Jean-Jacques Rousseau on Liz Cheney's Dismissal as Republican House Whip

 

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House Republicans recently voted to dismiss Rep. Liz Cheney from her post as whip of House Republicans.  Their reason for doing this is that they believe she is not  loyal to the former president.  She refuses to ignore moral principles and affirm his false narrative that he won the last election “by a landslide.” She also accuses him of inciting the insurrection that took place at the U.S Capitol building on January 6, 2021.  She wants conservative principles not loyalty to any particular person (especially not to a morally corrupt person) to be the driving force of the Republican Party. 

 [See Cheney's own defense in the Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/liz-cheney-told-the-truth-republicans-must-decide-whether-they-value-trump-over-it/2021/05/05/7449c0cc-adc9-11eb-b476-c3b287e52a01_story.html ]

 By coincidence, as I was listening to this news, I have  been writing about Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract (1762).  It will be the eighth and final book in my study guide series on the classic philosophers.  

 I came across two passages, relevant to the plight of Rep. Cheney that caught my attention. 

First, Rousseau writes that the state will decline when “ the citizens, having fallen into servitude, have lost both liberty and will. Fear and flattery then change votes into acclamation; deliberation ceases, and only worship or malediction is left” (Bk.4,ch.1). Loyalty will also change votes. In Cheney’s case, both fear and loyalty are they enemies of reason. The representatives who want to oust Cheney are in a kind of psychological servitude to Donald Trump that overrides deliberation. They fear Trump’s anger and the loss of his support unless they display fealty by voting for Cheney’s dismissal. This singular issue is what has turned the vote of the House from strong support for Rep. Cheney before the November election to weak or no support for her after the election and the tragic insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Second, Rousseau would point out that the mistake made by the House Republicans who want Cheney out is that they have “changed the question and answered something different from what they should be asking.” In Rousseau’s words: “Instead of saying, by their vote, "It is to the advantage of the State (country)," they say, "It is to the advantage of this or that person or that or that faction that this or that view should prevail." And this is exactly the point that Rep. Cheney is trying to make. The House Republicans who want her out are not saying “It is to the advantage of the people of the United States of America to vote Cheney out of office.” Instead they are saying “It is to the advantage of Donald Trump, his supporters and the Republican Party to vote Cheney out of office.” If they had asked the former question, they would have immediately understood that it is not to the advantage of the country to support a man who is still telling “The Big Lie” that he won the election and who incited his supporters to storm the Capitol on January 6, 2021 in an effort to block the final vote for his opponent.

Laurence Houlgate

Coming soon:on Amazon:   UNDERSTANDING JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU