The Spirit of Democracy

Think back to the time of 6th century BCE Athens. The city controlled an empire of dozens of separate Greek states. It was the world center of philosophy, science, and art. And it was the world’s first society to govern itself by democracy.

Of course we must qualify that statement by noting that only landed Athenian males 21 years of age and older were allowed to participate in the forms and offices of government. But within those limitations it was a true participatory democracy. Every eligible citizen was a member of the primary governing body– the Assembly. That would have been about 40,000 men at the height of the Empire. A quorum of the Assembly was 6,000 citizens.

We call it the age of Pericles, but he was neither king nor president. He was one of ten elected generals, each of whom served a one year term. He was elected to that position multiple times, so clearly he must have had both charisma and leadership skills. But it was the Assembly that made all key decisions. And all decisions were made by simple majority vote. In that respect the Athenian democracy was a true democracy, unlike our representative federation. Decisions of state in our system are not made by we the people, but by those we elect to represent us.

The delegates of what we now call the Federal Convention did not invent democracy, and they did not invent the key features of our federal system: separation of powers, a bicameral legislature, a hierarchical court system, and the guarantee of rights for all citizens. All of those elements were incorporated into the constitutions of various of the states after they declared independence.

The Constitution was a remarkable document for its time, but it retains many anti-democratic elements. The Senate represents states, not the people. Nine U.S. states contain more than half of total U.S. population, and yet those states only have 18% representation in the Senate. That is extremely unfair to the residents of the most populous states.

In 1929 Congress passed the Permanent Apportionment Act, which capped the total number of Representatives in the House at 435. That constraint, coupled with the Constitution’s requirement that every state must have at least one Representative, has resulted in the over-representation of low population states. The House now has 114 fewer members than it should on the basis of population alone.

Neither the House nor the Senate truly represent the national character. The Senate represents the separate states and the House represents state defined localities. The president is the only nationally elected official who represents the nation as a whole. That is the primary reason why the president and Congress are so often at odds.

And since the Electoral College is based on the number of members of the House and Senate, it amplifies the misrepresentations of those two bodies.

There is work to do if we wish our government to be more democratic and more fairly representative. But we should ask: is democracy necessarily a good thing? Can the public really be expected to make sound decisions in a world of every greater complexity? Perhaps we should allow those who have the greatest understanding of government, economics, and society to make the nation’s most important decisions. Maybe we would be wise to establish a class of professionals who are specially trained to lead the country, as imperial China did.

Alexander Hamilton touched on this question in his defense of the Electoral College:

It was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations.

It was also peculiarly desirable to afford as little opportunity as possible to tumult and disorder. This evil was not least to be dreaded in the election of a magistrate, who was to have so important an agency in the administration of the government as the President of the United States. But the precautions which have been so happily concerted in the system under consideration, promise an effectual security against this mischief.

(The Federalist #68, Alexander Hamilton, 1788)

The chief question Hamilton did not answer in his musings is just how, exactly, we are to recognize the persons who possess the requisite “information and discernment”? We have seen many examples recently of people who loudly proclaim their credentials and their wisdom who in fact know little or nothing about their areas of alleged expertise.

Should we expect the average citizen to be an expert on all matters relevant to the health and safety of the nation? No, absolutely not. But that doesn’t mean that the average citizen has no stake in national or international affairs. On the contrary, national issues have national impacts. The entire nation will almost certainly be adversely affected by foolish national policies.

The greatest risk to the nation is when our leaders lose touch with the people. The examples of the Vietnam and Iraq wars show that it makes no sense to engage in foreign wars if you do not have the full support of the people.

The divine right of kings was firmly entrenched in ancient Egypt by no later than 3000 BCE. The king, later called “Pharaoh,” was declared to be the son of Ra– literally the son of God. And yet the trappings of divinity could never disguise the fact that kings of the centuries since have had frailties and foibles, or that we all are subject to the indignities of our mortality.

There is no single class of people who are most qualified to lead. That simple truth is the central glory of democracy. Great leaders do not always have the greatest pedigrees. Trust the people.

Is economics complicated? Yes, as is immigration policy, trade policy, cybersecurity, and many other aspects of modern society. But those who seek our votes should be able to state their positions on the issues of the day in such a way that the average citizen can understand them. Those who sneeringly assume that the average citizen is too uninformed to make sound decisions do not deserve our votes.

The central principle of democracy, whether representative or participatory, is fairness. The idea that every citizen should have the right to vote and to expect that vote to count forces everyone to respect others. Other governmental systems do not necessitate such behavior. In fact many– especially autocracies– thrive on intolerance. That is why the spirit of democracy is the highest and the most basic– something every religion should call its own. Without tolerance people can easily fall into vindictiveness and aggression. Without respect for others they can become aloof and indifferent to human suffering. Democracy is the only governing principle that is predicated on tolerance for all.

