When They Go Low, We Go High

by Philip Collins

  Liberal democracy is a series of failures, each one slightly better than the last. It can be hard to make that sound as dramatic as the populist’s utopian insistence that we can make it to a perfect island in the ocean in a single leap. If the passion appears to be spent, if the extraordinary hopes that were once embodied in democratic politics now seem to be fraying, this is the moment to recall that liberal democracy was born as an insurgent idea. It was the utopia of its day, and the case in its favour, expressed in some of the finest words ever spoken, embodied the hope that tomorrow would exceed today.

  We need to make the case again that Cicero inaugurates, for liberty and justice in the republic as a superior state to the rule of the demagogue. We need the uplifting words of Thomas Jefferson to maintain that the beauty of politics is its capacity to restrain men from injuring one another and that this is the only way to protect the rights of minorities. We need the retort to the populist that Abraham Lincoln supplies. There is no pithier expression of a fine idea in the archive of speech than Lincoln’s imperishable formula of government of the people, for the people and by the people. We need to take heed of John F. Kennedy’s warning that good government is done with the people rather than to the people. And we have Barack Obama’s reminder, from not so long ago, that when hope connects to power it is still possible to be hopeful about America, and, by extension, about democracies the world over. Cicero, Jefferson, Lincoln, Kennedy, Obama – all, in their way, speak on behalf of representing the popular will through democratic institutions. They describe a utopia that is the best possible in the circumstances and they do so in words that yield to none in clarity, lucidity or beauty.

  The utopia of the people that is described in democratic rhetoric is not a state of final perfection. It is an endless process rather than a truth out of Pandora’s box. It is, as Richard Rorty writes in Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, ‘the hope that life will eventually be freer, less cruel, more leisured, richer in goods and experiences, not just for our descendants but for everyone’s descendants’. The conversation will never end, as the solution to one problem begets another. The purpose of democratic government is forever to adjudicate between rival expressions of reasonable desire. The calls for unity made by Jefferson, Lincoln, Kennedy and Obama are far more than political platitudes. They are the deepest wisdom of political thought.

  These speeches communicate a spirit too. They are not dry political theories. They are words written to cajole, persuade and inspire, words that articulate the principle of hope which was described by Ernst Bloch in the book of that name as follows: ‘Hope, superior to fear, is neither passive like the latter, nor locked into nothingness.’ Populism, which trades on – relies upon – fear, is locked into nothingness. Camus’s brilliant observation bears repeating. The democrat is the one who knows he does not know everything. Only the populist utopian thinks he has all the answers. He promises an odyssey to utopia but he is going nowhere.

  Being set on the idea

  Of getting to Atlantis,

  You have discovered of course

  Only the Ship of Fools is

  Making the voyage this year.

  Auden is right. We must not embark on the ship of fools.

  2

  WAR:

  THROUGH POLITICS PEACE WILL PREVAIL

  So Little Masonry

  In its final version it is one of the imperishable rhetorical classics, made all the more memorable for its echo of Shakespeare’s line from Henry V: ‘We few, we happy few, we band of brothers’. But it has a less distinguished history. In a by-election campaign in Oldham in 1899 the 24-year-old Liberal candidate, who was fighting the first political campaign of his career, had said, in all gravity: ‘Never before were there so many people in England, and never before have they had so much to eat.’ Nine years later the colonial under-secretary gave a speech on a projected irrigation scheme in Africa in which he said: ‘Nowhere else in the world could so enormous a mass of water be held up by so little masonry.’

  The name of the writer and speaker of these words in Oldham and in Africa was Winston Churchill, and neither of these were his finest hour. But then, suddenly, in August 1940, in a panegyric to the Battle of Britain fighter pilots who truly had stood between the nation and the barbarians, Churchill declared: ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed, by so many, to so few.’ In its ultimate, eternal permutation it has a classic simplicity and an effortless flow that seem inevitable. Even at this distance in time it is still moving to say it out loud. For Churchill, the moment finally ascended to the height of the words and the effect is mesmeric.

  Rhetoric cannot work when the phrases are too lavish for their topic. But there is no more important subject for the democratic politician than the coming or the conduct of war. The preservation of order is the first responsibility of the state, and so to launch a nation into war is the gravest thing a leader will ever do. There is no greater burden of office and, correspondingly, in the elevated words of Pericles, David Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson, Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan we hear some of the finest rhetoric in the canon. When the threat is as grave as war, the words must measure up to the task.

  This is where the tradition of rhetoric began – with a eulogy to the lost sons of Athens. In the Funeral Oration, Pericles tried to console the bereaved with the argument that voluntary sacrifice in battle is the highest form of civic duty. We have seen that Lincoln used the same argument at Gettysburg in 1863 in his eulogy to those slain in the American Civil War: ‘from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion’.

