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。

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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

James Madison traveled to Philadelphia in 1787 with Athens on his mind. He had spent the year before the Constitutional Convention reading two trunkfuls of books on the history of failed democracies, sent to him from Paris by Thomas Jef erson. Madison was determined,in drafting the Constitution, to avoid the fate of those “ancient and modern confederacies,” which he believed had succumbed to rule by demagogues and mobs.

1787年赶往费城的詹姆斯·麦迪逊 (译者注：James Madison, 美国国父之一，美国宪法主起草人，第4任美国总统) ，心中想着的都是雅典。麦迪逊下定决心，要在起草宪法时避免重蹈这些“古代和现代邦联”的覆辙，他相信这些曾经伟大的国度，最终都败落在煽动家 (demagogues) 和暴民集团 (mob) 的统治之下。

Madison’s reading convinced him that direct democracies—such as the assembly in Athens, where 6,000 citizens were required for a quorum—unleashed populist passions that overcame the cool, deliberative reason prized above all by Enlightenment thinkers. “In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever characters composed, passion never fails to wrest the sceptre from reason,” he argued in The Federalist Papers, the essays he wrote (along with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay) to build support for the ratii cation of the Constitution. “Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.”

遍览群书的麦迪逊深信，正是直接民主制度 (direct democracies) ——例如雅典的公民大会，需要6000名公民才能达到议事的最低出席人数要求 (quorum) ——所释放的民粹主义激情，蒙蔽了启蒙思想家们所褒扬的冷静审慎的理性。在他与亚历山大·汉密尔顿 (Alexander Hamilton) 和约翰·杰伊 (John Jay) 共同起草、为美国宪法奠定了理论基础的《联邦党人文集》(The Federalist Papers) 中，他写道：

在所有这些林林总总的集会中，无论参与者有着怎样的品格，激情总是会从理性手中篡夺权杖. 即便把每个雅典公民都变成苏格拉底，每次雅典公民大会最后还是会变成一群暴民的集会。

彭丽芳

Madison and Hamilton believed that Athenian citizens had been swayed by crude and ambitious politicians who had played on their emotions. The demagogue Cleon was said to have seduced the assembly into being more hawkish toward Athens’s opponents in the Peloponnesian War, and even the reformer Solon canceled debts and debased the currency. In Madison’s view, history seemed to be repeating itself in America. After the Revolutionary War, he had observed in Massachusetts “a rage for paper money, for abolition of debts, for an equal division of property.” That populist rage had led to Shays’s Rebellion, which pitted a band of debtors against their creditors.

麦迪逊和汉密尔顿认为，雅典公民早已被那些操纵他们情绪的野心勃勃的政治家所左右。据说，煽动家克里昂 (Cleon) 在伯罗奔尼撒战争中诱使公民大会对雅典的对手采取更加鹰派的政策，甚至连改革家梭伦 (Solon) 也通过在大会上的雄辩，废除了全雅典的债务 (译者注：当选执政官的梭伦废除了雅典以人身偿还债务的旧习，不准债主纳借贷者为奴抵债，且恢复了过往被纳为奴者的自由) 并令货币贬值。在麦迪逊看来，历史似乎正在美国重演。独立战争结束之后，他在马萨诸塞州亲眼目睹了“对发行纸币、废除债务以及平等分割财产的愤怒。”这股民粹主义的愤怒情绪导致了谢司暴动 (Shays' Rebellion)，实质上酿成了债务人与他们的债权人之间的武装冲突。

Madison referred to impetuous mobs as factions, which he defined in “Federalist No. 10” as a group “united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” Factions arise, he believed, when public opinion forms and spreads quickly. But they can dissolve if the public is given time and space to consider long-term interests rather than short-term gratification.

麦迪逊把这些浮躁的暴民集团称为派系 (factions)，并在联邦党人文集第10篇 (Federalist No. 10) 中将之定义为“因一些共同的激情或利益冲动聚众结社，并对其他公民的权利或整个社会的永久和总体利益造成危害”的团体。他认为，当公众舆论迅速形成并传播时，派系便涌现出来；而当公众有时间和空间考虑长期利益而非短期所得时，派系就会随之消散。

彭丽芳

To prevent factions from distorting public policy and threatening liberty, Madison resolved to exclude the people from a direct role in government. “A pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction,” Madison wrote in “Federalist No. 10.” The Framers designed the American constitutional system not as a direct democracy but as a representative republic, where enlightened delegates of the people would serve the public good. They also built into the Constitution a series of cooling mechanisms intended to inhibit the formulation of passionate factions, to ensure that reasonable majorities would prevail.

