History is filled with demagogues whose speeches end with the pronouncement, "we must do something, and we must do it now!" Not only do such leaders demand change like lightening and thunder, but they hold out the promise of a utopian paradise, if only the crowd will comply with their demand for sudden revision of institutions and practices. If such demagogues survive the inevitable collapse of their plans, their response is to explain that still further and more radical changes are needed, and then all will be well. Herbert Spencer explains these twin evils, sudden change and utopian expectations:
A fundamental error pervading the thinking of nearly all parties, political and social, is that evils admit of immediate and radical remedies. “If you will but do this, the mischief will be prevented.” “Adopt my plan and the suffering will disappear.” “The corruption will unquestionably be cured by enforcing this measure.” Everywhere one meets with beliefs, expressed or implied, of these kinds. They are all ill-founded. It is possible to remove causes which intensify the evils; it is possible to change the evils from one form into another; and it is possible, and very common, to exacerbate the evils by the efforts made to prevent them; but anything like immediate cure is impossible. In the course of thousands of years mankind have, by multiplication, been forced out of that original savage state in which small numbers supported themselves on wild food, into the civilized state in which the food required for supporting great numbers can be got only by continuous labour. The nature required for this last mode of life is widely different from the nature required for the first; and long-continued pains have to be passed through in re-moulding the one into the other. Misery has necessarily to be borne by a constitution out of harmony with its conditions; and a constitution inherited from primitive men is out of harmony with the conditions imposed on existing men. Hence it is impossible to establish forthwith a satisfactory social state. No such nature as that which has filled Europe with millions of armed men, here eager for conquest and there for revenge — no such nature as that which prompts the nations called Christian to vie with one another in filibustering expeditions all over the world, regardless of the claims of aborigines, while their tens of thousands of priests of the religion of love look on approvingly — no such nature as that which, in dealing with weaker races, goes beyond the primitive rule of life for life, and for one life takes many lives — no such nature, I say, can, by any device, be framed into a harmonious community. The root of all well-ordered social action is a sentiment of justice, which at once insists on personal freedom and is solicitous for the like freedom of others; and there at present exists but a very inadequate amount of this sentiment.
Spencer examines the analogy between adjusting purely material systems, like chemical equations or machines made of steel, and proposed reforms to human society. In the case of something as objective as gears and cogs, one imagines that outcomes are predictable and reliable. Yet patents are issued by the dozen for devices which fail, and scrapyards are filled with worthless prototypes. How much more complicated, then, to tinker with human relations and the institutions of civilization? How can one confidently expect miraculous results from hypotheses constructed on speculation? Yet that is the essence of many proposed reforms.
What, then, shall we say of these schemes which have to do not with dead matters and forces, but with complex living organisms working in ways less readily foreseen, and which involve the cooperation of multitudes of such organisms? Even the units out of which this re-arranged body politic is to be formed are often incomprehensible. Everyone is from time to time surprised by others’ behaviour, and even by the deeds of relatives who are best known to him. Seeing, then, how uncertainly anyone can foresee the actions of an individual, how can he with any certainty foresee the operation of a social structure? He proceeds on the assumption that all concerned will judge rightly and act fairly — will think as they ought to think, and act as they ought to act; and he assumes this regardless of the daily experiences which show him that men do neither the one nor the other, and forgetting that the complaints he makes against the existing system show his belief to be that men have neither the wisdom nor the rectitude which his plan requires them to have.
A clear example is provided by the French Revolution. New forms of government and of society were designed in the abstract purity of thought, without any practical experience. These bizarre arrangements, repugnant to ordinary human sensibilities, had to be enforced with bloody and cruel imposition. When such plans failed, their designers were sent to guillotine, and the next wave of would-be social engineers came forth with what they held to be not only a better, but the best plan, oblivious of the predictability which would bring them, too, to the guillotine. Thus radical attempts to fix injustice finally create more injustice.
Paper constitutions raise smiles on the faces of those who have observed their results; and paper social systems similarly affect those who have contemplated the available evidence. How little the men who wrought the French revolution and were chiefly concerned in setting up the new governmental apparatus, dreamt that one of the early actions of this apparatus would be to behead them all!
When "paper constitutions" are purely abstract hypotheses, they are worthless, or nearly so. But when they are the fruit of accumulated experience - when they are produced by the wisdom of several generations - then they are distilled from empirical data, and are the blossom of a tradition which does not enslave, but which rather organically grows. The word 'tradition' in the most pejorative sense can be thought to refer to that which binds and restricts with a mechanistic legalism from the past. But in the best sense, the word 'tradition' is both a vital seed and a fertile ground, bringing forth innovation in a process which incorporates the wisdom of the past and the opportunities of the future.
In this light we see, then, how a magnificent flower of liberty, which resulted in the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, in the passage of the 13th and 14th and 15th amendments to the United States Constitution, in the neglected fact that women were given the right to vote in American States and territories starting in 1869, and in the passage of the 19th amendment which confirmed that practice decades later, - we see how this flower blossomed, rooted as it was in the Magna Carta of 1215, in the English Bill of Rights of 1689, and in the Declaration of Independence of 1776. These liberties did not suddenly burst forth ex nihilo, but rather grew. Their durability, in contrast to the fleeting nightmare which was the French Revolution, manifests the stability of their rootedness.
When legislation is proposed as "urgent," one must hesitate. No passage of a new education policy, energy policy, fiscal policy, or other proposal is so pressing that it is to be viewed as an emergency. In real life, real people are constantly making numerous decisions in real time. This ensures a responsive and timely way to adjust to circumstances when speedy responses are needed. A legislature is not real life, its members are functioning as parliamentarians, not as individual private citizens, and its legislations cannot be, and do not need to be, in real time. Haste makes waste. Legislation passed in haste is soon regretted.
