@LouisIngenthron Political institutions shape the electorate as much as the electorate shapes political institutions. The electorate under an approval voting system would yield very different representation than plurality voting and primaries. The US Constitution is very self-consciously founded on the insight that "democracy" alone in not enough to form a decent state, careful institutions must organize and shape how the "will of the people" is formed and expressed.

@LouisIngenthron Where impeachment is not an adequate institution, we can make new ones. Why have laws against bribery, when there is always impeachment?

@LouisIngenthron We've been trying to educate the human community to be better for all of humanity. Basing any practical politics on the near-term success of that strikes me as a bit fanciful. 1/

@LouisIngenthron Why is it a legitimate grievance that a person hired by the state has to conform the manner of his speech to democratically prescribed norms? Is it illegitimate that a schoolteacher may discuss differences between religious communities, but would be fired if she referred to one as "vermin"? 2/

@LouisIngenthron Even for ordinary citizens, the first amendment permits restrictions of the *manner* of speech. For public officials, the legitimacy of restrictions is much clearer, and still this would only be a restriction on manner. One could advocate for war. One could not refer to the citizens of the group we would be at war with as "human animals". 3/

@LouisIngenthron Why does our highest level officials having restrictions on manner of speech that we'd readily accept for every schoolteacher in the nation amount to a legitimate grievance? Or should public schoolteachers have the right to refer describe some groups as animals when they teach about history and cultural difference? Do schoolteachers have a legitimate grievance there? /fin

@LouisIngenthron at a popular level, sure I agree we need to address the demand, though I think "education" is nearly always a nonanswer, a stand-in for an answer, rather than an answer.

but the supply by public officials in power and authority I think might have an important role in catalyzing popular impulses towards self-righteous violence, and the behavior of public officials is among the most clearly legitimate objects of public regulation. 1/

@LouisIngenthron nothing is a panacea, but do you think this wouldn't have a reasonable chance of helping? /fin

@LouisIngenthron i think the reason for a rule like this is precisely because we know in the heat of some moments, rhetoric like this is popular, contributes to leaders’ political fortunes rather than harming them.

so, the wise thing for a democracy to do in cooler times is to democratically choose to prohibit it. 1/

@LouisIngenthron individually we understand that while we have a choice every moment, if we want to lose weight it’s better not to have chocolate in the house, to skip it at the store, even though of course no one forces us to open up our pantry and succumb to it. if someone claimed we should all tolerate chocolate in something like home minibars because that maximizes point-of-purchase choice, we’d understand that’s not actually pro freedom. /fin

@Alon yes. i think it’s fair to point out neither side began with dehumanization at a leadership level, viz Ukraine. at a public level, even before there were “orcs” there were disparagements against “khokhol” on Russian social media. 1/

@Alon but overall i agree with you re:Russia - Ukraine. this rule would not have prevented that conflict, which was prosecuted very coolly as a geopolitical choice by Russia’s leaders, not by virtue of cycles between an inflamed public and inflammatory leadership. 2/

@Alon but many conflicts do depend upon those kinds of inflammatory cycles to gear up to violence and atrocity. consider eg the Yugoslav wars, and of course signally Rwanda. perhaps Russia-Ukraine is the exception that proves the rule? /fin

@LouisIngenthron i don’t think this is a rule you can apply to publics, who have free speech rights. but people in institutional positions of power can be legally bound in what they say while in their roles (and people who aspire to those positions can be bound by strong norms). 1/

@LouisIngenthron so Pence can’t arrest protesters for “dehumanizing language”. that’s easy. a harder question is could anti-abortion activists slippery-slope support for abortion rights into proscribed dehumanization, so it’d effectively become illegal for political figures to support thise rights. 2/

@LouisIngenthron i think that’s a real concern, but not necessary fatal. every rule we define demands lines be drawn, and there is always risk that advocates will push the lines where initial framers don’t mean them to go. that process, drawing, defending, and deciding after all to let shift lines is much of what our court system struggles with everyday. i’m not sure this set of proscriptions of official (and only official) speech would be slipperier than lots of other lines we draw. /fin

@Alon it’s certainly true that dehumanizing language by leaders doesn’t always portend atrocity, but i think it’s the converse that’s more relevant, how often is there atrocity that is not preceded by dehumanizing language from leadership? 1/

@Alon also, although certainly social media has been full of dehumanizing language about Russians, I think Ukraine’s leadership has been surprisingly free of that, continually emphasizing that, unlike the Russian military, they are not terrorists, and any strikes into Russia are carefully targeted at military objectives. 2/

@Alon at the beginning of the war, Zelensky spent a huge amount of rhetoric *humanizing* Russian soldiers, telling Russian mothers we have no desire for your sons to die here. i think it plausible that meaningfully conditioned, both at the level of international support and in actual practice, how Ukraine has prosecuted the war, for the better. /fin