美国正在经历暴民统治的噩梦

彭丽芳

美国大西洋月刊在2018年中期选举时发表系列文章，---民主在垂死吗？？？--- 探讨什么才是民主。

下载 (265.84 KB)

2020-11-22 10:42

现择其中一篇，《美国正在经历暴民统治的噩梦》 分享给网友。 我一口气贴不完，先占楼把原文贴完，再贴对应的中译（不是我翻译的）中英双语对照，更便于理解和避免歧义。

彭丽芳

这期刊物的其他几篇文章都值得一读。国内一个大型经济网站有pdf版的杂志下载....

下载 (326.38 KB)

2020-11-23 11:54

noramw

备注，留待研究

彭丽芳

转贴完结。

彭丽芳

下载 (69.34 KB)

2020-11-22 19:35

国父们在设计政府之初，考虑到应该预防群盲的激情冲动。但他们没能预测到数字时代后浪们是如此愤青，狂热到无拘无束。现在，到了宪政秩序如何存活下去的时候？

彭丽芳

来源：Rosen, Jeffrey, America Is Living James Madison's Nightmare, The Atlantic, October 2018 Issue

Jeffrey Rosen is a contributing editor at The Atlantic. He is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center and a professor of law at George Washington University.

译文来自Matters 分布式博客网站，作者： FullAutoNG

彭丽芳

These are dangerous times: The percentage of people who say it is “essential” to live in a liberal democracy is plummeting, everywhere from the United States to theNetherlands. Support for autocratic alternatives to democracy is especially high among young people. In 1788, Madison wrote that the best argument for adopting a Bill of Rights would be its inl uence on public opinion. As “the political truths” declared in the Bill of Rights “become incorporated with the national sentiment,” he concluded, they would “counter act the impulses of interest and passion.” Today, passion has gotten the better of us. The preservation of the republic urgently requires imparting constitutional principles to a new generation and reviving Madisonian reason in an impetuous world.

当下正是危险的时刻：从美国到荷兰，认为自由民主制度是“必不可少”的人口百分比正在急剧下降。在年轻人中，对专制替代民主方案的支持尤为突出。麦迪逊在1788年写道，采纳权利法案 (译者注: Bill of Rights，即美国宪法修正案的总称，因主要涵盖公民的基本权利而得名) 的最佳理由是它对公众舆论的影响。他总结说，随着权利法案中宣告的“政治真理与民族情感相结合”，将最终“抵消利益和激情带来的冲动。”

今天，激情已经战胜我们的理性占据了上风。若要将共和国延续下去，迫切需要将宪法原则传授给新一代，并在一个浮躁的世界中重振麦迪逊式的理性。

彭丽芳

To combat the power of factions, the Founders believed the people had to be educated about the structures of government in particular. “A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both,” Madison wrote in 1822, supporting the Kentucky legislature’s “Plan of Education embracing every class of Citizens.” In urging Congress to create a national university in 1796, George Washington said: “A primary object of such a national institution should be the education of our youth in the science of government.”


为了打击派系的力量，国父们认为人们必须接受政府结构的相关教育。1822年麦迪逊在支持肯塔基州立法机构的“涵盖每一阶级公民的教育计划”时这样写道： 一个人民的政府，若没有向人民公开的信息，或提供获取这些信息的手段，就只是一场闹剧或悲剧的序幕；或许两者兼有之。

A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both.

在敦促国会于1796年建立一所国立大学时，乔治华盛顿说：这样一个国家机构的主要目标，应当是对我国青年进行政府学科的相关教育。


The civics half of the educational equation is crucial. Recent studies have suggested that higher education can polarize citizens rather than ensuring the rule of reason: Highly educated liberals become more liberal, and highly educated conservatives more conservative. At the same time, the Nation al Assessment of Educational Progress has found that citizens, whether liberal or conservative, who are educated about constitutional checks on direct democracy, such as an independent judiciary, are more likely to express trust in the courts and less likely to call for judicial impeachment or for overturning unpopular Supreme Court decisions.

