If you've been thinking about US politics and trying to make sense of it for the last year or so, you might have hit on something like the following three propositions: one, US partisanship has never been so bad before; two, for the first time, it's geographically spatialized -- we're divided between the coasts, which want to look outwards, and the center of the country, which wants to look inwards; and third, there's nothing we can do about it.
如果過去一年你曾思索過美國政治, 並嘗試理解它、將它合理化, 你腦袋可能會出現以下三個論點: 第一,美國黨派之爭 從來沒這麼亂過; 第二, 美國首次出現了地域差異── 我們彼此分化著── 住在沿岸地區的人們向外看, 而居住在內陸地區的人們視野向內; 第三, 我們對此無能為力。
I'm here to today to say that all three of these propositions, all of which sound reasonable, are not true. In fact, our US partisanship goes all the way back to the very beginning of the republic. It was geographically spatialized in almost eerily the same way that it is today, and it often has been throughout US history. And last, and by far most importantly, we actually have an extraordinary mechanism that's designed to help us manage factional disagreement and partisanship. That technology is the Constitution. And this is an evolving, subtly, supplely designed entity that has the specific purpose of teaching us how to manage factional disagreement where it's possible to do that, and giving us techniques for overcoming that disagreement when that's possible.
今天在這 我想告訴各位, 也許這三個論點聽起來合理, 但並不是真的。 事實上, 美國黨派之爭可追溯至 最早的共和民主制政體。 當時的地域差異, 與今天幾乎相同。 這現象貫穿著美國歷史。 最後一點, 也是到目前最重要的一點, 我們其實擁有一個非凡的機制, 用於協助我們管理 分歧的意見與黨系之爭。 這個機制被稱之為「憲法」。 這是一項不斷革新、微妙、 精良的設計實體, 它獨特的用意在於 指導我們處理意見分歧, 的確可能可以處理, 同時給了我們解決分歧的工具, 在可能的情況下。
Now, in order to tell you the story, I want to go back to a pivotal moment in US history, and that is the moment when factional disagreement and partisanship was born. There actually was a birth moment -- a moment in US history when partisanship snapped into place. The person who's at the core of that story is James Madison. And at the moment that this began, James Madison was riding high. He himself was the Einstein of not only the US Constitution, but of constitutional thought more globally, and, to give him his due, he knew it. In a period of time of just three years, from 1785 to 1788, he had conceived, theorized, designed, passed and gotten ratified the US Constitution.
現在,為了給你們講這個故事, 我想回顧一下 一個美國史上的關鍵時刻, 而正是那時刻, 出現了分歧的意見以及黨派的誕生。 在美國史中這時刻 正是黨派誕生到位的時刻。 詹姆斯·麥迪遜是故事的核心人物。 在故事開始, 詹姆斯·麥迪遜處在巔峰時段。 麥迪遜不只是美國憲法的創始者, 也將憲政思想傳播到世界, 說句公道話, 他知道。 在短短的三年之中, 1785-1788 年間, 他從構想、理論化、設計、通過, 並得到批准,完成了美國憲法。
And just to give you some sense of the enormity of what that accomplishment actually was, although Madison couldn't have known it at the time, today that same constitutional technology that he invented is still in use not only in the US, but, 230 years later, in places like Canada, India, South Africa, Brazil. So in an extraordinary range of contexts all over the world, this technology is still the dominant, most used, most effective technology to manage governance.
我想讓各位理解他所完成的巨作 有多麼的深遠與偉大, 雖然麥迪遜當時不可能未卜先知, 直到今日,他所投入的憲法實體, 不只美國仍然實行著, 在 230 年後, 許多地方如加拿大、 印度、 南非、 巴西都在用。 對全世界影響如此深遠, 今天這項巨作仍占主導地位, 對於管理統治上,仍是最頻繁使用 也是最有效的一項技術。
In that moment, Madison believed that, having solved this problem, the country would run smoothly, and that he had designed a technology that would minimize the results of factions so there would be no political parties. Remarkably, he thought he had designed a constitution that was against political parties and would make them unnecessary.
當時, 麥迪遜相信如果解決了這個問題, 這個國家會運轉的更順利, 因此他設計了這項技術, 使派系紛爭傷害降到最小, 也就不會有政黨的出現了。 很顯然的,他認為他所設計的憲法 是不利於政黨的, 也會使政黨成為不必要。
He had gotten an enormous degree of help in the final marketing phase of his constitutional project from a man you may have heard of, called Alexander Hamilton. Now, Hamilton was everything Madison was not. He was passionate, where Madison was restrained. He was pansexual, where Madison didn't speak to a woman except for once until he was 42 years old, and then married Dolley and lived happily ever after for 40 years.