A More Perfect Union

In 1789 the US Constitution was innovative and daring. It established the United States as a representative federation with some democratic elements. It was a radical departure from the norms of the time in that most every other government was either a monarchy or an autocracy.

Other nations found the US Constitution inspiring. The soaring words of the Declaration of Independence promised life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to all, while the Constitution guaranteed protection from the depredations of an oppressive ruling class. Other nations adopted the Constitution as a template for their own governing principles.

But many of the anti-democratic elements of the Constitution were eventually discarded by other countries. Although some included a variation of the Electoral College in their own constitutions, all of them discarded it as unfair. The United States is the only major country with democratic-like government that still retains an Electoral College. See Chapter 7, “America the Outlier” from Tyranny of the Minority by Levitsky and Ziblatt for a brief history of these changes.

There are many other anachronisms in the US Constitution. Because the US Constitution is so hard to amend it has become stagnant and rooted in the past. For example, the Senate was designed to represent states, not people. There was much debate during the Federal Convention about how the Senate should be structured. The debate got so testy that it was handed off to a committee for resolution. The two primary advocates of direct representation of the people rather than states (Wilson and Madison), were purposefully excluded from the committee. The decision to cave in to the demands of low population states had already been made.

To improve the democratic profile of the US Constitution I propose the following 7 principles:

The Constitution should be much easier to amend. The requirement that amendments be approved by three quarters of the states is particularly onerous.
The president and vice president should be elected by the people directly, that he/she may represent the people of the nation as a whole, not the states.
The method of the election of representatives in the House should ensure that representation is proportional to population across the entire country, rather than skewed to the advantage of low population states.
The method of the election of senators should represent the people of the nation, rather than states.
The sizes of the House of Representatives and of the Senate should remain permanently fixed, regardless of the size of the nation’s population or the number of states.
Representatives and senators should represent the national character, not the characters of state defined localities.
The members of the House of Representatives and of the Senate should be selected by different methods to ensure that they represent two different aspects of the American character.

These 7 principles would eliminate most of the anti-democratic barriers in the current US Constitution and its amendments. While several possible structures for the House and the Senate could be compatible with the above 6 principles, I propose the following:

Change the Constitution to require that amendments be approved by two thirds votes in both House and Senate, rather than by three quarters of the states.
Eliminate the Electoral College for both the president and vice president.
The numbers of persons in the House of Representatives and of the Senate should be based on the psychology of group decision making, rather than on the numbers of states, or the numbers of citizens.
We traditionally think of the Senate as the more measured and deliberative body; so we would probably want the number of senators to be smaller than the number of representatives.
Representatives should be elected from national groupings based on relative population density, as this is the greatest single contributor to differences of perspective across the nation.
Senators should be selected from national groupings that are based on something other than population density. I suggest that senators should be chosen from random national groupings. That would ensure that senators represent the nation as a whole, regardless of their geographical origins.
Voter registration should be nationalized by adding a new data element to the Social Security Administration’s database of every American citizen for the state in which the citizen is registered to vote. Then require every state to update that field whenever a citizen registers to vote in that state. This will eliminate registration ambiguity.
Amend Article I Section 5 of the U.S. Constitution to state that members of the House and Senate can only block a vote to move a process forward with a 40% vote of the members. Then those of the blocking minority would have a limited period of time– I recommend 72 hours– to persuade the other members of Congress to their view. After that time the legislation must be brought to the floor for a vote. Only one such blockage can be issued for any one piece of legislation.

These changes would permanently eliminate gerrymandering, would eliminate voter registration ambiguities, and would ensure that both House and Senate represent the people of the nation as a whole, rather than local within-state groups. And they would ensure that proposed measures could be blocked by minorities only through concerted effort by those minorities.

These principles can be extended to the individual states. Doing so would ensure that state legislatures are representative of the people of their respective states in the same manner as the national government represents the nation as a whole.

Book Review: Pathogenesis

Many years ago– probably 50 or so– I read Rats, Lice, and History by Hans Zinsser at my father’s suggestion. Mr. Zinsser was a biologist who made significant contributions to our knowledge of typhus. That book, published in 1935, really opened my eyes to the impact that diseases have had on the history of the world.

I just finished reading Pathogenesis, A History of the World in Eight Plagues, by Jonathan Kennedy. In many ways it is an update to a book written by William McNeill titled Plagues and Peoples, published in 1976. (I have not read McNeill’s book.) Since that time the technology used to investigate past pathogens has radically improved and has enabled Kennedy to describe the impact that diseases have had on the arc of human history with far greater detail and precision.

The scope of the book is breathtaking. Mr. Kennedy achieves nothing less than a complete rewriting of much of history, from the paleolithic to the present. The book is bursting with detail, it is quite well written, and much of it reads like a thriller.