教育方程式中公民意识的一半是至关重要的。最近的研究表明，高等教育会使公民更加分化，而不是确保理性的统治：受过高等教育的自由主义者变得更加激进，而受过高等教育的保守主义者则更加保守。与此同时，国家教育进步评估 (National Assessment of Educational Progress) 发现，公民只要接受过对直接民主实施宪法制衡的教育（如司法独立的必要性），无论是自由主义者还是保守主义者，更有可能对法庭的判决表示信任，而不太可能呼吁弹劾法官或推翻不受大众欢迎的最高法院裁决。

彭丽芳

Voters in several states are experimenting with alternative primary systems that might elect more moderate representatives. California and Washington State have adopted a “top two” system, in which candidates from both parties compete in a nonpartisan primary, and the two candidates who get the most votes run against each other in the general election—even if they’re from the same party. States, which Louis Brandeis called “laboratories of democracy,” are proving to be the most effective way to encourage deliberation at a time when Congress acts only along party lines.

几个州的选民正在试验初选系统的替代方案，从中可能选出更加温和的代表。加利福尼亚州和华盛顿州采用了“前两名”制度，两党的多名候选人在一场不分党派的初选当中展开角逐，而获得最多选票的两位候选人则在大选中相互竞争——即使他们同属一个党派也没关系。路易斯·布兰迪斯 (译者注：Louis Brandeis，20世纪初美国最高法院的著名大法官) 称之为“民主实验室” ("laboratories of democracy") 的各州，被证明是在国会仅按照党派路线行事的当下鼓励审慎思考的最有效方式。

The best way of promoting a return to Madisonian principles, however, may be one Madison himself identii ed: constitutional education. In recent years, calls for more civic education have become something of a national refrain. But the Framers themselves believed that the fate of the republic depended on an educated citizenry. Drawing again on his studies of ancient republics, which taught that broad education of citizens was the best security against “crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty,” Madison insisted that the rich should subsidize the education of the poor.

然而，促进麦迪逊原则回归的最佳方式，可能也正是麦迪逊当初所提出的方案：宪法教育。近年来，开展更多公民教育 (civic education) 的呼声似乎已成了老生常谈。但当年制宪者曾指出，共和国的命运取决于受过良好教育的公民。在阅览古代共和国的研究时，麦迪逊发现古典时代的人们就曾指出，对公民的广泛教育是抵御“对公共自由处心积虑的侵犯”的最佳保障。藉此麦迪逊坚持认为，富人应当补贴穷人的教育。

彭丽芳

But these and other solutions could have First Amendment implications. “The democratic character of the internet is itself posing a threat to democracy, and there’s no clear solution to the problem,” Persily told me. “Censor ship, delay, demotion of information online, deterrence, and dilution of bad content—all pose classic free-speech problems, and everyone should be concerned at every step of the government regulatory parade.”

但是包括这些在内的解决方案，都可能造成涉及第一修正案的严重后果。“互联网的民主性质本身就构成了对民主的威胁，并且没有明确的解决方案，”Persily告诉我。 “审查，延迟，在线信息的（优先度）降级，（处罚带来的）威慑，和对不良内容的稀释——都会造成经典的言论自由问题，所以每个人都应该密切关注政府在言论监管上采取的每一步措施。”

Of course, the internet can empower democratic deliberation as well as threaten it, allowing dissenters to criticize the government in ways the Founders desired. The internet has also made American democracy more inclusive than it was in the Founders’ day, amplifying the voices of women, minorities, and other disadvantaged groups they excluded. And although our national politics is deadlocked by partisanship, compromise remains possible at the local level, where activism—often organized online- can lead to real change.

当然，就像互联网所带来的威胁一样，互联网也可以为民主议程赋予更大的能量，允许持不同政见者以国父们所期待的方式批评政府。互联网也使当今的美国民主比开国时期更具包容性，扩大了女性、少数族裔和其他弱势群体的声音。尽管我们的国家政治因党派分化而陷入僵局，但在地方层面仍然存在达成妥协的可能性，在那里政治运动——往往通过线上组织——可以带来真正的变革。


Federalism remains the most robust and vibrant Madisonian cooling mechanism, and continues to promote ideological diversity. At the moment, the combination of low voter turnout and ideological extremism has tended to favor very liberal or very conservative candidates in primaries. Thanks to safe districts created by geographic self-sorting and partisan gerrymandering, many of these extremists go on to win the general election. Today, all congressional Republicans fall to the right of the most conservative Democrat, and all congressional Democrats fall to the left of the most liberal Republican. In the 1960s, at times, 50 percent of the lawmakers overlapped ideologically.

联邦主义仍然是麦迪逊留下的冷却机制中最强大也是最具活力的组成部分，并继续促进意识形态上的多样性。目前，低选民投票率和意识形态极端主义的结合，倾向于为初选中非常激进或非常保守的候选人带来优势。由于地理上的自我分类和党派划地 (译者注: gerrymandering，指按照党派选民聚居地划分众议院选区的政治行为，因划分出的选区地块奇形怪状形似恶龙而得名) 造成的安全区，令许多极端分子能够持续赢得选举。今天，所有国会共和党人的政治立场比最保守的民主党人还要偏右，而所有国会民主党人比最激进的共和党人还要偏左；回首20世纪60年代，当时起码有50％的立法者在意识形态上存在重合。

彭丽芳

IS THERE ANY HOPE OF resurrecting Madison’s vision of majority rule based on reason rather than passion? Unless the Supreme Court reinterprets the First Amendment, allowing the government to require sites like Twitter and Facebook to suppress polarizing speech that falls short of intentional incitement to violence— an ill- advised and, at the moment, thankfully unlikely prospect— any efforts to encourage deliberation on those platforms will have to come from the platforms themselves. For the moment, they have adopted an unsatisfying mash-up of American and European approaches to free speech: Mark Zuckerberg provoked controversy recently when he said Facebook wouldn’t remove posts denying the existence of the Holocaust, because determining the intent of the poster was impossible, but would continue to ban hate speech that the First Amendment protects.

是否有希望在理性而非激情的基础上复活麦迪逊的多数统治观？ 除非最高法院重新诠释第一修正案，允许政府要求像Twitter和Facebook这样的网站，压制那些离故意煽动暴力仅有一步之遥的极端言论——一个不明智而且（很幸运）不太可能发生的场景——否则任何在这些平台上鼓励审慎思考的努力，必须来自平台本身。目前，他们令人不满的解决方式，将美国和欧洲对待言论自由的方式混为一谈：马克·扎克伯格最近公开声称，因为无法确定发帖者的意图，Facebook不会删除否认犹太大屠杀的帖子，但却会继续删除宪法第一修正案（译者注：即著名的言论自由修正案）保护下的仇恨言论，这自然引起了争议。


Still, some promising, if modest, fixes are on the horizon. Nathaniel Persily, a professor at Stanford Law School who leads an independent commission that will examine the impact of Facebook on democracy, notes one step the company has taken to address the problem of “click-bait,” which lures users with sensational headlines. Articles that persuade many users to click previously appeared high on Facebook’s News Feed. The company now prioritizes those articles users have actually taken the time to read.

当然这也并非全然无望，还是存在一些进展缓慢的修复方案。斯坦福大学法学院教授 Nathaniel Persily 领导下的一个独立委员会，正在研究Facebook对民主制度的影响，他指出该公司已经采取了一步措施来解决“标题党” ("clickbait") 的问题，“标题党”会通过耸人听闻的新闻标题引诱用户的点击阅读。在此之前，得到许多用户点击的文章在Facebook的新闻信息流中会排在显眼的位置；而现在，该公司会在信息流排列中优先考虑用户会实际花时间阅读的那些文章。

彭丽芳

During the 20th century, the Supreme Court also became both more powerful and more divided. The Court struck down federal laws two times in the irst 70 years of American history, just over 50 times in the next 75 years, and more than 125 times since 1934. Beginning with the appointment of Anthony Kennedy, in 1987, the Court became increasingly polarized between justices appointed by Republican presidents and justices appointed by Democratic presidents. Kennedy’s retirement raises the likelihood of more constitutional rulings split between ive Republican appointees and four Democratic ones.