  We will see too that in a democracy war needs a purpose beyond the cessation of hostility. The speeches in this chapter are also about the purpose to which peace must be turned. Pericles offers a eulogy to democracy as much as to the departed. Lloyd George defines the land fit for heroes. Wilson imagines a global alliance of democratic nations. Churchill offers blood, sweat, toil and tears to see off the tyrant and Reagan stands to speak on the right side of the Berlin Wall which marks off the free world. In all instances, the war is being fought for a noble purpose, not merely to keep the enemy at bay, but to deepen the commitment to a free nation.

  The original casus belli – that the nation was in peril – is never enough. The war has to be fought for better politics. The social legislation of the Labour Attlee government between 1945 and 1951 acquired its moral force from the aftermath of war. The conflict itself and its immediately succeeding years should be seen as a single event. The rhetorical work for what comes later begins during the war itself. War has always been, strangely enough, one of the ways in which democracies wield the resources to progress. Rhetoric that defends the idea of the people is the way that democracies heal their internal rifts. Rhetoric that commends the idea of the people against predators is the democratic response to threat. At a moment of peril the speech, the means by which the leader inspires the nation to withstand assault and live to fight another day, is vital. There is no other time when so much rests on so few words.

  PERICLES

  Funeral Oration

  Athens

  Winter, c.431 BC

  Pericles (494–429 BC) stands at the front, if not necessarily at the top, of the history of rhetoric. Thucydides, who bequeaths us our knowledge of Pericles, rated him the finest speaker of his time, one of the few men in whose hands democracy, an otherwise dangerous creed, was safe. The Funeral Oration is the source of Pericles’ reputation as, in a phrase from Thucydides, ‘the first man among the Athenians’.

  A general, an orator and a patron of the arts, Pericles was the guiding spirit of Athens from c.460 to 429 BC, the period in which the city was rebuilt after the destruction of war with Persia. The Parthenon was built on the Acropolis and Athens was established as the artistic and cultural centre of the Hellenic world. Pericles was a reformer. His introduction of payment for public service permitted many more members of the Athenian demos
to take part in public affairs. But the judgement of Thucydides describes the paradox of Pericles as a democrat. Pericles is not the kind of democrat who would be so defined according to a modern sensibility. His very pre-eminence has a monarchical aspect in tension with the spirit of democratic politics. So does his support for Athenian imperialism and his proposal that citizenship should be limited only to those who could show that both parents had been citizens. We also need to be careful not to make a fetish of the word democracy. Citizenship in ancient Greece was denied to women and slaves, and not all free men had a vote in the assembly. When Pericles invokes the idea of the people he does not mean to include them all, or even half of them.

  It is to Thucydides that we owe the text of the Funeral Oration. It is all but certain that this extract from the History of the Peloponnesian War differs from the words Pericles actually spoke. Quite how much the two diverge we cannot know, despite healthy scholarly disputes about the issue. It is likely that Thucydides was a witness to the speech, but he casts doubt on his own fidelity to the original when he writes: ‘I have found it difficult to remember the precise words used in the speeches which I listened to myself … so my method has been, while keeping as closely as possible to the general sense of the words that were actually used, to make the speakers say what, in my opinion, was called for by each situation.’ What we have is Thucydides remembering, no doubt improvising, perhaps improving, Pericles.

  We can be more certain that the oration was given at the end of the first year of the Peloponnesian War (c.431 BC) to honour the fallen, as part of the annual public funeral for the state’s war dead. Rather like Donald Trump today, Thucydides makes much of the size of the audience, perhaps to stress the vital importance of the occasion. It is also recorded that Pericles delivered the speech on a rostrum built high, so that his declamation could carry. It was to be his final testament as an orator: not long after the Funeral Oration a plague swept the city and took Pericles with it. His words, though, have lived on, and as we have seen, their echoes ring in the speeches of American presidents in a new republic more than two millennia later.

  Most of those who have spoken here before me have commended the lawgiver who added this oration to our other funeral customs. It seemed to them a worthy thing that such an honour should be given at their burial to the dead who have fallen on the field of battle. But I should have preferred that, when men’s deeds have been brave, they should be honoured in deed only, and with such an honour as this public funeral, which you are now witnessing. Then the reputation of many would not have been imperilled on the eloquence or want of eloquence of one, and their virtues believed or not as he spoke well or ill. For it is difficult to say neither too little nor too much; and even moderation is apt not to give the impression of truthfulness. The friend of the dead who knows the facts is likely to think that the words of the speaker fall short of his knowledge and of his wishes; another who is not so well informed, when he hears of anything that surpasses his own powers, will be envious and will suspect exaggeration. Mankind are tolerant of the praises of others so long as each hearer thinks that he can do as well or nearly as well himself, but, when the speaker rises above him, jealousy is aroused and he begins to be incredulous. However, since our ancestors have set the seal of their approval upon the practice, I must obey, and to the utmost of my power shall endeavour to satisfy the wishes and beliefs of all who hear me.

  Pericles begins with a lament about the need for rhetoric. It would be preferable, he says, convincing nobody, if the dead could be honoured without the requirement for high-sounding testimony. It would, of course, be better if the dead could speak for themselves. In their absence Pericles, will do his best to rise to the occasion which is imperilled, he says, by the reliance on a single orator.

  The funeral oration had become a familiar ritual in Greece by the late fifth century. The remains of the dead were left out for three days in a tent where offerings could be made. A funeral procession followed, with ten cypress coffins carrying the remains, one for each of the nine Athenian tribes and one for the remains of the unidentified. Any citizen was free to join the procession. A public sepulchre in the city’s most beautiful suburb was reserved for those who fell in war. At the graveside, an orator, described by Thucydides as ‘of approved wisdom and eminent reputation’, delivered the eulogy.

  The ritual created a civic unity which it was the task of the orator to express. A speech is always a ritual that enacts a moment, even before a word is spoken. In an era in which reports from the battlefield were distant and unreliable, the funeral oration created a single experience of the war for the assembled citizens. It became the sanctioned memory of the war. Pericles is writing history up on the rostrum even before Thucydides adds his second draft.

  He does so with a form that has grown familiar. This is a variation on the theme of ‘Words cannot express …’ But words have to express. That’s all the orator is there for. Thus, Pericles is to be taken seriously but not literally. Like Mark Antony in Julius Caesar, he is feigning an inability to find words that have the weight to capture the moment. It’s a conceit, of course. If Pericles really thought he couldn’t meet the moment he wouldn’t – he shouldn’t – have taken the gig. But he did; he couldn’t resist.

  I will speak first of our ancestors, for it is right and seemly that now, when we are lamenting the dead, a tribute should be paid to their memory. There has never been a time when they did not inhabit this land, which by their valour they will have handed down from generation to generation, and we have received from them a free state. But if they were worthy of praise, still more were our fathers, who added to their inheritance, and after many a struggle transmitted to us their sons this great empire. And we ourselves assembled here today, who are still most of us in the vigour of life, have carried the work of improvement further, and have richly endowed our city with all things, so that she is sufficient for herself both in peace and war. Of the military exploits by which our various possessions were acquired, or of the energy with which we or our fathers drove back the tide of war, Hellenic or barbarian, I will not speak; for the tale would be long and is familiar to you. But before I praise the dead, I should like to point out by what principles of action we rose to power, and under what institutions and through what manner of life our empire became great. For I conceive that such thoughts are not unsuited to the occasion, and that this numerous assembly of citizens and strangers may profitably listen to them.

  Having merely gestured towards the habitual routine of a funeral oration, Pericles then affronts convention. He does pay perfunctory tribute to the ancestral heritage of contemporary Athenians and to the acquisition of empire, but then he changes course. Military valour, the usual subject of such an occasion, he dismisses as a theme too familiar to dwell upon. There is more than a little political calculation in this manoeuvre. The war is not going well. The early results are disappointing, and Pericles is using the speech to see off his enemies.

  The privilege of speaking uninterrupted at the commemoration of the war dead is an opportunity too good for a politician of his stature to miss. Pericles had promised that the war would bring glory, and glory so far had been conspicuously absent. This explains why he dares instead to shift the focus to the form of government that the city enjoys.

  This is a signal moment. Rhetoric and democracy fuse in this argument. The fact that Pericles needs an argument at all is a much more critical point than it might on first hearing sound. The priest, the king, the tyrant, simply act. In a democracy, the judgement of words replaces the asserted wisdom of the tyrannical fiat. Democracy anoints the argument rather than the individual. For this reason, the public speech is essential to democracy. It is also the principal innovation of the new form of politics. Pericles insists that he is going to talk about Athens itself, reinterpreting the deaths of the citizens for the glory of its name. He is going to establish the polis as so splendid that death in war is a glorious, almost a desirable, contribution to the
national story.

  Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the institutions of others. Our government does not copy our neighbours’, but is an example to them. It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. But while there exists equal justice to all and alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognised; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as the reward of merit. Neither is poverty an obstacle, but a man may benefit his country whatever the obscurity of his condition. There is no exclusiveness in our public life, and in our private business we are not suspicious of one another, nor angry with our neighbour if he does what he likes; we do not put on sour looks at him which, though harmless, are not pleasant. While we are thus unconstrained in our private business, a spirit of reverence pervades our public acts; we are prevented from doing wrong by respect for the authorities and for the laws, having a particular regard to those which are ordained for the protection of the injured as well as those unwritten laws which bring upon the transgressor of them the reprobation of the general sentiment.

  This speech contains democratic multitudes. Here is the first usage of the cliché that some might have thought a New Labour coinage: the many not the few. Here is ‘equal justice to all’, which later becomes the subject of a speech by Thomas Jefferson. Here is equality before the law, modern meritocracy, the private liberty of the citizen, respect for the public interest, protection of the vulnerable, the dignity of the institutions of state, and here is the court of public opinion. In this passage Pericles is inventing the democratic idiom, fashioning the phrases that come to define government by the people.