenaciously, when necessary? The best hope for such a politics is to be found in a concept we might call the "Politics of Peace." This is, at root, a way of understanding what politics is. Here, politics is understood by political actors and citizens more broadly not as a form of war, or a zero-sum game, or a competition between friends and enemies. Instead, it is understood as a form of cooperation in the pursuit of desirable ends, when and where cooperation is possible.
The politics of peace, while admittedly challenging, is a better way than the alternatives (the politics of unitary vision and the politics of war) of safeguarding American freedom and political equality from the coercive encroachments of faction. So, what does it mean? And how can it work?
DEFINING THE POLITICS OF PEACE
The politics of peace has several defining features. First, politics is understood as a form of cooperation, not a form of war or even fierce competition. The goal is to think and act together as a people, to the extent this is desirable and possible. Second, this approach to politics is minimalist in the ends it pursues, not because the pursuit of public ends is wrong per se, but because it so often conflicts with our political pluralism. This can be stated as a law: For a people committed to freedom and political equality, the more politically pluralistic society becomes — discordant in the ends people want government to pursue — the less the government can (and should) do.
Besides being cooperative and minimalist with respect to ends, the politics of peace is characterized by two essential practices. First, persuasion is the only legitimate means of converting disagreement into agreement. Coercion is reserved only for existential emergency. Second, a high degree of political self-restraint must be exercised at the national level when cooperation turns out to be impossible. I call this the practice of "standing down" or not insisting upon victory, since politics on this conception is not competitive but cooperative.
Finally, though not a definitional trait, one more aspect of the politics of peace worth stressing is that it will inevitably be frustrating. Persuasion is difficult, exhausting, and often fruitless; and standing down feels like failure — especially when one believes passionately in one's cause. The temptation to use force or deception to get one's way will thus often seem irresistible. But resorting to such measures when emergency does not demand it is, on this conception of politics, a grave injustice: It is to grant oneself and one's friends a degree of license one denies to others. It is therefore a violation of our commitment to political equality.
To help readers imagine what the politics of peace might look like in practice, we can consider an analogy. Imagine three neighbors who have lived alongside each other for a long time. Conversing one afternoon, they decide to celebrate their success in navigating the challenges of being neighbors. Neighborliness is, after all, a unique kind of relationship (neither family nor friendship) with its own challenges and rewards.
Suppose our three neighbors decide to take a celebratory road trip together to some exciting location. The idea is appealing to all three, at least in principle. They begin to discuss possible destinations. But after a healthy vetting of ideas, they reach an impasse. All three like the idea of the road trip in general, but each favors a different destination. One wants to go to Las Vegas, where he can gamble, catch a musical, and admire the Bellagio Fountains. Another wants to go to the Grand Tetons to hike some trails and brush up on his fly-fishing, while the third wants to visit the Gulf of America for scuba diving and seafood. What can they do? Obviously, they cannot drive to all three places or even to two, since their preferred destinations are so far apart. They must choose one destination. But how?
As we ponder the question — "but how?" — the power of the neighbor analogy comes to light. Though the relationship of neighbors is not identical to that of citizens, neighbors are like citizens in two crucial respects: They are related to one another by proximity, and they recognize each other as free and equal. That is to say, no neighbor can force another to take a road trip. Because of these similarities, the neighbor analogy helps us think through the problem of rights and obligations in societies where all citizens are regarded (like our neighbors) as free and politically equal.
The first thing to say about how the neighbors might resolve their disagreement is that they should try persuasion. And to be successful, their practice of persuasion must exhibit certain qualities while avoiding others. If they are too aggressive or disrespectful toward the others, then the road trip will never happen. Rather, the neighbors should be solicitous of each other's desires and interests. They must determine whether a compromise can be struck.
But what if persuasion fails to yield results? What should the neighbors do then? The answer seems obvious: They should simply drop the idea of a road trip and talk about something else. Certainly, they cannot use fraud (much less, force) to reach agreement — not only because it violates the tacit terms of their relationship (freedom and equality), but also because they must live with each other going forward: It is difficult to live with people who have deceived you. Perhaps the neighbors' failure to reach an agreement will result in frustration. That is easily imaginable. But frustration is still no ground for violating each person's freedom and equality. Perhaps the neighbors will consider other ways of celebrating their many years together, or perhaps they'll simply retreat to their own houses for a while.