Why did Homo sapiens replace Neanderthals and Denisovans throughout Europe? Answer: disease.

Why are the people of Europe descended from three distinct population groups– Western Hunter-gatherers with dark skin, dark hair, and light eyes; Neolithic European farmers with olive skin and dark hair who moved into the region about 9,000 years ago; and Steppe Herders, who were tall, light skinned, and fair haired and who swept across Europe about 5,000 years ago? Answer: disease.

Why did the Athenians lose the Peloponnesian War to the Spartans and thereby pave the way for Philip of Macedon to conquer all of Greece? Answer: disease.

Why did the Roman empire come crashing down? Answer: disease.

Why did capitalism replace feudalism in England and in no other European society? Answer: disease.

Why were Europeans able to conquer the powerful cultures of the Aztecs, the Incas, and Native American Indians, despite having vastly inferior numbers? Answer: disease.

Why did the European colonies that were established in North America and the Caribbean rely primarily on African slaves, rather than indentured servants from Europe for their plantations? Answer: disease.

Why were no European powers able to establish colonies in the interior of Africa until the 1870s? Answer: disease.

Why were the slaves of what is now Haiti able to free themselves from their overlords, the French, at a time when the French military was the mightiest in the world? Answer: disease.

It’s a powerful book. It forces you to confront the fact that much of what we think of as human directed events are in fact driven by other factors– especially disease. I was already somewhat prepared for the findings of this book through other readings. But it has a depth and breadth of scholarship that goes far beyond anything I was expecting. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

Book Review: Tyranny of the Minority

Earlier I reviewed How Democracies Die, published in 2018 by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. Tyranny of the Minority was published in 2023 by the same two authors, both of them professors of Government at Harvard University.

This book isn’t a sequel to their earlier book. How Democracies Die is a sweeping study of democracies around the world. Tyranny is focused chiefly on the United States, though it burgeons with the lessons of democracies around the world.

Much of the book is a history lesson of how the United States evolved from being at the very forefront of the global experiment in democracy as a method of government to lagging far behind other democracies. Certainly the US Constitution is a marvel of political innovation. The three branches of government, each serving to check and balance the others; the bicameral legislature; a president elected (indirectly) by the people; the Bill of Rights; the power to amend the Constitution itself through a regular process– each of these was a major innovation. The US Constitution served as a model for the constitutions of many other countries, many of which are strong, healthy democracies today.

But most of the other countries that adopted some form of the US Constitution as their original template have radically revised their own constitutions to make them more suitable to contemporary social purposes and needs. The authors explain that many countries had some form of indirect voting for their legislatures or for their presidents, as was originally implemented in the US Constitution. (Article I Section 3 says that the members of the Senate would be elected by the state legislatures; the 17th Amendment changed that to support direct election by the people of each state. And the people elect electors to the Electoral College, which in turn elects the president.) But most of them got rid of it. Here’s what the authors have to say about it:

By the late nineteenth century, France and the Netherlands had eliminated the powerful local councils that had previously selected members of parliament; Norway, Prussia, and Sweden did the same in the early twentieth century. France experimented with an electoral college for a single presidential election in the late 1950s but then dropped it. Electoral colleges gradually disappeared across Latin America. Columbia eliminated its electoral college in 1964 under military rule but replaced it with direct presidential elections in 1988. Argentina, the last country in Latin America with indirect presidential elections, dropped its electoral college in 1994.
Tyranny of the Minority, pg. 205

Here in the US, there have been many proposals to eliminate the Electoral College– and they have all failed, usually in the Senate.

The US Constitution is encumbered with many counter-majoritarian components, several of which prevent the majority of the American people from getting what they want from their government. The counter-majoritarian elements are enumerated in Tyranny as follows:

The Bill of Rights
A Supreme Court with lifetime appointments and the power to declare legislation passed by Congress incompatible with the Constitution
Federalism, which grants many powers to the states
A bicameral legislature, requiring majorities in two different houses for the passage of any legislation
A radically skewed representation in the Senate
The filibuster, which requires a 60% majority in the Senate to end debate (and which can now be enacted with nothing more than an email)
The Electoral College
Radically restrictive rules for implementing constitutional change: 2/3 vote of each house in Congress and 3/4 ratification by the states

(Tyranny of the Minority, pg. 147 – 148)

The Bill of Rights grants many privileges to citizens that we certainly want to protect and defend, so that component is actually protective of democracy. Similarly we want the courts to ensure that our laws are consistent with our principles– so granting the Supreme Court the power of judicial review is reasonable, and potentially protective of democracy. But lifetime tenure on the court can serve as an obstruction to change and for that reason it is more likely to contribute to stagnation.