为了防止派系斗争扭曲公共政策并威胁自由，麦迪逊决定将人民排除在政府的直接组成部分之外。麦迪逊在联邦党人文集第10篇中写道：一个纯粹的民主，我指的是一个由少数公民组成、并由他们亲自组建和管理政府的社会，无法找到根治派系祸端的良方。制宪者们 (Framers) 并没有将美国的宪法体系设计为一套直接民主制度，而是组建为一个代议制的共和国 (representative republic)，通过开明的民选代表为公共利益服务。他们还在宪法中加入了一系列冷却机制，旨在抑制激情派系的形成，以确保理性的多数派占据上风。（译者注：一个极富争议且常遭误解的机制，就是 filibuster “冗长发言”，也称“程序性阻挠议事”，是美国参议院的独特章程，少数派议员可以藉此阻止“多数派的暴政”，逼迫多数派改期讨论立法，需要3/5多数才能终结辩论）


The people would directly elect the members of the House of Representatives, but the popular passions of the House would cool in the “Senatorial saucer,” as George Washington purportedly called it: The Senate would comprise natural aristocrats chosen by state legislators rather than elected by the people. And rather than directly electing the chief executive, the people would vote for wise electors—that is, propertied white men—who would ultimately choose a president of the highest character and most discerning judgment. The separation of powers, meanwhile, would prevent any one branch of government from acquiring too much authority. The further division of power between the federal and state governments would ensure that none of the three branches of government could claim that it alone represented the people.


人们可以直接选举众议院议员，但众议院的民众激情会在“参议院的餐盘” ("Senatorial saucer"，语出美国开国元勋乔治·华盛顿) 中冷却下来：参议院将由州立法委员们选出的自然贵族组成，而不是通过人民选举产生。选择国家元首的方式也并非直接票选，而是先由人民投票给明智的选举人——在当时意味着有私产的白人——并由他们最终选出一位品格最为高尚、判断力最为果决的总统。与此同时，三权分立 (separation of powers) 将阻止任何一支政府部门获得过多的权力。联邦政府和州政府之间的进一步分权，确保三支政府部门（译者注：即立法权、行政权、司法权）中没有一个能够声称只有自己代表人民。

彭丽芳

According to classical theory, republics could exist only in relatively small territories, where citizens knew one another personally and could assemble face-to-face. Plato would have capped the number of citizens capable of self-government at 5,040. Madison, however, thought Plato’s small-republic thesis was wrong. He believed that the ease of communication in small republics was precisely what had allowed hastily formed majorities to oppress minorities. “Extend the sphere” of a territory, Madison wrote, “and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more dii cult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other.” Madison predicted that America’s vast geography and large population would prevent passionate mobs from mobilizing. Their dangerous energy would burn out before it could inflame others.

根据古典理论，共和国只能存在于疆域相对较小的地区，在这些地方，公民个人之间能够互相熟悉，并可以面对面地召开集会。柏拉图会将自治政府的公民人数上限设置在5040人。然而，麦迪逊认为柏拉图的小共和国论点是错误的。他认为，小共和国的所谓交流便利，正是令草草形成的多数派能够压迫少数派的原因。麦迪逊写道：

扩大（共和国）疆域的范围，就会令政党和利益的多样性大大提高；这样一来总体当中的多数派形成共同动机、侵犯其他公民的权利的可能性就会降低；或者即便存在这样一个共同动机，也能阻止所有受到这一动机煽动的人发现他们所能动用的暴力，令其群体性的统一行动变得更加困难。麦迪逊预测，美国庞大的地域和人口规模可以阻止激情暴民的串联动员。他们危险的能量会在可能煽动其他人之前消散。

Of course, at the time of the country’s founding, new media technologies, including what Madison called “a circulation of newspapers through the entire body of the people,” were already closing the communication gaps among the dispersed citizens of America. The popular press of the 18th and early 19th centuries was highly partisan— the National Gazette, where Madison himself published his thoughts on the media, was, since its founding in 1791, an organ of the Democratic- Republican Party and often viciously attacked the Federalists.