What I like about the neighbor analogy is that it prompts the question of why politics should be any different. If citizens are, like the neighbors, regarded as free and politically equal, why would there ever be a scenario in politics where some citizens force others to "take a trip" they do not want to take? Put differently, the neighbor analogy suggests that if we take freedom and political equality seriously, then all cooperative endeavors ought to be voluntary or, in other words, agreed to by consent; for if they are not voluntary then the agents are not free and equal. Again, why should political deliberation and collective action look different from neighborly deliberation and action?
WHY POLITICS IS DIFFERENT
The question is not rhetorical, and there are answers to it. Politics is in fact different for several reasons. For one, it is saddled with tasks that neighbors can't achieve by themselves: the establishment of a uniform code of law and customs, law enforcement, judicial decision-making, military defense, consumer protection, and the like. Moreover, at least two of these tasks (the police and the military) are basically coercive by nature. We should not expect to see them performed in the manner of friendly neighbors discussing a hypothetical road trip.
The neighbor analogy simply breaks down when it comes to such fundamental political tasks. Why is this? One reason is that these tasks have a "necessary" quality that a road trip lacks: The neighbors do not have to take a road trip, but citizens must secure themselves from harm. Put differently, fundamental political tasks are more like conditions than ends: They establish the framework of security and order that makes the pursuit of ends possible, whether by individuals, groups, or by the nation as a whole. Thus, while the neighbor analogy may tell us how free and equal individuals might pursue collective ends, it says nothing about how to establish the conditions that make the free pursuit of ends possible in the first place.
Politics also diverges from neighborly cooperation because of the problem of securing universal consent. Practically speaking, no nation can function if every political decision requires universal consent or even, for that matter, the consent of a majority. In the United States, we strive instead for the consent of a majority of elected representatives and trust that periodic elections will keep government officials broadly in line with popular sentiments. This is to say, universal consent ought to be the basis of legitimate public policy, but because it is impossible, we agree instead to an expedient, a fair procedure. We agree to abide by the decisions of the "democratic process."
Of course, a troubling question arises here. Have American citizens ever in fact consented to the various processes that produce our nation's laws, policies, directives, and other compulsory rules? A large body of scholarly literature reminds us that our constitutional system was originally approved by the states (not all of which initially voted in its favor) rather than by the consent of individual citizens. And even if our system were popularly approved, we would still face the question of why the consent of one generation should be binding on the next. Apparently, what we would need (to bring everyday politics in line with the neighbor analogy) is an ongoing popular consent for the procedures by which all collective decisions are made. But this, of course, cannot happen.
To make matters worse, political decision-making today has largely migrated from Congress, where the Constitution placed it, to a vast network of executive agencies whose officials are unelected and more or less unaccountable. This has produced what can only be described as a crisis of political legitimacy in America. As citizens, we understand and accept that universal consent is impossible to achieve in politics. But the next best "expedient" of a representative system of government has been quietly abandoned for a system that seems relatively unconcerned with consent. Today, most Americans have almost no knowledge of where or how the rules that govern us are made. Government looks much like some citizens compelling others to a take road trip they do not wish to take.
These problems of "necessity" and "consent," then, supply good reasons why politics often diverges from the neighbor analogy. In addition, we might add the problem of existential emergency, as when a swift military action is demanded or when a natural disaster requires an immediate coordinated response.
But however telling these exceptions may be, they are far from negating the basic power of the neighbor analogy. On the contrary, they are the exceptions that prove the rule. What the neighbor analogy does is help rekindle our collective imagination about how free and politically equal citizens ought to treat each other as a matter of course. If Americans are to take freedom and political equality seriously, we must find ways to minimize the practice of rule without consent. It is not only morally imperative to do so in order to avoid hypocrisy and grave injustice toward fellow citizens; it is practically imperative to begin addressing the crisis of legitimacy that threatens to undermine our constitutional order.