(I would have added the Apportionment Act of 1929 to the above list, as that legislation capped the number of members of the House at 435. That, coupled with the constraint that each state must get at least one representative, has resulted in a massive over-representation of low population states. For example, the state of California has about 26% less representation in the House than it should have on the basis of population alone.)

The authors show that the many counter-majoritarian elements of the US Constitution have produced the result that the US is a true laggard among modern democracies. Here is how the authors express it:

America is the only presidential democracy in the world in which the president is elected via an Electoral College, rather than directly by voters. Only in America can a president be “elected against the majority expressed at the polls.”

America is one of the few remaining democracies that retains a bicameral legislature with a powerful upper chamber that is severely malapportioned due to the “equal representation of unequal states” (only Argentina and Brazil are worse). Most important, it is the world’s only democracy with both a strong, malapportioned Senate and a legislative minority veto (the filibuster). In no other democracy do legislative minorities routinely and permanently thwart legislative majorities.

America is one of the few established democracies (along with Canada, India, Jamaica, and the U.K.) with first-past-the-post electoral rules that permit electoral pluralities to be manufactured into legislative majorities and, in some cases, allow parties that win fewer votes to win legislative majorities.

America is the only democracy in the world with lifetime tenure for Supreme Court justices. All other established democracies have either term limits, a mandatory retirement age, or both.

Among democracies, the U.S. Constitution is the hardest in the world to change, for it requires supermajorities in two legislative chambers plus the approval of three-quarters of the states.
Tyranny of the Minority, pg. 217

Americans tend to think of the US Constitution as an ideal of completed perfection. It is not; and in fact the very extensive evidence the authors present shows that the US Constitution is greatly in need of reform. The US has become stagnant, relative to other democracies throughout the world, and it is time that the American people were alerted to that fact.

This book and its predecessor are absolutely essential to anyone who wants to understand the place of democracy in the world and in our country. I heartily recommend this book to anyone who is interested in how best to preserve and extend our democracy.

Book review: The Lost Bank

The Lost Bank: The Story of WASHINGTON MUTUAL, The Biggest Bank Failure in American History, by Kirsten Grind, was published in 2012. It’s written very much like a novel, with lots of in depth insight into the thinking and attitudes of many of the people involved in what was without question an unmitigated disaster.

I had followed the demise of WaMu casually at the time. I read the multi-part story of the collapse in the Seattle Times, and of course I was aware of the broader collapse of the real estate market across the country. But this book made me aware of dimensions of the WaMu story that I hadn’t previously understood.

For one thing, Washington Mutual was led in the 1980s by Lou Pepper, who fostered a code of behavior that was based on ethics, respect, teamwork, innovation, and excellence. The bank’s tag line was that it was a “friend of the family.” Lou Pepper believed in selling a good product at an honest price. Tell your customers the truth, be honest and forthright, and you’ll make lots of money. Pepper circulated through the company, talking to people in all levels of the business. Here’s how Ms. Grind put it:

He encouraged executives to dress up on Halloween, bringing candy to the branches. He regularly ate in the cafeteria on the second floor with everyone else. He sat with the building’s maintenance men so frequently that they presented him with his own work jacket. To employees, he really seemed like one of them.
The Lost Bank, pg. 20-21

The culture that Pepper built at Washington Mutual resonated with the company’s employees. They genuinely felt part of something, and they felt good about working for a company that was serving its customers honestly.

Pepper chose Kerry Killinger to replace him. Although Killinger was sharp and insightful, he was also distant and aloof. He could elicit details from a report that others might miss, but he found it difficult to make eye contact, or to initiate conversation, or to confront anyone about issues affecting the bank’s profitability. He tended to stay in his office, rather than to mingle. It just wasn’t his thing.

Troubles began to surface in 2003 when Fay Chapman, WMs chief legal officer, became aware of the underwriting guidelines of Long Beach Mortgage, a subprime lending subsidiary that had been purchased four years earlier. She learned of 270 loans sampled from those that had been sold by Long Beach, 40% were unacceptable because they contained a “critical error.” She demanded to do a more thorough review of Long Beach, and ultimately Killinger allowed her to take a team of about 100 people down to California to do an intensive review of Long Beach’s records. Here’s how Ms. Grind summarized Chapman’s findings:

By the end of three long months, Chapman’s team had reviewed 4,000 mortgages from Long Beach. Of those, only 950 were deemed good enough to be sold to outside investors. The rest were basically garbage. Even more troubling, several hundred loans had so much paperwork missing that Long Beach wouldn’t have been able to foreclose on a borrower in default. It wasn’t even clear who owned the mortgages anymore.
The Lost Bank, pg. 77

Thanks to Ms. Chapman’s efforts WM put a stop to the haphazard practices that had resulted in such a high percentage of garbage loans at Long Beach.

