The limits of compromise

Tipping Points

We have reached a critical point in our history, not unlike the one we faced in the decade before the Civil War. Pessimists might agree that these critical moments in history, while they happen often enough, are not unrelated, rather they build upon each other reaching a crescendo. The Civil War is a prime example of the result of a series of critical moments that led to a tipping point. Slavery was at the center of the dispute between the north and south. The war was actually a fait accompli that began with a series of weak and flawed compromises that merely put off the inevitable. The three-fifths compromise that survived the often raucous Constitutional Convention was perhaps the granddaddy of the series of agreements reached by northern and southern politicians that settled little and created new and bigger hurdles down the road. The Missouri Compromise (1820) and the Compromise of 1850 actually created the environment for the southern states to secede because the issue being debated had no middle ground.

The racist three-fifths false compromise fails on the grounds that one cannot subdivide individuals-their rights or their humanity-by agreement, especially since they were not included as part of the compromise. It allowed the counting of slaves for the purposes of apportionment:

When he presented his plan for the frame of government to the Convention on its first day, Charles Pinckney of South Carolina proposed that for the purposes of apportionment, a “House of Delegates” be determined through the apportionment of “one Member for every thousand Inhabitants 3/5 of Blacks included.”[8][9] The Convention unanimously accepted the principle that representation in the House of Representatives would be in proportion to the relative state populations, but it initially rejected his proposal regarding apportionment of the black population along with the rest of his plan. However, since slaves could not vote, leaders in slave states would thus have the benefit of increased representation in the House and the Electoral College.

False Compromise

It may seem “democratic” to settle disputes by finding a middle ground, but some issues cannot be reduced to compromise, truth is never negotiable. Justice can never be achieved by a toss of a coin. This is the basis of the “Argument to Moderation (argumentum ad temperantiam)” fallacy:

-also known as false compromise, argument from middle ground, and the golden mean fallacy-is the fallacy that the truth is a compromise between two opposing positions.
An example of a fallacious use of the argument to moderation would be to regard two opposed arguments-one person saying that the sky is blue, while another claims that the sky is in fact yellow-and conclude that the truth is that the sky is green. While green is the colour created by combining blue and yellow, therefore being a compromise between the two positions, the sky is obviously not green, demonstrating that taking the middle ground of two positions does not always lead to the truth.

A series of false compromises, like the ones that led to the Civil War, not only fail due to their inconsistencies but also exacerbate the disputes they intended to solve.

The Biden Administration may have inherited a similar circumstance. Some issues have no middle ground, Voting rights, civil rights, and abortion rights are not amenable to a “golden mean” solution. The excessive gun violence so often overlooked by second amendment advocates had long lost the middle ground to the mindless random slaughter of school children. Disputants involved in the arguments hold that their positions are equally legitimate while logic and reason dictate that rational arbitrators like the courts could not be expected to take a side on truth.

Like the failed compromises of the past, the Biden administration should be wary of attempts to “compromise” on issues that are the bedrock to democracy. The calls for bipartisanship of the Manchins and Sinemas of the party only serve to kick the real issue of governance down the block a bit. History’s lessons are ignored at our peril. A 2011 lecture by University College London professor, Dr. Adam Smith, asks the question “Did democracy cause the American Civil War?” In it Smith points out the residual effects on the United States of the Compromise of 1787 — -the agreement which broke the logjam between small and large states holding back the adoption of a constitution after the failure of the Articles of Confederation:

Dr Smith’s thesis was that the very nature of American democracy increased the likelihood of war.

Slaveholders had rights not enjoyed in Europe or Brazil via a federal constitution that gave them advantages of representation. Democratic politics also gave them the capacity to build popular support, so that, although they were always a minority, they dominated Congress and were frequently elected President.

— Ben Stevens H P Stevens,

Echoes?

We are again living through the residue of that agreement with undemocratic constructs like the bicameral Congress which favors smaller, less populated states by according them equal representation in the Senate and Electoral College. Today, a minority party, out of power in both the House and Senate, has been able to deny the will of a majority of American voters. This vocal minority has been augmented by the militant right-wing gangs whose lust for power is being aided by protocols designed to promote the democratic principles of fairness and justice. Compromise has its limits. Just as there can be no rational compromise with those who deny climate change, refuse Covid vaccinations, and support violence to achieve their ends, there can be little accommodation in a democracy with autocrats.

For those in the Republican Party who believe that the white supremacists, Nazis, anti-Semites, and assorted deplorables can be mollified with a place at their table or with the half-dividends of a compromise, the past is prologue. Over one hundred and fifty years ago there was another war brought on by the failures of compromise with the soul of America in jeopardy. It doesn’t take an A-student in history to understand that more than the Union, more than the North and Lincoln, America won the Civil War. It was a bruised and bloody — and a woefully imperfect America-that prevailed. This 2020 presidential election was one that many perceived to again hold the soul of America in the balance. We have once again reached the end of compromise as darker forces not unlike an earlier army of traitorous confederates flout law and reason in the pursuit of dominion.

DNA

Maybe democracy holds within its DNA the gene bearing its own destruction-a recessive gene that reappears at inconvenient times when stars align and the will is weak:

… the 1850s saw the founding of the Republican Party — a self-styled ‘anti-party’ that was “fresh from the loins of the people”. The Tea Party anyone?

Overall, by 1860/61, there was huge pressure on politicians on both sides to accept war rather than to compromise — with correspondents imploring them to go to war.

— Ben Stevens H P Stevens​​​​​​​

Then, again, maybe these are the tests that democracy must occasionally pass as it reinvents itself and cures its imperfections. After all, the 18th-century marvel that stunned the known world was one that declined to compromise and refused accommodation with a despot from afar and several decades later from confederate +insurrectionists from within. Is it possible that we are being asked to do the same again?

After all, the sky is not green, and red and blue do not necessarily yield peace.

Originally published at https://vincerizzo.substack.com on November 15, 2021.