According to legend, Benjamin Franklin was spotted emerging from the Continental Congress and a citizen asked, "Doctor, what have we got?" and Franklin replied, "A Republic if you can keep it."
We have failed to keep it. We have evolved into government in stasis yet heading toward anarchy en route to fascism. Two party government as it exists in the United States fails to meet James Madison's test for a republic: a representative democracy in which supreme power is held by the people through elected representatives of the whole population, and which has an elected president rather than a monarch.
Today, millions of Americans hold strong beliefs about social and political issues that are utterly unrepresented by either party. The Republicans have become a party of the far right, fraught with more dementia than typifies the far right parties in other attempts at democracy around the world. The Democratic party has become a center-right party, with a weak and spineless centrist core and a powerful right-wing minority that is closer to the Republican right than to its own center.
Progressive Democrats and independents voted for Barack Obama in either the belief or the hope that he would in fact lead a changing nation. When he used the internet in an unprecedented solicitation of citizen input into his new administration, those voters overwhelmingly told him they wanted single-payer health care, an end to Bush's wars, saner environmental policies, restoration of civil liberties and the rule of law, an end to corporate welfare and more effective government regulation of businesses that work against the public interest.
He ignored us. Instead of single-payer health care, he gave us a lame "public option" that he never fought for, and he began his "reform" by selling his soul to the pharmaceutical industry. Instead of ending the wars he extended them. Instead of strong legislation to stop climate-changing carbon emissions, water and air pollution and abuse of public lands, while creating clean energy jobs, he bargained away the enforcement powers of the original Clean Air Act. His party members in Congress were as complicit as Republicans in give-aways to dirty coal and Big Oil. Even his weak-tea legislation is being savaged by the right wing of his own party in vile alliance with the Republicans. In the latest betrayal of the principles he misled us into thinking he stood for, he has reversed positions and is said to be ready to resume the Bush policy of military kangaroo courts to try detainees long held illegally and immorally without charge or counsel, many of them having been repeatedly tortured as well. The list is endless.
It is time for us to learn from Europe. Multi-party democracy thrives there because it enables representation of people across a broad and often subtle spectrum of interests and needs. Hence England, for example, has room for parties dedicated solely to the interests of independence for Scotland, Wales and North Ireland; parties in shades of green, degrees of left-lean, conservators of traditional values, differing angles of rightward tilt, and a fluid center. There are, in short, real, functioning political parties to represent all the people.
Millions of Americans believe that progressivism, whether personified by Republican or Democratic leaders, has served this nation well. Progressives, after all, gave us suffrage, fair trade, anti-trust laws, the income tax, the Fair Deal, the New Deal, regulation of financial markets, Social Security, liberation of the political process from control by bosses and corrupt machines, labor unions, institutions dedicated to peace and human rights, Medicare, national parks and a vast, once-prosperous middle class.
The inheritors of such ideas have been effectively disenfranchised. Many of them voted for Obama simply because he was not Bush or McCain. Unless their interests are re-empowered by new parties, their polar opposites will take the country into fascism unopposed.
What's happening in Washington today is a travesty of democratic republicanism. We have not kept the priceless treasure we were given by Franklin, Madison and the other founders.
We desperately need ethical, economic, political and social reforms -- and we can't even pass health care reform.
"Don't tell Momma I'm a journalist; say I play the piano in a whorehouse."
I share most of your disappoints with Obama, although unlike some on the left, I do not blame him for all our ills. But it seems that the vote for him was the last gasp of the Republic. The palpable energy that resulted from people getting involved and excited was very scary to those who count on our disaffection and distraction — and steps have been taken to ensure that never happens again. Congress is now ruled by corporate interests. The corporate media only reports on tea party grassroots movements (apparently the left has disappeared) — the pundits are talking heads that just keep repeating talking points; never is a true progressive voice heard. Supreme Court decisions have made corporations the fourth branch of government. And the schools have effectively created students who do not have the complexity or subtlety of thought needed to be progressive. The odds have been stacked against us.
ReplyDeleteI’m not sure we have a Republic to turn over to the idiots anymore.
I couldn’t agree with you more regarding the disappointments of the Obama administration so far. But there is a cure within our grasp which could be much easier than the development of additional political parties. What if “We the People” could become the fourth branch of government, with the ability to make our own laws at the local, state and national level? What if a constitutional amendment could ensure that such a system becomes the law of the land–an amendment which does not require ratification by Congress, but only ratification by enough citizens voting on the internet?
ReplyDeleteSurprise! The National Initiative for Democracy exists and fulfills all the points mentioned above. Please investigate Senator Mike Gravel’s life’s work (since exposing the Pentagon Papers back in the 1970’s.) Please learn about true “Citizen Power” that could get the people the results we want by going to Mike’s website: ni4d.us You can vote for this proposed constitutional amendment at that site. You can learn who has endorsed the national initiative by going to vote.org–you will find the names of the late Robert MacNamara, the late Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, and Pete Seeger, among many, many more more.
I hope you’ll do a future blog on this radically important initiative. Onward! And thank you so much for the work you do!
kathy on March 9th, 2010 10:51 am
I share most of your disappoints with Obama, although unlike some on the left, I do not blame him for all our ills. But it seems that the vote for him was the last gasp of the Republic. The palpable energy that resulted from people getting involved and excited was very scary to those who count on our disaffection and distraction — and steps have been taken to ensure that never happens again. Congress is now ruled by corporate interests. The corporate media only reports on tea party grassroots movements (apparently the left has disappeared) — the pundits are talking heads that just keep repeating talking points; never is a true progressive voice heard. Supreme Court decisions have made corporations the fourth branch of government. And the schools have effectively created students who do not have the complexity or subtlety of thought needed to be progressive. The odds have been stacked against us.
I’m not sure we have a Republic to turn over to the idiots anymore.