Under Killinger’s leadership, WM went on a buying spree. The bank purchased other banks at a frenetic pace, expanding Washington Mutual to become the largest savings and loan in the country. By 2007 Washington Mutual was sitting on assets of more than $300 billion.

Killinger was far more interested in growing the business than in staying true to the values and principles that had prevailed during Pepper’s tenure. He pushed the bank away from its old roots of just being a friend of the family to being far more sales oriented. He even said that everyone in the company was in sales. But in the course focusing chiefly on sales and less on company culture, the bank allowed poorly documented mortgages to take an ever increasing proportion of its portfolio.

WM had been selling ARMs (Adjustable Rate Mortgages) since the 1970s. In the early 2000s Option ARMs became a major part of the business. These were loans that gave the borrower the option of choosing the payment they preferred. A minimum payment was listed on the customer’s bill, but that minimum only covered interest, not the premium. Many of the banks that WM had purchased sold Option ARMs, so this type of loan became part of WM’s DNA.

Kevin Jenne, a WM manager in market research, conducted a number of focus groups of Option ARM borrowers. He quickly learned that borrowers didn’t understand what was adjustable about an ARM loan, or how it was adjusted, or when it was adjusted. Customers simply didn’t understand the terms of the loans they had purchased.

Jenne also found that many of the agents who were selling Option ARMs didn’t fully understand them either– and they therefore weren’t communicating to borrowers the full extent of their indebtedness.

Once the real estate market began to collapse, the logic behind the Option ARM collapsed as well. As long as real estate values were climbing, anyone with an Option ARM load could simply refinance based on the new, higher value of their property. Some borrowers were refinancing every six months! But once real estate values started to fall, that approach no longer made sense. The long term picture for WM, as for many of the other lenders in the country, was that the bank held an ever increasing percentage of mortgages that were almost certain to go into default.

Rumors began to spread that WM didn’t have the resources to cover the cost of loans that were almost certain to go sour as the market turned down. The government downgraded WM’s rating. There was a massive run on the bank between September 9th and September 25th 2007 during which time customers pulled over $16 billion out of their accounts. In the previous 9 months WM had also lost over $6 billion on bad loans.

Killinger was fired by the Board of Directors on September 4th, 2007. A new CEO was hired on Monday September 8th– Alan Fishman. He immediately dove into searching for a buyer for the company. But after a three week frantic search he was unable to find any buyers.

Behind the scenes the FDIC was talking to many of the same potential buyers that Fishman had approached. The FDIC put WM up for bid in a secret auction that was predicated on the idea that the FDIC would shut the company down, but would assume none of the debt carried by the bank. JPMorgan was the only bidder.

WaMu was shut down by the FDIC on September 25, 2007 and was sold to JPMorgan Chase for $1.888 billion. At that time WaMu had about $310 billion in assets. WaMu’s holding company, Washington Mutual Inc., filed for bankruptcy. That wiped out $7 billion in share value, $2 billion in preferred shares, and another $20 billion for bondholders.

The government and WM had different figures for the bank’s financial status at the time of its closing. The government said that WM had $20.8 billion in available liquid assets, but WM said the real number was $29 billion. Both numbers were above 5% of total assets, the normal point at which the government would force a bank to close. What is the source of the discrepancy? Here’s what Ms. Grind has to say about it:

WaMu’s liquidity figure on the day of its failure is unresolved, as is the difference between these assessments.
The Lost Bank, pg. 300

The end of the whole fiasco is extremely unsatisfying. As far as WM goes, most of the blame would properly fall on Killinger. He was warned several times of the danger that Option ARMs could pose to the long term health of the company– and he did nothing whatsoever to stop it. By contrast, Jaime Dimon of JPMorgan anticipated the devastation that Option ARMs could wreak– and he pulled JPMorgan out of that market.

Killinger was given a severance package of about $22 million. The FDIC sued him and two other WM executives for $900 million. The case was settled in 2011 for $64 million. But the damages assessed were paid from WM’s insurance policies, not by the defendants themselves.

The Lost Bank is a story of hubris on a massive scale. Although the book is focused on Washington Mutual, the much broader picture of what was happening in the national real estate market inevitably intrudes. Loan officers who acted more like salespeople than sage consultants. Banks that packaged up hundreds of bad loans as investment instruments without disclosing the very real risks of default. Wall Street investors who eagerly bought those instruments without awareness of their inherent unreliability. And borrowers who were often bamboozled by the terminology, but who nonetheless were eager to own a piece of the American dream. It was in one sense the ultimate financial craze that necessarily resulted in its own demise.

I heartily recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand why Washington Mutual collapsed. And because Ms. Grind does such a good job of describing the broader market conditions that prevailed the reader will also have a good understanding of why and how the entire real estate market turned sour in the early 2000s.