FEDERALISM AND VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATION
"But how?" — I return to this question now in the context of politics, keeping the neighbor analogy well in mind. The problem might be described as follows. Various citizens and groups of citizens have political visions they want to pursue. Their visions clash. In some instances, compromises can be struck; but often the visions are so fundamentally at odds that they cannot be reconciled at all. The achievement of one entails the negation of another. Efforts at persuasion only deepen awareness of the differences. Frustration sets in. Thoughts turn to non-democratic means of achieving what cannot be secured by consent. But non-democratic solutions invariably violate the conditions of freedom and political equality that legitimate our constitutional order. What to do?
Citizens who face this problem have options that are too infrequently explored. If we understand politics as a form of cooperation, which is definitional for the "politics of peace," we should not be surprised by the impossibility of reaching agreement on some political visions. "Cooperation where it is possible" is the slogan of the politics of peace; sometimes it's not possible. Yet failure to secure national support for a political vision leaves open the possibility of garnering more local forms of support. Federalism and voluntary association remain open.
Federalism refers, of course, to the division of power among national, state, and local governments. It was a vital part of our original constitutional design, though the balance has shifted dramatically over time toward national centralization. One could recount the history of this change. But here I simply want to argue that a revitalized practice of federalism would help facilitate the politics of peace.
One advantage of federalism — that is, pursuing in the states what cannot be achieved nationwide — is that many states are less politically pluralistic than the nation as a whole. This is not universally true; but where it is, the challenge of securing consent may prove easier. In other words, political visions might be pursued at the state level without violating (as egregiously) the freedom and political equality of fellow citizens. Of course, without universal consent, citizens might still suffer the indignity of being forced on a "trip" they do not want to take. In politics, this problem can never be completely eliminated. It can only be minimized. But federalism is one way of minimizing it. As scholar Michael McConnell puts it, "local laws can be adapted to local conditions and local tastes, while a national government must take a uniform...approach."
A second advantage of federalism for the politics of peace — besides the fact that pluralism will likely be less severe in the states — is that "exit" is significantly easier. Exit refers to the ability of citizens to move away from places where undesirable political decisions are being enforced. It is like when a neighbor (in the neighbor analogy) simply walks away from the discussion: The others can do as they please, but not with me! In politics, such "walking away" is complicated by the fact that state borders, not private-property lines, must be crossed for escape. Often, economic and sentimental barriers exist as well. Exit is thus much harder in politics than in neighbor relations, a kind of last resort. Nevertheless, exit is typically easier from a state (or from a district within a state) than from the nation as a whole; and this has the effect of lessening, to just that extent, the moral offensiveness of factional rule.
When citizens at the national level suffer the injustice of being "lorded over," they are basically trapped. They might of course emigrate. But changing citizenship is no easy task, and for the least advantaged it is often impossible. For this reason, too, federalism (as opposed to uniform policies at the national level) is institutionally conducive to the politics of peace.
Readers will naturally wonder at this point which areas of public policy are most amenable to diverse federalist solutions and which should remain national. Surely, there are some decisions that demand uniformity if we are to function coherently as a nation. Much good work has been done on this question in recent years as American politics at the national level has become more antagonistic. The volume American Federalism Today, edited by Michael Boskin, and Yuval Levin's American Covenant are helpful here. But it is not my task to recommend a precise division of labor. My point is much more fundamental: The more pluralistic American society becomes, the less will citizens be able to pursue unitary political visions without violating freedom and equality.
The more our freedom and equality are sacrificed, the more politics will approach a "politics of war." The alternative that I am proposing is to rethink the very meaning of "politics" for a people like us — to think of it in cooperative rather than competitive or warlike terms. This will require techniques for mitigating political "frustration." Increased efforts at federalism (whatever the precise balance between national and subnational units may be) is one powerful technique.
