Conservatives believe they are the people’s servants; Dems claim to be their masters

America’s Founders, both at the federal and state levels, feared the mob element of direct democracy, so they created our nation as a series of republics. This means that citizens do not vote directly on laws. Instead, they vote for representatives who will bring their constituents’ values to reasoned legislative opinions. It is “government of the people, by the people, [and] for the people.” But in an epic showdown in South Carolina’s House of Representatives, a Democrat representative made clear that the people have no idea what’s good for them and must be discounted.

The representatives involved are Adam Morgan, a Republican, and Todd Rutherford, a Democrat. It’s not important to know what specific legislation they’re debating, although it obviously has to do with some proposal to grant financial benefits to a corporation to entice it to come to South Carolina. What’s important to know is the differing views, which is whether the government is to be the people’s servant or their master—or, one could say, should government represent the people or the lobbyists?

(I’ve included the transcript at the end of this post for those who cannot or do not want to listen to the video.)

There’s so much to unpack there. First, as I said, I don’t know what deal is being discussed. I do know that South Carolina has a thriving economy because the state welcomes businesses. However, it sounds as if, in this case, the state is trying to impose on a single community a business the community does not want, and Morgan is being urged to get with the lobbyists’ program and vote against his own constituents.

Second—and this is the important thing—is the way Rutherford so perfectly articulates the philosophy of expertise that entered America with the early 20th-century progressives and Woodrow Wilson. Wilson, incidentally, was an academic.

That theory is that, even in a democracy, whether representative or direct, the “little people” have no idea what’s good for them. They can’t be trusted. Government must be in the hands of learned (and, apparently, well-funded) experts who paternalistically know what’s best for the people they represent.

We see this same line of thinking in the battle between Pete Buttigieg’s other half, Chasten, who (God help us) has an education degree. It started when Chasten got upset that Chaya Raychik, who is behind Libs of TikTok, was appointed to help craft Oklahoma’s education policies.

Raychik, Chasten said, isn’t “qualified” because she “[h]olds no degree in education” and has “[z]ero classroom experience.” How dare she weigh in on whether there should be gay porn in classrooms or lessons that teach white children that they’re irredeemably evil because of their skin color? Without that degree, her values and opinions are less than useless.

Raychik instantly exposed Chasten for what his degree in education and his expertise really mean:

There’s your “expertise” in action.

Yes, having academic knowledge or a specific area of trained expertise can be useful. However, in 2024, it’s important to remember, when you think of academic knowledge, that there’s a big difference between being educated, which is what a degree once meant, and being indoctrinated, which is what a degree now means. There are such things as common sense, rational self-interest, and the knowledge that comes from living in the world and seeing how it works.

I’ll end with an anecdote that perfectly illustrates this. Francis Galton, the father of statistics, went to a county fair in 1906. There, 800 people submitted their estimates about an ox’s weight (1,198 pounds), with the person guessing most accurately winning the ox. While the winning guess was one or two hundred pounds off, when Galton averaged the 800 guesses, he discovered that the crowd’s collective wisdom came in at 1,197 pounds.

Our representatives are charged with making the ultimate decisions for our welfare, but Morgan remembers that this decision must always be made while keeping in mind who is the servant and who is the master. Or as Thomas Jefferson wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”

TRANSCRIPT

MORGAN: The pressure in here in Colombia is for me to not even vote red on the board. [Pointing to the board recording “yea” and “nay” votes.] Y’all might not know this: A dark money entity that was created on Tuesday, the day after we voted for this… I went home and an attack piece went out in my home district about the fact that I voted for this.

I get that the people in Colombia..that the lobby wants me to either not vote or to vote green on this, but my constituents want me to vote red and they want their tax money spent on core government functions—on their roads, on their schools. That’s what they want their money spent on.

They don’t want us in here trying to play this government planning thing where we and our bureaus can figure out where the jobs should be, who should be employed, how much money should be allocated where in the private sector. It never works. It’s socialism. It’s never worked anywhere before. So, what are we doing trying to do it here?

RUTHERFORD: But would you consider the fact that South Carolina’s track record on bringing major projects into this state has a winning record and, therefore, again, commerce should be listened to, rather than those people back in your district that may not have ever brokered a deal, may not understand what it means of being a project, may not understand economic incentives. So, what you’re suggesting is we should listen to the people back home in your district rather than the people at commerce that have been successful at bringing these mega deals [garbled] their lives.

MORGAN: Mr. Rutherford, I don’t think that you could have espoused a philosophy that disagrees more fundamentally than [i.e., with] me. I completely disagree with you, and I think that you believe what you just said, but no, I, 100%, I’m going to listen to the people back home who I represent in this House, and you should listen to the 40,000 people in your area and not the bureaucrats at commerce and not the lobbyists, and not the multibillion-dollar international corporations. You should listen to your constituents like I am.

So, yes, I will always fall back on the common sense of the wonderful people from Taylors and Greenville East side, far more than I will ever listen to unelected bureaucrats, other representatives in here who have been here for far too long and have maybe managed a whole lot of these deals and far more than I will ever listen to any member out there in the lobby.

Image: X screen grab.

 

 

 

 

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