在20世纪，最高法院也变得日益强大，内部也更加分裂。法院在美国历史上的前70年中仅两次推翻联邦法律，在随后的75年中则超过50次，自1934年以来更是超过125次。从1987年任命安东尼·肯尼迪 (译者注：Anthony Kennedy，里根时期任命的最高法院大法官，常在高院判决出现均票僵局时投出5比4的关键一票，于2018年7月退休) 开始，在共和党总统任命的大法官和民主党总统任命的大法官之间最高法院愈发两极分化。肯尼迪的退休，提高了五个共和党任命者和四个民主党任命者之间更多分裂判决的可能性。


Exacerbating all this political antagonism is the development that might distress Madison the most: media polarization, which has allowed geographically dispersed citizens to isolate themselves into virtual factions, communicating only with like-minded individuals and reinforcing shared beliefs. Far from being a conduit for considered opinions by an educated elite, social-media platforms spread misinformation and inflame partisan differences. Indeed, people on Facebook and Twitter are more likely to share inflammatory posts that appeal to emotion than intricate arguments based on reason. The passions, hyper-partisanship, and split-second decision making that Madison feared from large, concentrated groups meeting face-to-face have proved to be even more dangerous from exponentially larger, dispersed groups that meet online.

令所有这些政治对抗愈演愈烈的，是可能最令麦迪逊感到困扰的发展：媒体的两极分化，使得地理上分散的公民可以自我孤立于虚拟派系之中，只与志趣相投的人交流并强化共同的信仰。社交媒体平台不仅不是受过良好教育的精英所认可的意见渠道，还会传播虚假信息并激起党派纷争。事实上，Facebook和Twitter上的人更有可能分享更加感性化的煽动帖子，而不是基于理性的复杂论点。麦迪逊对大型集中团体的激情煽动、极端分化和仓促决定的担心，不仅得到了证明，而且在通过网络交流的超大型分散式团体中，情况远比预想中更加危险。

彭丽芳

More recently, geographical and political self-sorting has produced voters and representatives who are willing to support the party line at all costs. After the Republicans took both chambers of Congress in 1994, the House of Representatives, under Speaker Newt Gingrich, adjusted its rules to enforce party discipline, taking power away from committee chairs and making it easier for leadership to push bills into law with little debate or support from across the aisle. The deining congressional achievements of Barack Obama’s presidency and, thus far, Donald Trump’s presidency—the Affordable Care Act of 2010 and the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, respectively—were passed with no votes from members of the minority party.

最近，地理和政治上的自我分类，催生一批不惜一切代价全力支持党派路线的选民和代表。共和党人在1994年夺得国会两院的多数席位之后，众议院在时任议长纽特·金里奇 (译者注：Newt Gingrich，1995-1999年任众议院议长，曾参与2012年总统大选共和党初选) 的领导下，调整了贯彻党纪的众院规则，从各下属委员会主席手中夺取权力，使党领导层能够在不经全面辩论或争取两党支持的情况下，就将提案推入立法表决程序。巴拉克·奥巴马总统任内，以及唐纳德·特朗普总统上任迄今所达成的国会成就——2010年的《平价医保法案》和2017年的《减税和就业法案》——均在未获得少数党成员投票的情况下强行通过。


Madison feared that Congress would be the most dangerous branch of the federal government, sucking power into its “impetuous vortex.” But today he would shudder at the power of the executive branch. The rise of what the presidential historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. called the “imperial presidency” has unbalanced the equilibrium among the three branches. Modern presidents rule by executive order rather than consulting with Congress. They direct a massive administrative state, with jurisdiction over everything from environmental policy to the regulation of the airwaves. Trump’s populist promise—“I alone can fix it”—is only the most dramatic in a long history of hyperbolic promises, made by presidents from Wilson to Obama, in order to mobilize their most ideologically extreme voters.