Another approach is to rejuvenate our practice of voluntary association. Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America reminds us that in the 1830s, Americans took the "most advantage of association" and applied it "to a greater diversity of objects" than any people in the world. By "association," Tocqueville meant individuals who cooperate on a voluntary basis in the achievement of desired ends. The ends in question varied widely:
An obstacle comes up on the public highway, passage is interrupted, traffic stops; neighbors immediately establish themselves in a deliberating body; from this improvised assembly will issue an executive power that will remedy the ill — before the idea of an authority preexisting that of those interested has presented itself to anyone's imagination....[T]hey associat[e] for the goals of public security, of commerce and industry, of morality and religion. There is nothing the human will despairs of attaining by the free action of the collective power of individuals.
Tocqueville praised Americans for their habit of association because he found it so unusual. In much of the world at the time, voluntary associations were tightly regulated or forbidden; or citizens were simply in the habit of begging their governments for relief from hardship. Not so for Americans. The American citizen "learns from birth that he must rely on himself to struggle against the evils and obstacles of life; he has only a defiant and restive regard for social authority, and he appeals to its power only when he cannot do without it." Tocqueville described voluntary association as the "art of pursuing the object of...common desires in common...."
Tocqueville divided voluntary associations into two types — civil and political. Civil associations stressed independence from government. They were about self-reliance and cooperative problem-solving at the sub-political level. The advantage of civil associations was that they allowed groups of like-minded citizens to pursue causes that concerned them without asking an entire nation to share their concerns. The nation was left to pursue genuinely common problems.
Political associations were different. Though they were similarly voluntary, their goal was to influence and affect government itself. They had the purpose of "making a public opinion prevail, of elevating a statesman to the government, or of taking away power from someone...." Tocqueville admired political associations for three reasons. They served as a check on the tyranny of the majority in government; they had the power to shape public opinion on issues and to resist the hegemony of government propaganda; and they supplied a kind of school for citizenship. Their members had to "learn to submit their will to that of all the others and to subordinate their particular efforts to the common action...."
Though both types of voluntary association still exist today, they are badly atrophied compared to what Tocqueville saw. For this reason, they provide a largely untapped resource for the "politics of peace" if approached in a certain way. Take political associations: If a large faction today fails to garner majority support for a national policy, it might create a voluntary political association for the purpose of gradually and painstakingly swaying public opinion in its favor. The goal here would be persuasion. But, as with the neighbor analogy, persuasion must not be too aggressive lest it backfire. Opponents should be treated with respect as free and equal citizens entitled to their own preferences. There is a world of difference in this respect between genuine attempts at persuasion on the one hand and propaganda on the other, which uses falsehoods, half-truths, hyperbole, and fear. Propaganda belongs to the politics of war, not the politics of peace, and it tends to exacerbate political antagonisms instead of lessening them.
As for civil associations: On many political issues — not all, but many — citizens might consider doing for themselves what they cannot get government to do for them. Say one's concern is with poverty, unemployment, hunger, drug addiction, or the like. Nothing prevents citizens from forming voluntary associations to address these problems without the aid of government. Moreover, there are real advantages to addressing them this way. When citizens act in person to help the needy, they actualize personal virtues of compassion and respect and, by the same token, develop bonds of reciprocal gratitude and recognition from those they serve. This "actualization" of political virtue is vital for a well-functioning community and for personal happiness as well.
Too often we hear the old refrain that some things are "too important to be left to charity." Thus, we fight to expand government welfare, even though government programs are largely impersonal, often controversial, and frequently ineffective or marred by unintended consequences. The politics of peace asks us to think again — to reconsider the tremendous benefits of voluntary well-funded associations not only for solving problems in our social world but for doing so in a way that (because voluntary) respects our basic commitments to freedom and political equality.
SUBSIDIARITY
A renewed appreciation for federalism and voluntary association would facilitate the politics of peace. Not only do these practices offer ways of accomplishing things politically without depending on the federal government, they serve as a kind of pressure valve for the frustrations of democratic politics in a pluralist age. The possibility of federalism and voluntary association reminds us that all is not lost if a political movement fails at the national level. We have other options. Again, a major advantage of federalist and voluntary solutions is that they avoid (or at least lessen) the problem of "rule without consent." Just to the extent that we as citizens personally support the laws and policies under which we live, and to the extent that "exit" is a viable possibility (which is maximally the case with voluntary associations), we decrease the "crisis of legitimacy" described above.