当然，在这个国家成立之初，新生的媒体技术，包括麦迪逊所述的“报纸在整个人民群体当中流通”，已经在缩小分散在美国各地的公民之间的沟通差距。18世纪和19世纪初的大众媒体是高度党派化的——刊载麦迪逊本人思想、成立于1791年的《国家公报》(National Gazette)，就是民主共和党 (译者注：Democratic-Republican Party，1792由麦迪逊和杰弗逊创建的美国主要政党，反对汉密尔顿领导的新联邦党，后一度执掌国会，1824年因党内政治路线发生分裂，是现代民主党和共和党的共同前身) 的一个宣传机关，经常恶毒地攻击联邦党人。

彭丽芳

But newspapers of the time were also plat- forms for elites to make thoughtful arguments at length, and Madison believed that the enlightened journalists he called the “literati” would ultimately promote the “commerce of ideas.” He had faith that citizens would take the time to read complicated arguments (including the essays that became The Federalist Papers), allowing levelheaded reason to spread slowly across the new republic.

但当时的报纸仍是精英们通过长篇大论进行思想碰撞的平台，而麦迪逊认为，他称之为“文人” ("literati") 的开明记者最终会促进“思想市场” ("commerce of ideas") 的运作。他相信，公民会花时间去阅读复杂的论点（包括日后集结为《联邦党人文集》的这些论文），使不盲从的理性能够在新共和国的疆域内缓慢传播开去。


JAMES MADISON DIED AT MONTPELIER, his Virginia estate, in 1836, one of the few Founding Fathers to survive into the democratic age of Andrew Jackson. Madison supported Jackson’s efforts to preserve the Union against nullification efforts in the South but was alarmed by his populist appeal in the West. What would Madison make of American democracy today, an era in which Jacksonian populism looks restrained by comparison? Madison’s worst fears of mob rule have been realized—and the cooling mechanisms he designed to slow down the formation of impetuous majorities have broken.

詹姆斯·麦迪逊于1836年在他的弗吉尼亚庄园蒙彼利埃 (Montpelier) 中逝世，也让他成为为数不多的能够活着看到安德鲁·杰克逊 (译者注：Andrew Jackson，第7任美国总统，现代民主党的创始人) 开创的民主时代的美国国父之一。麦迪逊支持杰克逊保护联邦免受南方分裂的努力，但对他在中西部挑起的民粹主义思潮感到震惊。若是麦迪逊在世，看到今天美国民主的发展令杰克逊时代的民粹主义都相形见绌，会作何感想？麦迪逊对暴民统治的最大恐惧已经成真——他设计的放缓浮躁多数派步伐的冷却机制，已然失效

彭丽芳

The polarization of Congress, reflecting an electorate that has not been this divided since about the time of the Civil War, has led to ideological warfare between parties that directly channels the passions of their most extreme constituents and donors— precisely the type of factionalism the Founders abhorred.

国会的两极分化，反映了自内战时期以来最为分裂的选民群体，所带来的各党派之间的意识形态战争，并直接向政坛传导了两党选民和捐助者当中最极端份子的激情——而这恰恰是被国父们所摒弃的派系主义 (factionalism)。


The executive branch, meanwhile, has been transformed by the spectacle of tweeting presidents, though the presidency had broken from its constitutional restraints long before the advent of social media. During the election of 1912, the progressive populists Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson insisted that the president derived his authority directly from the people. Since then, the office has moved in precisely the direction the Founders had hoped to avoid: Presidents now make emotional appeals, communicate directly with voters, and pander to the mob.

与此同时，行政部门已经因推特治国的奇观发生了转变，不过早在社交媒体出现之前，总统一职就已经摆脱了宪法设下的限制。在1912年总统大选中，激进的民粹主义者西奥多·罗斯福 (Theodore Roosevelt，第26任美国总统) 和伍德罗·威尔逊 (Woodrow Wilson，第28任美国总统) 坚持认为总统的权力直接来源于人民。自那之后，美国总统的作为就始终与国父的期待背道而驰：时至今日，总统会向公众提出感情化的诉求，与选民直接进行沟通，并迎合暴民的所思所欲。

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。

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

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

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。

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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

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。

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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

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。