Are We Facing The End of Democracy As We Know It...

Who’s the Worst Person in the World?

We may think terrorism is the worst enemy we have to face as a people. The media echoes the president’s admonitions about the mysterious Islamic forces that are out to destroy America. And we all collectively shake with fear. And manipulated as we are, we tend to ignore the fact that the government insidiously uses our fear to deprive us of all the rights we have taken for granted: Privacy, First Amendment, habeas corpus, etc.

In light of these incursions on our rights, is it the forces of Islam we should fear the most?

Consider that if for no other reason, we know that our worst enemy can destroy our democracy and end our reign as the greatest social experiment ever..

It can shatter our democratic institutions…

It could destroy the environment; lose us our jobs and our place in the world.

And end our way of life as we know it.

But before we track to possible causes and solutions, let’s look back at the ideas of Tocqueville, who warned us in so many words that democracy was a dangerous form of government because it could be perverted easily into tyranny if the wrong people were to rise to the top and none would be the wiser…. It was one of the dangers of rule of the ‘majority.’ This was over one hundred years ago, 1835 to be exact…

So, what are we to make of this?

We may conclude that we have allowed unprepared people with personal agendas to rise to the surface and we have voted for them without the appropriate due diligence; moreover, we may conclude that as citizens and voters, we have placed too much trust in the mechanisms of government to keep us on an even keel—at a time when these built in “checks” and “balances” are being held hostage by the controlling party.

Consequently, if we abide by Tocqueville’s prophetic words, we may come to the conclusion that the culprit is not terrorism, per se, but ourselves for not becoming more engaged in our form of government, but, instead letting others do the work of keeping our democracy viable and responsive to the needs of the people.

By our own inaction, inattention, distraction or whatever you call it, we have left the world to be governed by a government that doesn’t like to govern; a government that relishes its power but ignores its moral and constitutional responsibilities…. A governmet that has taken away our freedoms without providing us with the protections we need to insulate ourselves from an enemy that has the advantage of time and patience…..

And what do we do?

For the most part, Americans simply stew in their juices and do nothing. They do not call their representatives; they do not display their discomfiture with the direction that the government has gone in; they do not exercise their freedom to protest—until five years after the beginning of an untenable War where no progress is being made and we keep losing ground every day.

We are either too busy, too preoccupied making money or too engaged in other things—to allocate even one half hour a day to saving our form of government.

In short, we have put up with the current conditions for five years and deferring our responsibilities as citizens to someone else….

In the process, we have lost our perspective and we have lost many of our rights..

In the end, it seems that we have confused the job holder with the job. We have mixed up the presidency with the president.

And we are all suffering for it.

Why?

It may be an outgrowth of the post-sixties attitude that suggested: Let somebody else worry about it. Or it may be that we just don’t care enough. Or that we never learned in our civics classes that American citizens have rights if their government is perverted or that the principals do not live up to their obligations of government.

But to paraphrase Tocqueville, the French philosopher, Democracy is simply something you cannot walk away from. It is a system that can be easily perverted from its original intent and nobody would be the wiser….

And so it is….

Today, our legislation is written by business lobbyists and few of the legislation written is designed to uphold the good of the people. Most legislation being signed by the president is oriented towards fulfilling special interests and nobody seems to be outraged by similar violations that are inconsistent with the oath of office…

Moreover, the Constitution and Bill of Rights are violated almost every day and nobody says a word.

What’s wrong with us?

Have we surrendered our willingness to protect the concept of democracy?

Have we become attenuated in spirit and commitment to what America stands for?.

If you talk to your neighbors, you will discover that many are detached as if they operate on a separate planet. They drive gas guzzlers and focus on the one thing that motivates them most: Making money.

Many of the rest do to Fast Track and NAFTA, can no longer afford to keep a roof over their head and food on the table. The Middle Class over the past seven years is an ambulance case.

But where is the person that democracy can fall back on? Where is the hero ready to pick up the standard and fight to retain his rights guaranteed under the Constitution?

That is the defining question.

What we do know is that if we do nothing, the government has its way with us.

This lesson was brought home to my son in law last week when he saw an “add on” to a bill to support financing the war.
He said to me it’s a shame that when the people don’t pay attention, government takes advantage.

And I replied,”Ah! That’s enlightenment. Democracy is the most fragile form of government and demands that we, the people, take their job of keeping an eye on the politicians we’ve elected, if we hope to have them represent us….”

Sadly, as a people we are not only disengaged, we are naïve. We happen to be guided by the myth that no president would actually do something that was not in the best interests of the people.

That is the big mistake!

And unless we correct it, we may go down in history as a blip on the historical time line.

In effect, we are the enemy. We are the product of an enduring disconnect.

For one reason, the facts speak for themselves. We are simply unwilling to get involved; and we are passive enough that we can even accept the worst news with barely more than a shrug of the shoulders.

By comparison, in the France that we love to poke fun at, if the government were to impose a trifling tax on the unions—something considered miniscule here, there would be demonstrations and those affected would go on strike.

We here bear things much worse with hardly a sign of recognition.

In other words, we have morphed into a kind of people who feel that there is nothing that is worth our standing up for. We have become a nation of jelly fish and special interests, a people who by our own passivity are shaping the destinies of us all….

Of course, nobody will like that comparison but it is hard to ignore when we sit back and see one piece of legislation after another passed that will eventually lead to the end of the Middle Class, the destruction of the environment, the pursuit of wars for no reason, the exploitation of the people and maybe even the end of the world.

Many of us have been led to believe that “passivity” is good. But for whatever the reason, the undeniable fact is that left to our own devices, we will not stand up to protect even our humble abodes when there is no place else to go. And even the lowest creature on the animal scale will not abuse his own home…

I am sure that psychologists now and into the future will ponder our decline from a powerful nation to a nation of sheep. But most likely they will argue over the reasons through the rest of recorded time.

In many cases, we think we know what happened to Rome.

The leadership was corrupt and the people were weakened by plague after nearly eight hundred years of glory.

In Greece, we suspect that the end of this land was due to aggression that caused a backlash and the rise of the mystics like Pythagoreans who ended their evolution and progress as a people.

For Americans who did not feel responsible for maintaining the relationship between government and the people, it was only a matter of time when ironically we would be reduced to ideological slaves by the few who seek to profit from economic domination of the world.

What’s so saddening is that things don’t have to play out this way. Americans could rise up one day and say that a whole America is worth fighting for….that democracy is worth keeping….and bad leaders should be disposed of.

But if past history is any barometer, the news of our new found courage is not encouraging….

Les Aaron
The Armchair Curmudgeon