The overarching argument of this essay is that the "politics of peace" is the most practicable way of approaching politics for a people committed to freedom and political equality — much more practicable than the alternatives. This is a pragmatic and consequentialist argument. But there are also solid moral grounds for arguing that the politics of peace is the best approach for us. This is due to its respect for persons. To bring this moral dimension to light, it helps to appreciate how the practices of federalism and voluntary association can be grounded in a notion of subsidiarity.
Subsidiarity is the principle that all social and political tasks ought to be handled by the smallest, least centralized, competent authority rather than by a larger, more remote one whenever possible. The term was first introduced in the papal encyclical Quadragesimo Anno in 1931 under Pope Pius XI. The context was the rapid rise of fascist and communist statism and the need to protect non-state associational freedoms, including those of the Catholic Church. To many, the advanced technological abilities of the 20th century offered a new argument for centralization in the name of efficiencies of scale. But against this Pius XI argued as follows:
Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them.
"Gravely wrong," an "injustice" — the moral language is not accidental. Though subsidiarity has been and will continue to be defended on pragmatic grounds, its deepest justifications are ethical, and they derive from a well-supported and widely accepted philosophical anthropology.
The moral argument from philosophical anthropology can be found clearly stated in the writings of the 19th century philosopher-theologian Luigi Taparelli. Though Taparelli did not use the term "subsidiarity," he more or less invented the concept long before Pius XI used it in Quadragesimo Anno. In Taparelli's treatise Saggio teoretico di diritto naturale appoggiato sul fatto (A Theoretical Essay on Natural Right from an Historical Standpoint), the argument runs like this: All human beings have a natural range of needs, but nature also limits our ability to satisfy those needs as individuals. We require the help of others. Humans are thus socially dependent, not only in terms of our needs but also in pursuing other goods — material, social, and intellectual — that contribute to our completion and flourishing. Humans have a natural duty to seek the help of others (the word subsidiarity relates closely to the Latin word for help, subsidium). But when we do so, we also recognize in others a kind of equality: Others too are humans with a duty to seek help for the satisfaction of their basic needs and wants. From this, a reciprocal duty to seek and to give help emerges in the rational consciousness.
Once we feel this duty to help others and recognize this same duty in others, a further obligation of institutional "non-interference" emerges. Help is so fundamental — self-help and helping others — to the moral fulfillment of human beings that we must avoid, whenever possible, depriving individuals and groups (associations) of the power to act voluntarily in this way. In Aristotelian terms we must leave space for voluntary virtuous action because such action just is what we mean by happiness, fulfillment, well-being. Let people fulfill their duty to help others, says the principle of subsidiarity; they have a right to help themselves and others. Any polity that negates or unnecessarily inhibits this right is acting against the good of its own citizens. Again, a right to "just autonomy" or to "self-regulation in pursuit of the good," as scholar Thomas Behr puts it, is a fundamental right of individuals and associations within the broader polity.
It is important to stress that subsidiarity is not reducible to a blanket libertarian preference for a minimal state along the lines of a mere "umpire" or "night watchman." Rather, subsidiarity requires that the state manage those tasks that stand in need of state-level action while prescinding from those that do not. As Russell Hittinger has put it: "The principle does not require [intervention at the] 'lowest possible level' but rather the 'proper level.'" And according to scholar David Golemboski: "Those who associate subsidiarity with univocal endorsement of small-government libertarianism misrepresent it. Rather, subsidiarity calls for the distribution of responsibility and authority to bodies at all levels of society, as is appropriate to the nature of those bodies."
As for the pragmatic or consequentialist arguments in favor of subsidiarity, they are numerous and weighty. Subsidiarity can lead to better policy outcomes because of the proximity of policymaking to those it affects. It increases social capital and a sense of belonging by encouraging and empowering local associations. It increases individuals' sense of political efficacy and helps bestow legitimacy on the laws and policies under which people live. It serves as a kind of "school" for citizenship by offering occasions for individuals to think and act within associations to solve complex problems. It supplies channels for citizens to actualize specific virtues (prudence, courage, generosity, and the like), which contributes to their overall sense of excellence and accomplishment. And it lessens feelings of political alienation and disaffection.