Book Review: Genghis Khan

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford was published in 2004. It’s the story of the rise and demise of the largest empire in world history– the Mongol Empire. Here’s how the author describes the astonishing accomplishments of the Mongols:

In twenty-five years, the Mongol army subjugated more land and people than the Romans had conquered in four hundred years. Genghis Khan, together with his sons and grandsons, conquered the most densely populated civilizations of the thirteenth century. Whether measured by the total number of people defeated, the sum of the countries annexed, or by the total area occupied, Genghis Khan conquered more than twice as much as any other man in history.
Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, Weatherford, pg. xviii

I had known something about the Mongol Empire before I read the book, but it really helped me understand what the Empire really was and how it worked. During the Cold War the Soviets suppressed all research into Genghis Khan. The region of his homeland in Mongolia was strictly off limits and much of the surrounding area was used for artillery practice. Scholars who probed the history of the Mongols were censored, and publication of works about Genghis Khan were forbidden.

The collapse of the Soviet Union meant that scholars could begin to research the history of the Empire, but there was another problem– the Mongols were very secretive about the inner workings of their society. A set of documents known as The Secret History of the Mongols supposedly narrated the history of the Empire from the perspective of an insider– an actual eyewitness to the events that subjected more than 3 billion people to Mongol rule. But the Secret History had long since been lost.

In the early 20th century a copy of the Secret History was found in Beijing, written in Chinese characters. But the document made to sense to readers of the time because it preserved Mongolian sounds in a code written in Chinese characters. It wasn’t until the 1970s that Mongolian and English translations first appeared in print– the product of decades of slow but steady scholarship. But even then the Secret History was mostly incomprehensible to modern readers because it assumed a deep understanding of common cultural practices and beliefs of Mongolian society, and of the geography of Mongolia.

By the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union scholars from around the world had pieced together a fair picture of how the Secret History should be read. Weatherford had absorbed much of this research and in 1998 he traveled to Mongolia to get some background information on the region and the people. He expected that it would take him a short time to put together the finishing touches on the book he had been writing– but he ultimately spent another five years there. He learned how to ride horses as the Mongolians rode them. He learned how to shoot a bow and arrow the way that Mongolian soldiers did. And he learned about the many Mongolian traditions on which their society was based. His book represents the culmination of a century of scholarly research and his own five years of in depth immersion in Mongolian society.

The Mongols were tremendous warriors. They developed a large repertoire of innovative tactics, many of which changed warfare forever. For example, in ancient times it was traditional to conduct war in the spring, summer, and fall. Winter was a time to consolidate one’s forces, to rebuild supply lines, and to tend to the wounded. But the Mongols often launched their attacks in winter, rather than the spring– thereby turning the traditions of warfare inside-out. As people of the steppe, the Mongols were perfectly adapted to conducting war in ice and snow. Their conquest of northern China gave them access to gunpowder– used by the Chinese for fireworks. The Mongols changed the formula for making gunpowder to make it burn instantly rather than to glow slowly as it had been used by the Chinese– and they quickly adapted it for use in weapons. As a result the Mongols forever changing the mechanics of the siege. And they were absolute masters of using deception to mask their real objectives and intent in battle. It was a type of tactic that had long been employed by their ancestors on the steppe, and one that they adapted for use on the grand stage of Asia to devastating effect.

The Mongols built only one major city– Karakorum, the Mongol capitol in the heart of Mongolia. They created no monuments, no sculptures, no art. From ancient times the residents of the steppe had lived as nomads– and Mongolian soldiers were as much at home in a saddle as in a tent. They simply didn’t see a need to stay rooted at a single location. The Empire was driven by Mongolian societal traditions that expected a tribal leader to distribute wealth to the other members of his tribe. And that tradition demanded that the Mongols had always to obtain new riches, necessarily acquired through new conquests. Their relentless drive took them from the far reaches of east Asia to the Mediterranean Sea. It wasn’t until the Mongol army was defeated by the Mamluks at the small town of Ayn al-Jalut that the Empire’s expansion was brought to an end.

When the Mongols arrived at a city that they intended to conquer they announced to the city leaders that they could either surrender– or die. It was no idle threat. The Mongols had perfected the art of the siege, and inevitably a city under siege would fall. Once the Mongols had control they assassinated the wealthy oligarchs, appropriated their riches, and demanded absolute loyalty from those who were appointed to rule. The city would then be plundered and riches taken from it would be returned to Mongolia to be redistributed to Mongol society generally.

But the Mongols weren’t just rapacious plunderers. They instituted many innovations across the broad expanse of their Empire, including a postal system and tax incentives that were friendly to business enterprises. They allowed all religions to flourish, so long as religious leaders did not challenge the Mongol right to rule. As the book’s title suggests, the Mongols were to a large extent responsible for ripping the medieval world out of its parochial slumber into a new age of cosmopolitan awareness, international trade, and religious toleration.