他在最後推廣憲法階段 得到了某人莫大的幫助, 而這人你可能聽過, 亞歷山大·漢密爾頓。 漢密爾頓、麥迪遜兩人 天性可說是南轅北轍。 漢密爾頓充滿熱情激昂, 而麥迪遜則是嚴謹拘束, 漢密爾頓男女老幼通吃, 麥迪遜則從沒跟女人說過話, 直到他 42 歲那年, 因此娶了朵莉為妻, 並幸福過了 40 年。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
To put it bluntly, Hamilton's the kind of person about whom you would write a hip-hop musical --
簡而言之, 漢密爾頓是 那種會使你譜出嘻哈音樂劇的人──
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
and Madison is the kind of person about whom you would not write a hip-hop musical.
而麥迪遜是那種 無法將他譜進嘻哈音樂劇的人。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
Or indeed, a musical of any kind at all.
或是,任何種類的音樂劇都不行。
But together, they had become a rather unlikely pairing, and they had produced the Federalist Papers, which offered a justification and, as I mentioned, a marketing plan for the Constitution, which had been wildly effective and wildly successful.
但是他們兩人搭檔一起時, 他們配合的天衣無縫, 他們共同創造出《聯邦論》, 也因此給了── 就如我先前所提到的, 憲法行銷計畫的理由。 結果十分有效、十分成功。
Once the new government was in place, Hamilton became Secretary of the Treasury, and he had a very specific idea in mind. And that was to do for financial institutions and infrastructure exactly what Madison had done for constitutions. Again, his contemporaries all knew it. One of them told Madison, who can't have liked it very much, that Hamilton was the Newton of infrastructure. The idea was pretty straightforward. Hamilton would give the United States a national bank, a permanent national debt -- he said it would be "immortal," his phrase -- and a manufacturing policy that would enable trade and manufacturing rather than agriculture, which was where the country's primary wealth had historically been.
當新的政府就任時, 漢密爾頓當上了財政部部長, 當時他心頭湧上一個特別的想法。 那就是 實行金融機構以及基礎建設, 就像麥迪遜為憲法所做的一樣。 而同僚得知後, 其中一個人告訴麥迪遜, 他不可能願意看到 漢密爾頓成為基礎建設的初始者。 他的想法相當簡單明確。 漢密爾頓將給美國一間中央銀行, 一筆永久的國債── 他說這將會「成為永恆」, 而他所制定的產業政策, 將使貿易和製造業 超越農業 這項歷史上國家首要財務來源。
Madison went utterly ballistic. And in this pivotal, critical decision, instead of just telling the world that his old friend Hamilton was wrong and was adopting the wrong policies, he actually began to argue that Hamilton's ideas were unconstitutional -- that they violated the very nature of the Constitution that the two of them had drafted together. Hamilton responded the way you would expect. He declared Madison to be his "personal and political enemy" -- these are his words.
麥迪遜極力反駁。 在這至關重要決定中, 除了告訴眾人他的老友 漢密爾頓是錯誤的, 並實施著錯誤的決策, 他還開始爭論 漢密爾頓的想法有違憲法的概念── 違反了他們當初一起起草的 憲法其本質。 漢密爾頓的回應就如我們預期, 他宣稱麥迪遜是 「我個人也是政治上的敵人」── 這是他親口說的。
So these two founders who had been such close friends and such close allies and such partners, then began to produce enmity. And they did it in the good, old-fashioned way. First, they founded political parties. Madison created a party originally called the Democratic Republican Party -- "Republican" for short -- and Hamilton created a party called the Federalist Party. Those two parties adopted positions on national politics that were extreme and exaggerated. To give you a clear example: Madison, who had always believed that the country would have some manufacturing and some trade and some agriculture, began attacking Hamilton as a kind of tool of the financial markets whom Hamilton himself intended to put in charge of the country. That was an overstatement, but it was something Madison came to believe.
這兩位開國元勳人曾是 如此友好、如此親密的盟友、 如此有默契的夥伴, 最後彼此產生了敵意。 他們的做法很老派, 首先他們各別成立了黨派。 麥迪遜成立的黨派 原本稱為「民主共和黨」, 後來簡稱為「共和黨」, 而漢密爾頓建立了「聯邦黨。」 這兩個黨派所擁護的國家政治立場 十分誇張的極端。 以下一個例子: 麥迪遜的想法是 一個國家不單單 只發展貿易與製造業, 農業也必須概括在內, 所以他開始攻擊漢密爾頓, 說他是金融市場的工具, 而漢密爾頓打算控制國家。 雖然聽起來誇張, 但這的確是麥迪遜所相信的。
He also attacked city life, and he said that the coasts were corrupt, and what people needed to do was to look inwards to the center of the country, to farmers, who were the essence of Republican virtue, and they should go back to the values that had made American great, specifically the values of the Revolution, and those were the values of low taxes, agriculture and less trade. Hamilton responded to this by saying that Madison was naïve, that he was childish, and that his goal was to turn the United States into a primitive autarchy, self-reliant and completely ineffectual on the global scale.
麥迪遜同時也攻擊城市的生活型態, 他認為沿岸正在腐敗, 人民應該向內陸看, 應該更關心國家的中心, 應該注重農民, 即共和黨美德的精髓。 同時也應該注重 使美國人偉大的核心價值, 尤其是革命的價值觀, 即低稅收, 看重農業, 同時減少貿易。 漢密爾頓回應說麥迪遜是如此天真, 同時也很幼稚, 他的目標是將美國轉變成為 一個守舊獨裁專制, 一個自給自足, 對全球毫無影響力的國家。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
They both meant it, and there was some truth to each of their claims, because each side was grossly exaggerating the views of the other in order to fight their war. They founded newspapers, and so for the first time in US history, the news that people received came entirely through the lens of either the Republican or the Federalist party.
他們都是認真的, 他們各自的主張中也許有些事實, 這樣說是因為兩邊為了打贏, 都把對方的言詞誇大。 隨後他們各自成立報社, 也是美國歷史上頭遭 人們所接收到的新聞來源 不是出自共和黨,就是聯邦黨。
How does this end? Well, as it turned out, the Constitution did its work. But it did its work in surprising ways that Madison himself had not fully anticipated. First, there was a series of elections. And the first two times out of the box, the Federalists destroyed the Republicans. Madison was astonished. Of course, he blamed the press.
這最後是如何收場的? 結果是,憲法呈現出它的功效, 而且是以出乎意料的方式呈現, 麥迪遜本身並沒有完全料到。 首先是一連串的選舉。 頭兩次讓人跌破眼鏡, 聯邦黨打敗了共和黨。 麥迪遜極為錯愕。 當然,他責怪媒體。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
And in a rather innovative view -- Madison never failed to innovate when he thought about anything -- he said the reason that the press was so pro-Federalist is that the advertisers were all Federalists, because they were traders on the coasts who got their capital from Britain, which Federalism was in bed with. That was his initial explanation. But despite the fact that the Federalists, once in power, actually enacted laws that criminalized criticism of the government -- that happened in the United States -- nevertheless, the Republicans fought back, and Madison began to emphasize the freedom of speech, which he had built into the Bill of Rights, and the capacity of civil society to organize. And sure enough, nationally, small local groups -- they were called Democratic-Republican Societies -- began to form and protest against Federalist-dominated hegemony. Eventually, the Republicans managed to win a national election -- that was in 1800. Madison became the Secretary of State, his friend and mentor Jefferson became president, and they actually, over time, managed to put the Federalists completely out of business. That was their goal.
他提出一個相當創新的觀點── 不管做任何事麥迪遜 總是以創新的觀點出發── 他說媒體之所以都支持聯邦黨, 是因為廣告商都是聯邦黨人, 因為他們是住在沿岸的貿易商, 他們從英國拿資金, 而英國是聯邦黨人的老相好。 以上是他一開始的解釋。 儘管聯邦黨 一上台之後, 就制定法條,將批評政府列為非法── 美國也發生過這種事── 然而 共和黨反擊, 麥迪遜開始強調言論自由, 並將言論自由納入權利法案中, 同時也允許 民間社會組織的成立。 所以當然,在全國各地 就有一群小型的地方組織, 他們稱之為民主—共和主義社會, 開始形成並反擊聯邦黨的霸權。 最後,共和黨贏得全國的選舉, 那是 1800 年。 麥迪遜也成為了國家的國務卿, 而他的朋友同時也是導師 傑佛遜成為了美國總統, 隨著時間推移, 他們真的讓聯邦黨完全消失。 這是他們的目標。
Now, why did that happen? It happened because in the structure of the Constitution were several features that actually managed faction the way there were supposed to do in the first place. What were those? One -- most important of all -- the freedom of speech. This was an innovative idea at the time. Namely, that if you were out of power, you could still say that the government was terrible.
而為什麼會這樣? 這是由於憲法的架構中, 其中有幾項特點 確實可以管理黨派的分歧, 在故事一開始的時候就應該實行了。 這些特點是什麼呢? 第一,也是最重要的一點, 言論自由。 在當時這是一個新思維。 換句話說,當你失去政權時, 你仍有權力說政府的不好。
Two, civil society organization. The capacity to put together private groups, individuals, political parties and others who would organize to try to bring about fundamental change. Perhaps most significantly was the separation of powers -- an extraordinary component of the Constitution. The thing about the separation of powers is that it did then and it does now, drive governance to the center. You can get elected to office in the United States with help from the periphery, right or left. It turns out, you actually can't govern unless you bring on board the center. There are midterm elections that come incredibly fast after a presidency begins. Those drive presidents towards the center.
第二點, 民間社會組織。 不管是組織私人團體或是聚眾, 或是成立政黨等等, 會帶來本質上的改變。 也許最重要的是權力分立── 這是憲法中非凡的組成。 關於權力分立, 不管是當時或是現在, 都將治理推向中間。 在美國你可以 藉由邊陲的支持當選上台, 不管是偏右或是偏左。 然而結果是, 除非你注重中間,否則無法治理。 總統就位後, 期中選舉很快就到了, 也因此使總統一定要著重中間。
There's a structure in which the president, in fact, does not rule or even govern, but can only propose laws which other people have to agree with -- another feature that tends to drive presidents who actually want to get things done to the center. And a glance at the newspapers today will reveal to you that these principles are still completely in operation. No matter how a president gets elected, the president cannot get anything done unless the president first of all follows the rules of the Constitution, because if not, the courts will stand up, as indeed has sometimes occurred, not only recently, but in the past, in US history. And furthermore, the president needs people, elected officials who know they need to win election from centrist voters, also to back his or her policies in order to pass laws. Without it, nothing much happens.
事實上在這架構中,總統並不統治 或是管理, 但只能提案, 而且必須獲得其他人同意── 這是另一個架構特色, 驅使總統 將心力放在中間。 在今日的報紙中你仍可以發現 這些原則今日依然運行著。 無論一個總統是如何選上的, 總統在沒有遵循憲法前提下 是什麼都無法完成的。 若沒有遵循憲法, 法院會發聲並採取一些措施, 這不是現在才有的, 而是從過去美國歷史延續到現在。 此外, 總統需要人民, 民選官員都知道他們需要 中間選民以贏得選舉, 及支持他們想通過的法案。 若沒有經過這樣的程序, 基本上總統無力改變些什麼。
The takeaway of this brief excursus into the history of partisanship, then, is the following: partisanship is real; it's profound; it's extraordinarily powerful, and it's terribly upsetting. But the design of the Constitution is greater than partisanship. It enables us to manage partisanship when that's possible, and it enables us actually to overcome partisan division and produce compromise, when and only when that is possible. A technology like that is a technology that worked for the founders, it worked for their grandchildren, it didn't work at the moment of the Civil War, but then it started working again. And it worked for our grandparents, our parents, and it's going to work for us.
從歷史上的黨爭 得到的精華概要就是: 黨派之爭真實存在; 它影響深遠; 非常有力; 非常令人生氣。 然而憲法的設計 是遠超乎黨派本身的。 它使我們能夠管理黨派, 也使我們可以克服黨派間的分歧, 並產生妥協, 也只有這種情況下才有可能。 這樣的工具 對開國元勳是有效的, 同時也適用於他們的後代子孫, 雖然在南北戰爭期間 憲法並沒有作用, 但戰爭結束後又恢復它的功效了。 它延伸至我們的祖父母, 我們的父母, 當然它也適用於我們。
(Applause)
(掌聲)
So what you should do is really simple. Stand up for what you believe in, support the organizations that you care about, speak out on the issues that matter to you, get involved, make change, express you opinion, and do it with respect and knowledge and confidence that it's only by working together that the constitutional technology can do the job that it is designed to do.
而你真正該做的其實很簡單。 捍衛你所信仰的, 支持你所關心的組織, 勇敢大聲說出和你息息相關的議題, 並參與其中, 嘗試著改變, 說出你的意見, 並用尊重的心、智慧與自信來做, 唯有當我們共同努力, 憲法系統才能發揮它的效用。
Stand up for what you believe, but take a deep breath while you do it. It's going to be OK.
在捍衛你的信仰之前, 深呼吸, 一切都會沒事的。
Thanks.
謝謝各位。
(Applause)
(掌聲)