But for present purposes, the chief pragmatic benefit of subsidiarity is a political one at the aggregate level: Subsidiarity facilitates the "politics of peace" by teaching that it is not only tolerable but morally preferable, when a faction fails to garner support at the national level, to abstain (at least temporarily) from its national ambitions and aim instead at more local, voluntary levels of engagement. If the political vision is truly vital to the common good of the nation, it should grow associationally both in size and influence over time, perhaps even to the point of ascending to national policy after all. But if it is not what the nation needs — not something all or most citizens regard as vital — then it should settle at the exact associational level to which it belongs.
SUPPORTING VIRTUES
But institutional arrangements alone are not enough to maintain the politics of peace. Political leaders and citizens alike will need to work toward certain virtues. In thinking about virtues, a few basic distinctions are especially helpful. One is the ancient distinction between "competitive" and "cooperative" virtues. Competitive virtues such as the excellence of a boxer or the cleverness of a general appear only among the few. In politics, they are the virtues of political leaders and elites. "Cooperative" virtues are different. Though they are not easy to practice (no virtues are easy), they can in principle be practiced by most, if not all, the members of any group engaged in cooperation. Justice, respect for others, self-restraint, honesty, a willingness to compromise: These are among the virtues that make cooperation possible.
Another valuable distinction is that between "practical" and "intellectual" virtues. All practical virtues relate to human action — courage, generosity, temperance, obedience — while intellectual virtues relate to thought — wisdom, intuitiveness, prudence. These two classes of virtue interrelate in at least one crucial way: All "practical virtues" contain an element of thought, whether this involves real-time calculations about what one ought to do or latent calculations embedded in habits and customs. For this reason, it is often helpful when recommending specific political virtues, as I am about to do, to be cognizant of the element of thought, especially the demands on thought, that the practical virtues presuppose.
Finally, there is the distinction between virtues whose value is "intrinsic" and those whose value is extrinsic or "instrumental." An advantage of intrinsic virtues for those who pursue them — think of maturity, wisdom, holiness — is that they are enjoyed for their own sake and need no justification beyond themselves. Instrumental virtues differ in that they are not desirable in themselves but for the ends they bring about. For this reason, they sometimes seem like a chore, things to be suffered through rather than enjoyed.
The classic problem with instrumental virtues — a problem that permanently plagues politics — is the temptation to seek alternative ways of achieving the ends in question. If it were somehow possible to secure political victory without the toilsome work of persuasion and respect for the rights of others, why not take the easier route? In the following account of virtues conducive to the politics of peace, I will address this problem by suggesting that the virtues I highlight, while instrumental in nature, also have value in themselves and thus ought to be desired for their own sake as well as for their civic utility.
Let me turn now to some specific virtues, 11 in all. I have already mentioned the practices of standing down and patience in the face of frustrations that attend the politics of peace. These are clearly cooperative (not competitive) virtues, suggesting that the more widely they are recognized and practiced, the more successful the politics of peace will be. Indeed, if citizens in general do not recognize these virtues — if they rather oppose them, as is often the case today — then leaders will not have much incentive to recognize them either. In fact, leaders may have a particularly hard time standing down because leadership is so competitive by nature. Leaders will need the support and understanding of their constituents.
Though standing down and patience are "practical" virtues, they place demands on the intellect. There is an important role to be played here by our centers of moral formation (family, religious institutions, schools, and universities) in cultivating the relevant intellectual habits. Fundamental is the habit of perceiving and respecting the rights of others. In one sense, this is nothing new or terribly demanding: It is as old as civilization itself. But in our extremely pluralist age, this ability depends on (or at least benefits from) an intellectual achievement that is not so easily acquired: the ability to appreciate legitimate sources of intellectual diversity and disagreement stemming from human nature and culture. This is probably a college-level (and perhaps a lifelong) challenge, and it cannot be expected that an entire citizenry will possess it. But the more that these sources of disagreement can be understood and articulated by the elites of our age, the more might "standing down" and "patience" seem reasonable modes of practice.
