View 293 January 19-25, 2004 (original) (raw)
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Tuesday, January 20, 2004
The media created Dean, and is now busily crushing him like a bug. Interesting.
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Consider the following. I have comments below.
Jerry
Fred just elaborated onwhat you wrote today:
http://www.fredoneverything.net/DemocracyText.shtml
I can't say that he's wrong at all, and that is more than a bit scary.
Ed
Dear Dr. Pournelle,
Here is the latest from Fred. In his usual obnoxious manner he starts out trying to see how much of his potential audience he can offend. For those who stay the course, he has something to say. I don't always agree with all, or sometimes even with any of it but he always hits close enough to the truth to make very uncomfortable reading. like you, he makes me think.
http://www.fredoneverything.net/DemocracyText.shtml
Patrick A. Hoage
Fred in his usual manner goes to the heart of issues. The essay on "FAKING IT" (meaning on faking democracy) begins:
While the United States is freer and more democratic than many countries, it is not, I think, either as free or as democratic as we are expected to believe, and becomes rapidly less so. Indeed we seem to be specialists in maintaining the appearance without having the substance. Regarding the techniques of which, a few thoughts:
(1) Free speech does not exist in America. We all know what we can�t say and about whom we can�t say it.
(2) A democracy run by two barely distinguishable parties is not in fact a democracy.
A parliamentary democracy allows expression of a range of points of view: A ecological candidate may be elected, along with a communist, a racial-separatist, and a libertarian. These will make sure their ideas are at least heard. By contrast, the two-party system prevents expression of any ideas the two parties agree to suppress. How much open discussion do you hear during presidential elections of, for example, race, immigration, abortion, gun control, and the continuing abolition of Christianity? These are the issues most important to most people, yet are quashed.
All of which is true, and all of which is cause for concern.
But: do understand that the Republic was intentionally set up to "fake it" in the sense that it wasn't intended to be a Democracy. The old John Birch Society had most things wrong, but their slogan was correct: "This is a Republic, not a Democracy." That was intended by the Framers, and their intention was defended in The Federalist Papers, a series of letters to the editors of newspapers, written by Madison, Hamilton, and Jay under the pseudonym "Publius", and intended to persuade voters to ratify the Constitution of 1789 as drafted in the Convention of 1787.
It is a commentary on American public life and the quality of public schools that most students in our schools have never heard of the Federalist Papers, and most colleges consider The Federalist too difficult to be assigned to undergraduates (upper division political science majors sometimes excepted). Letters to the editors of newspapers, intended to be persuasive to voters, are now arcana, impossible for high school students, and too difficult to be assigned to college students.
Left to me, I would make it mandatory to have at least a rudimentary knowledge of The Federalist a requirement for admission to college. Left to me I would make it mandatory to have a rudimentary knowledge of The Federalist before you could register to vote in a Federal election. But that's an aside and not what this comment is about.
The Framers rightly feared direct democracy, and rule by "faction" which is to say by political parties. They also understood there would probably be no way to suppress parties as such, although they did manage to keep them from being organized for a number of years. The notion of federal laws governing the establishment of political parties, and federal tax money being paid to political candidates, would have been enough to make most of the Federalists revolt, possibly to bring back King George as the lesser of the evils visiting the Republic.
But: while they feared direct democracy, they also understood that government should address the real problems of the Republic as seen by the citizens: the notion that two parties could suppress all comment and debate on the most important issues facing the Republic: immigration, citizenship, government hostility to public religion, an armed citizenry, would have sent the Framers back to their Committees of Correspondence concerning the Public Safety, and the militia into the streets to bring down a foul tyranny in blood; and I don't think I exaggerate.
"The important thing is that every citizen be armed." Is that debated now?
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof" in a nation that had tax-supported established churches in 7 of the 13 states at the time the Bill of Rights was adopted did not mean that federal courts would intervene to take down a manger in the public square. God save the United States and this honorable court.
In Los Angeles the police are forbidden to interfere with the activities of gang members who have been convicted of crimes and deported and are now illegally back in the country: the policeman who arrested this criminal whose "parole" was contingent on his being deported, cannot arrest him on sight as an obvious criminal, because the LAPD is not allowed to have any enforcement powers in immigration matters. If they did it might interfere with the illegal immigrant's rights to public largess, education, health care, and welfare. And I wish I were making this up.
Now perhaps this is as it should be, but it is not that way due to any debate and election. Indeed, California voted to deny illegal aliens public benefits, but the Federal Courts have ruled that unconstitutional under reasoning that strains the imagination. California must collect taxes and pay benefits to people who are criminals under Federal Law but who will not be interfered with by Federal officers -- and this on orders of Federal Courts.
Perhaps this is as it should be, but shouldn't some of this be debated? How many candidates for public office have you heard commenting on these matters?
Fred puts things bluntly and strongly, and I would argue that direct democracy is a cure worse than the disease; but the Republic the Framers created is pretty well gone now, and the Imperium isn't paying much attention to the people either.
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We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security
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I doubt those words are studied much in schools today, nor is Federalist 10, nor most of what I learned in 8th grade civics in rural Tennessee.
So it goes.