Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Why, nemo. Or, to speak more exactly, in our country today the question is misplaced and so can beget no answer. 55 Quite in the Machiavellian republican tradition, our people accept the care of lawgivers who are not them: Founders who lay down the country's basic laws and (or including) high judges who construe the laws and maybe from time to time take such liberties with them as may be required (the judges believe) for their preservation and refreshment. Ultimately, Americans do not demand to be their own rulers.
Acceptance of such arrangements may not be the only rational and reasonable choice open to a democratically and constitutionally minded people. That is a matter under debate. 56 On the evidence of Bush v. Gore and its aftermath, it is the choice made by Americans, at least those of our generation. We may not all like this fact or feel proud of it. But why, after all, should anyone here and now take Machiavelli to be worth dredging up, long after his death and that of his particular romanist-inspired political ideas, except as possibly a disturber of complacency and cant? Of course, it is hard to come face-to-face with one's own cant.
An earlier version of this chapter was delivered as the 2001 Colin Thomas Ruagh O'Fallon Lecture, University of Oregon, April 9, 2001.
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Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication information:
Book title: The Longest Night: Polemics and Perspectives on Election 2000.
Contributors: Arthur J. Jacobson - Editor, Michel Rosenfeld - Editor.
Publisher: University of California Press.
Place of publication: Berkeley, CA.
Publication year: 2002.
Page number: 271.
This material is protected by copyright and, with the exception of fair use, may not be further copied, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means.
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