Another virtue previously mentioned is skill at persuasion — essential for leaders who want to unify diverse citizens. Excellence at persuasion is, of course, a "competitive" virtue. Some individuals possess it more than others. But it is perhaps the most cooperative of the competitive virtues insofar as it requires a willingness to understand the world as others see it, to enter into their frame of mind. This is what the German sociologist Max Weber called verstehen (understanding) or what the early-modern Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico called entrare (to enter into). It is a skill not limited to political elites. In fact, the more it can be cultivated among citizens in general, the more will citizens feel sympathy toward each other and a willingness to accept the politics of peace.
Two other intellectual virtues that facilitate the politics of peace — especially in pluralist contexts — are intellectual humility and what we might call intellectual fastidiousness. Intellectual humility refers to the basic Socratic (and Millian) virtue of accepting that you might be wrong — that others may see something important that you have inadvertently missed. Error is especially common in politics because of the kinds of judgments involved. Often, choosing the right policy depends upon speculative assessments of the past and the future, weighing competing goods, and perhaps choosing the lesser of two evils. Most important, political judgment requires the ability to think not only about one's own situation, but also the situation of others about whom one may be insufficiently informed. A little bit of humility goes a long way.
Intellectual fastidiousness is slightly different. Where intellectual humility describes a blanket willingness to entertain the possibility of error, intellectual fastidiousness involves guarding oneself from the sources of sloppy thinking and bias. In our overly siloed, identity-based politics today, intellectual fastidiousness is vital for citizens who want to think and act responsibly and cooperatively. The mere fact that something has been reported on a favorite news source does not make it knowledge. Fierce resistance to dogma, propaganda, and ideological bias are essential for avoiding intellectual arrogance and the slippery slope that may lead to the politics of war.
Two other cooperative virtues — now in the neighborhood of moderation — are conducive to the politics of peace. One is basically "intellectual" and entails recognizing the difference between the proper tasks of politics and the tasks of those sub-political domains where citizens spend much of their time and find much of their meaning. This is the virtue that motivates the practice of subsidiarity. We might think of it as a kind of political abstemiousness: Resist the desire to demand of politics what we look for in a family, a church, or a business. To do otherwise is to ignore our pluralism and ride roughshod over the freedom and equality of others.
The other virtue related to moderation is self-discipline vis-à-vis public services. When politics is approached as war, this virtue does not have much to recommend it and may even count as a vice: With everyone clamoring to have their interests supported by government spending, moderation simply means defeat. In the politics of peace, however, where citizens seek to cooperate, public services are not mere benefits but also burdens to be jointly borne. William Galston is characteristically perceptive on this point:
The greatest vices of popular governments are the propensity to gratify short-term desires at the expense of long-term interests and the inability to act on unpleasant truths about what must be done. To check these vices...citizens must be moderate in their demands and self-disciplined enough to accept painful measures when they are necessary. From this standpoint, the willingness of...citizens to demand no more public services than their country can afford and to pay for all the benefits they demand is not just a technical economic issue but a moral issue as well.
Galston goes on to claim that "[c]onsistently unbalanced budgets — the systematic displacement of social costs to future generations — are signs of a citizenry unwilling to moderate its desires or to discharge its duties."
The final virtue I will stress is toleration, in many ways the sine qua non of the politics of peace. Profound diversity, or what I have been calling pluralism, is accommodated rather than warred against in this form of politics. And the way it is accommodated presents a challenge: The more that citizens are encouraged to seek legislation in the states to their liking, the more will states differ from each other in character and ways of life. And the more that citizens turn to voluntary associations to persuade and self-actualize, the more will diversity be manifest. Amid such rampant diversity, toleration is the virtue that enables us to "live and let live."
Toleration is not relativism or libertinism. Rather it presupposes a citizenry with deeply held moral beliefs and committed ways of life — otherwise toleration is no virtue at all. To "tolerate" refers to a willingness, in the name of peace, to live with people one would prefer never to see, people who seem gravely wrong and potentially dangerous. The practice of toleration may rest on pragmatic grounds such as war fatigue or an awareness of war's futility, or it may rest on moral or religious grounds, such as a belief in human rights or a desire to "love your neighbor as yourself." But whatever the grounds, the politics of peace is impossible without it. Happily, it is a liberal virtue that has been with us for some time; and there is no reason to believe it cannot be recovered and strengthened as we stop approaching politics as war.