This book is very well written, thoroughly researched, and a delight to read. It fills in many gaps I had in my understanding of the Mongols’ place in history. I therefore heartily recommend it to anyone who wishes to know more about one of the most transformational periods of history.

Book Review: How Democracies Die

How Democracies Die, by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, was published in 2018. It’s a broad overview of how democracies have died in countries around the world. The authors are professors of government at Harvard University.

The purpose of the book is to answer the question of whether the United States is in danger of losing its democracy. To that end, in Chapter One the authors list four indicators of authoritarian behavior. These are:

Rejection of democratic rules of the game
Denial of the legitimacy of one’s political opponents
Toleration of, or encouragement of, violence
Readiness to curtail the political liberties of opponents and of the media

They provide many specific examples of these behaviors from the historical record of democracies that died in Europe and in South America, including those of Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, Poland, and Russia.

Some democracies have died in a palace coup, but over the last several decades the chief method of destroying a democracy has been to weaken in from within, as Hitler did. First, win power through normal democratic means: get elected to office. Then, weaken democratic institutions by:

Capturing referees: Buy off, threaten, or exile judges, internal investigators, monitors– anyone in a position to follow behind-the-scenes machinations, expose them to the public, or bring them to an end.

Sidelining key players: Bring anyone with economic power or political capital to heel, through any means available. Allow business interests to thrive– so long as they don’t interfere with politics. Demand loyalty from popular cultural figures and punish those who fail to comply. Pack the courts and government positions with loyalists to ensure that no one contradicts the goals of leadership.

Changing the rules: If the law limits a leader’s term of office, change the law. If appointments to cabinet positions require the consent of Congress, dissolve Congress. If the Constitution limits the power of the Executive, suspend the Constitution.

These stratagems have succeeded in many countries around the world. They together constitute a standard playbook for wannabe dictators the world over. Be patient and follow these simple rules over the course of several years and your victory is assured.

Is America under threat of losing its democracy? The authors show by example from the public record that Donald Trump exhibited all four of the autocratic behaviors they listed in Chapter One while he was running for office in 2016! The warning signs were available then, and they are even more evident now. If Trump were to return to office he has said that he will be a dictator on Day One– but only on Day One. Sorry, but that’s just not how true dictators roll. Toward the end of his first term of office he entertained Michael Flynn’s idea of declaring Martial Law and of seizing voting machines from around the country. He said that he wanted the US military to shoot protesters, and he wanted the Custom Border Patrol to shoot anyone who approaches the southern border. He even talked openly of suspending the Constitution. And of course ever since November 2020 he has yelled that the election was stolen from him. Trump very definitely exhibits all of the characteristics of a dictator. So YES, America could lose its democracy.

In fact there are many powerful interest groups that have openly declared their opposition to democracy. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is an agenda which they and their alliance of more than 80 conservative organizations expect that the next Republican president will enact. Chief among its objectives is the replacement of the “Deep State” with party loyalists. That is the very essence of the authoritarian principle of “Sidelining key players” described above.

The authors of How Democracies Die have released a book titled Tyranny of the Minority in September of 2023. When I’ve had a chance to read it I’ll post a separate review here.

Is fiction superior to history?

Should the education of the young rely on the lessons of history, or should it instead employ fiction to convey the core observations we wish future generations to understand about human behavior?

One could argue that the lessons of history are more real and more true than anything that could be represented in fiction, and that therefore history is clearly superior as a tool for educating the young. On the other hand, a well written novel can convey a story in a manner that is far more immediate and personal, and therefore fiction can appear more directly relevant. Histories, by contrast, are generally long, nuanced, and encumbered by innumerable details that can readily distract the reader. Fiction, therefore, is better than history in the respect that it can tell a story in a clear and direct manner that is readily appreciated by both young and old.

Before we attempt to resolve this dispute we should ask if there are indeed lessons of history, and if so, how does one discover them?

Absolutely history has important lessons to teach us. The moment when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon River was the point from which the Roman Republic would inevitably slide into autocracy. World War I should inform us all about the horrors of modern weapons. The Iraq War of 2003 should serve as a warning not to go to war on the basis of falsified evidence.

How does one discover such lessons? By hard, detailed research. Much of history has been buried in dust and deceit. The job of the historian is essentially that of a journalist– to discover the truths that some people are doing everything they can to hide. The difficulty for the historian is that there are generally no living witnesses to interview. So much of the historian’s task is to piece together a picture of the past from those bits of data that still survive.

Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar tells the story of the assassination of one of the most influential individuals in human history. The speeches by Brutus and Mark Antony of Act III Scene 2 are absolute masterpieces of elocution, regardless of how historically accurate they may be, though they do sound rather stilted to modern ears. Regardless, the play certainly conveys the revulsion that the Roman public must have felt toward Caesar’s murderers, and it realistically portrays the anger that erupted from the aftermath of his death into civil war.

But there is so much more that the play does not relate about the background of Caesar’s rise to power, and about the impact of his assassination on the broader sweep of Roman history. The play begins with Caesar being offered a crown by Mark Antony, which Caesar refuses three times. But Brutus and the other assassins had already made up their minds to kill Caesar. Here is Brutus considering his options in Act II Scene 1:

But ’tis a common proof,
That lowliness is young ambition’s ladder,
Whereto the climber-upward turns his face;
But when he once attains the upmost round.
He then unto the ladder turns his back,
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
By which he did ascend. So Caesar may.
Then, lest he may, prevent. And, since the quarrel
Will bear no colour for the thing he is,
Fashion it thus; that what he is, augmented,
Would run to these and these extremities:
And therefore think him as a serpent’s egg
Which, hatch’d, would, as his kind, grow mischievous,
And kill him in the shell.
Julius Caesar, Act II, Scene 1, William Shakespeare

There is little mention in Brutus’s ruminations of the long sequence of events that preceded his decision. When Caesar crossed the River Rubicon with his one legion of troops, he didn’t simply violate a time honored tradition– he started a civil war. That war created such bitterness that there was from that moment forward little chance of reconciliation. He pursued his primary adversary, Pompey, to Greece where, in 48 BCE, Pompey’s forces were defeated at Pharsalus. In 46 BCE Caesar defeated Pompey’s supporters, under the leadership of Scipio, at Thapsus in what is now Tunisia. And finally Caesar defeated Pompey’s eldest son Gnaeus Pompeius in 45 BCE at the Battle of Munda in what is now southern Spain. In honor of his victory at Munda he was appointed dictator for 10 years.

On return to Rome he worked tirelessly to diminish the power of the other institutions of Roman authority. He packed the Senate with his own supporters, effectively making that body a submissive advocate for his own objectives. He increased his own powers. When tribunes attempted to obstruct his agenda, they were brought before the Senate and were stripped of their offices. And he pushed through legislation that imposed term limits on governors, to insure that none of them would be able to ascend through the ranks as he had done.

And yet the other elements of Roman society and government were willing participants in Caesar’s ascent. In 49 BCE, Caesar was appointed dictator. (He resigned after 11 days.) In 48 BCE he was reappointed dictator for an unspecified period. After his victory at Munda he was again appointed dictator for a term of 10 years. Also in 48 BCE he was given the powers of a tribune permanently. And in February 44 BCE he was named dictator for life.

Caesar’s assassins intended to put an end to Caesar’s ambitions and thereby to preserve the Roman Republic. But in fact the longer term outcome of their plot was literally the opposite of what they had intended. After yet another lengthy civil war Gaius Octavius emerged as the sole victor and authority, and Rome was transformed into an empire that bore little resemblance to the Republic it replaced.

None of this nuance is mentioned in Shakespeare’s play. So is the play something that the young should be encouraged to read? Well, first we should acknowledge that fiction is entertainment first and foremost. It may in addition provide some life lessons, but that is not a requirement. Readers are perfectly entitled to read works of fiction with little thought about what, if anything, might be learned from their reading.

In this specific case, Shakespeare’s play is clearly intended to inform the viewer about the events of March 15, 44 BCE, one of the most momentous days in history. And as it does an excellent job of portraying the emotions that raged through the Roman people it is certainly a worthy study for anyone hoping to understand those tumultuous times. But I don’t see how it is possible to fully appreciate the motivations of the conspirators or of Mark Antony without having a broader understanding of the events that led up to Caesar’s assassination. Those events are complex, nuanced, and not fully understood, even today.

The longer term consequences of his assassination encapsulate the most important lesson of Caesar’s life and times– that whenever the transfer of power is anything other than peaceful and ordered, society will likely veer toward authoritarianism in its attempt to avoid chaos. That is a lesson that people in any society, in any time, and under any system of government can benefit from learning.

So I would recommend that this play be included in the syllabus of a high school literature class only if it is accompanied by an extensive history of the broader context of the times in which Caesar rose to power. And it should be followed with a discussion of the longer term consequences to the Republic. The evolution from Republic to empire gave rise to the imbalance of Tiberius, Nero, Caligula, and Commodus. And that imbalance led inexorably to the death of the Empire and the centuries of chaos that ensued.

In this broader context the lines between fiction and history blur. History provides the hard evidence, the factual basis for our visions of the past; and fiction can turn those hard facts into raw emotion that makes history come alive. These are dual elements that can work together to provide a broader understanding of the past, and which together can convey the lessons of human behavior that we wish future generations to learn.