Happy Election Day! Broadly speaking, there are two ways of thinking about democracy. The first is moral, that it is an absolute good in and of itself. “Government of, by and for the people.” This is the view celebrated when losing candidates bow to “The will of the people.” And they are indeed giving up something tangible — power, office, influence, privilege, etc — in return for an abstract good. The practice of democracy requires that sacrifice, and — as we have seen — can’t function without it. “Democracy depends on the consent of the losers.” — Uri Friedman. The other way of looking at it is utilitarian. That is: democracy is, despite its flaws and inefficiencies, the best way of ensuring the most tangible benefits to the greatest number of people. The Declaration itself moves quickly from a moral argument — “all men are created equal…” …to a utilitarian one: “…. That to secure these rights [of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness] Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Lincoln, our greatest democrat, stressed this idea in his First Inaugural: “By the frame of the Government under which we live this same people have wisely given their public servants but little power for mischief…While the people retain their virtue and vigilance no Administration …can very seriously injure the Government in the short space of four years.” The Framers’ great insight, built on Enlightenment philosophy and observation of all of human history to that point, is that any concentration of power in the hands of the few will, eventually, work to the detriment of the many. And rather than hope that the ruler of the moment might be benevolent… …they distributed power equally to “We the people” — however cramped and blinkered their conception was of who counted as people. I have come around to the view that this is more important than the moral argument. There is no problem, no challenge, no inequity, no injustice, that can’t be solved — however slowly and imperfectly in practice — with democracy. There are very few that can be solved without it. Go vote.