I have now described 11 virtues that help sustain the politics of peace. Respect for the rights of others, a willingness to stand down when those rights are threatened, patience, recognition of the legitimate sources of intellectual diversity and disagreement, ability to "understand" the people we are trying to persuade, excellence in persuasion, intellectual humility and fastidiousness, political abstemiousness, self-restraint with respect to public services, and toleration. Are these virtues "intrinsic" or "instrumental"? It is an important question because if they are merely instrumental — hard sacrifices we must endure for peace — then they will likely lack all attractiveness for citizens who are vigorously clamoring for their favorite causes. But I do not believe they are merely instrumental. It is true that all or most of them are instrumental when considered in isolation, but when combined they make for a kind of hyper-virtue that I think is easily recognizable in the "good citizen." And I am confident (with Plato, Aristotle, and a host of other thinkers) that this virtue is, in fact, both intrinsic and instrumental at the same time.
The good citizen is of course instrumentally related to the flourishing regime. In this sense one must modulate one's passions in order to accommodate the desires and actions of others. But the good citizen is also a form of excellence in itself. We might say, "it is well to be a good citizen." This is because it is such a significant moral achievement and form of rational self-actualization. To be a good citizen is to have taken a broad view of oneself within the necessary social and political contexts for human flourishing. It is to have reasoned one's way to a kind of moderate balance between personal desires and duty toward others. And it is to have acted in ways that display one's understanding routinely and habitually.
For all these reasons it is no stretch to suppose that the efforts we make toward the politics of peace will not only be good for our regime, but also good for ourselves as individuals. They will contribute to our sense of personal fulfillment and happiness.
A PRACTICAL POLITICS OF PEACE
The politics of peace is of course no foolproof method of resisting factional rule. It is not a set of institutional mechanisms such as the checks and balances relied upon by the founders. Though it does involve institutional practices such as federalism and voluntary associations, it also relies on an inescapable human element — on citizens' desire for peace, on their willingness to make certain sacrifices in the name of political harmony, and on their attraction to the distinct form of excellence that good citizenship entails. Because of this human element, some readers will wonder whether the politics of peace is, at the end of the day, a utopian concept. I am sympathetic to that worry.
To take the question seriously requires another essay, one focused on practical matters of implementation and maintenance rather than on setting out a theoretical concept. The concept of a politics of peace needed to be delineated first. Whether it is utopian or not depends, I think, on one fundamental matter, the extent to which it is possible for American attitudes to shift on what is just and unjust to do to our fellow citizens in politics. Our longtime assumption emerging from our founding has been that politics is a kind of battleground where factions compete fiercely for the prize of political power and that the only way of stopping self-interested factions from attaining and abusing power is to encourage the rise of rival factions to oppose them. But I have argued that this assumption, this way of understanding what politics is and how to prevent it from dissolving into faction, has not worked as well as we imagine.
I believe that the way we understand what politics is affects the way we practice it. And thus, I have argued for a different fundamental understanding, not because I think there is an "essence" of politics for all times and places but because I think this understanding offers practical and moral advantages for a people committed to personal freedom and political equality. It encourages cooperation where cooperation is possible and desirable.
Can this way of understanding politics and the norms of just political conduct that follow from it catch on? I used to be skeptical. But something has given me hope. I teach a class from time to time called "Progressivism" that details the rise of that ideology in the 1890s, its many transformations over the years and, most importantly, its many successes. Particularly since the 1950s in America, the Progressive movement has succeeded in fundamentally altering American attitudes on a range of issues from race and welfare to sexuality and equality in the workplace. One need not be for or against the attitudinal changes in question to realize that attitudes have changed. And that is a telling realization. On all these issues, American views shifted precisely on questions of what is just and unjust with respect to how we treat our fellow citizens. And this is the very possibility on which depends the utopianism (or not) of the politics of peace. I have reason to believe it is possible.