麦迪逊曾担心，国会将成为联邦政府中最危险的分支，将权力吸入其“浮躁的漩涡” ("impetuous vortex") 之中。但在今天，他大概会对行政一支掌控的权力感到不寒而栗。被总统史学家 Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. 称之为“帝国总统” ("imperial presidency") 的崛起，打破了三个分支之间的均衡关系。现代总统通过行政命令施政，而不再与国会协商共事。他们领导着一个庞大的行政体系，对从环境政策到电波监管等各方面都有管辖权。特朗普的民粹主义承诺——“我一个人能解决它”——不过是从威尔逊到奥巴马的每一任总统都曾许下过的夸张承诺中，最具戏剧性的一页，而每一任总统的目的，都是去动员选民中意识形态最为极端的群体。

彭丽芳

The Founders’ greatest failure of imagination was in not anticipating the rise of mass political parties. The i rst parties played an unexpected cooling function, uniting diverse economic and regional interests through shared constitutional visions. After the presidential election of 1824, Martin Van Buren reconceived the Democratic Party as a coalition that would defend strict construction of the Constitution and states’ rights in the name of the people, in contrast to the Federalist Party, which had controlled the federal courts, represented the monied classes, and sought to consolidate national power. As the historian Sean Wilentz has noted, the great movements for constitutional and social change in the 19th century—from the abolition of slavery to the Progressive movement—were the product of strong and diverse political parties.

国父们的设想中最严重的失误，在于没有预料到大众政党 (mass political parties) 的崛起。最早的一批政党发挥了意想不到的冷却作用，通过共同的宪法愿景将各色经济和地方利益联系在了一起。在1824年总统大选之后，马丁·范·布伦 (Martin Van Buren) 将民主党重塑为一个以人民的名义捍卫严谨的宪法和各州权利构建的政治联盟，而联邦党则控制了联邦法院体系，代表着富裕阶级并寻求巩固国家权力。正如历史学家Sean Wilentz所指出的那样，19世纪促成宪法和社会变革的伟大运动——从废除奴隶制到进步运动——是强大而多元化的政党的产物。

Whatever benefits the parties offered in the 19th and early 20th centuries, however, have long since disappeared. The moderating effects of parties were under mined by a series of populist reforms, including the direct election of senators, the popular-ballot initiative, and direct primaries in presidential elections, which became widespread in the 1970s.

然而，无论在19世纪和20世纪初政党带来了多少好处，自那之后也早已不复存在。一系列民粹主义改革破坏了政党的调节作用，包括参议员的直接选举（译者注：1913年通过的对美国宪法第17修正案的再修订），大众选票倡议以及总统大选中的直接初选；特别是直接初选在20世纪70年代达到了全国性的普及。

彭丽芳

Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms have accelerated public discourse to warp speed, creating virtual versions of the mob. Inflammatory posts based on passion travel farther and faster than arguments based on reason. Rather than encouraging deliberation, mass media undermine it by creating bubbles and echo chambers in which citizens see only those opinions they already embrace.

Twitter，Facebook和其他平台急剧加速了公众争议的产生，创造出虚拟版本的暴民集团。激情起意的煽动帖子，比基于理性的观点散播得更广更快。大众媒体不仅没能够起到促进审慎思考的作用，反而还通过创造泡沫和回声室破坏理性思维，令置身其中的公民只能看到他们想看到的观点。

We are living, in short, in a Madisonian nightmare. How did we get here, and how can we escape?
简而言之，我们正身处麦迪逊式的噩梦之中。我们是怎么走到这一步的，我们又该如何逃离这个噩梦？

From the very beginning, the devices that the Founders hoped would prevent the rapid mobilization of passionate majorities didn’t work in all the ways they expected. After the election of 1800, the Electoral College, envisioned as a group of independent sages, became little more than a rubber stamp for the presidential nominees of the newly emergent political parties.

从一开始，国父们为了阻止激情多数派的迅速动员而设下的机制，就未按照他们预期的方式发挥作用。在1800年总统大选之后，被设想为独立开明群体的选举人团制度 (Electoral College)，就已沦落为新兴政党总统候选人的橡皮图章。