SuperPACs – The Sport of Kings

Dave Weigel has a point: SuperPac money has certainly made the Republican Primaries interesting. But Weigel’s larger point—that SuperPacs are good for Democracy–ultimately falls flat.

Here’s what Wiegel got right:

1. SuperPacs have made it more difficult for the Republican Establishment to anoint Mitt Romney as the inevitable candidate.
2. SuperPacs have allowed a handful of other rich people to make their voices heard, which is in a twisted way, an expansion of democracy, i.e. the net effect is that more people have a voice in the process.

But here’s what Wiegel got wrong–very wrong.  Democracy isn’t about diversifying the group of rich people that have already captured our once hallowed halls of government.  Our Democracy, our Republic really, is about the majority of citizens having the opportunity to influence and even control the agenda pursued in those halls.

Whether it’s the Republican Establishment’s rich guys or the other maverick rich guys that Wiegel points out; we still have the makings of a true plutarchy (plutocracy + oligarchy = plutarchy). Even if we cede his point about the expansion of voices thanks to SuperPacs, we get a plutocracy at best.

Every lover of freedom—especially libertarians—ought to lament the loss of true Democracy through manipulation of the laws by the richest among us.

The ancients had a word for the kind of state that functions under laws that have been shaped by one person or one class: thrasymachan. Classics buffs will  recognize the reference to Thrasymachus, a devil-like character in opposition to the Justice of which Socrates spoke and the fundamental freedoms necessary for public life.  For Thrasymachus, justice was defined as the interest of the stronger; in other words, might makes right.

The thrasymachan state is evil because in it freedom is sacrificed for the preferences of a person or a class.  The laws are rigged for them and those who do not challenge such unjust laws and obey them blindly are not free people; in fact they could be best described as slaves.

SuperPacs may have angered the Republican Establishment, but their success in the Republican primaries reminds us that it is the super-rich who have the most to gain from them—not the average citizen. SuperPacs, even if they do occasionally get exposed by the Fourth Estate (what’s left of it), are designed to promote the interests of the stronger.  Their very existence is an attack on our ability to be free people.