The Grinch that Stole Democracy



Blunt talk for bludgeoned people.



We do a good job of talking democracy.



But where is it?



“Is it in the house….

Is it in the tree

Or any longer

Does it belong

To you or to me?”





/There is no doubt in my mind that America has morphed into a despotic form of government, a Fascist state, over the last eight years. And to make the cheese more binding, this government’s cure for terrorism has proven worse than the illness.



Sure, thousands died on 9/11. But does it do justice to their memories to defame them by giving up what has set us free in the first place?



Frankly, that explanation doesn’t hold up.



And I don’t believe that any survivors would have wanted that.



On the other hand, was this an opportunity to use fear to deprive us of those particular values that this country has come to be known by and to impose upon us the restrictions of a despotic state?.



The fact is that the countervailing measures have been weak and misplaced at best. And, in effect—as a result of scaring everyone half to death-- America is dominated by a one party system.



We have seen this in a thousand ways.



From our willingness to sacrifice our standing on Posse Comitatus and habeas corpus, two of the few things that separate us from a Police State.



I have lived under Martial Law and two of the things that they do not feature are the above; consequently, in this so-called “free country” you can be arrested and held indefinitely without charges being leveled. Believe me, this is not the system you want to live under.



Add to that, the willingness of the society to subject themselves to inordinate invasions of privacy—from snooping to the ready availability to unauthorized sources of your personal information.



What we seem to have forgotten is that our rights are a constitutional issue guaranteed under the laws of the land; if you allow them to be given up so easily, do not think your government will stop there.



And they haven’t.



We now live under a system that allows you to be picked up and shipped elsewhere for interrogation because the government says so.



They have a fancy word for that which seems to infer that it meets the American standard, but any way you slice it, the government can go to your home and take you away without proof of your wrongdoing..



And keep in mind, too, that we have abrogated the Geneva conventions, which makes it possible for an innocent person to be “waterboarded” since our Attorney General does not think it is torture.



A nice mess wouldn’t you say.



Yet, nobody seems too upset with these losses of our liberties guaranteed to us under the constitution of our land.



De Tocqueville almost put his finger on it with a host of essays. The following is just a small part of his thinking summarized but he had much to say about the dangerous portents of Democracy in his trip here a century ago.

This is what Wikopedia has to say but there are many sources including the writing of de Tocqueville himself: The primary focus of Democracy in America is an analysis of why republican representative democracy has succeeded in the United States while failing in so many other places. He seeks to apply the functional aspects of democracy in America to what he sees as the failings of democracy in his native France.

Tocqueville speculates on the future of democracy in the United States, discussing possible threats to democracy and possible dangers of democracy. These include his belief that democracy has a tendency to degenerate into "soft despotism" as well as the risk of developing a tyranny of the majority. He observed that the strong role religion played in the United States was due to its separation from the government, a separation all parties found agreeable. He contrasts this to France where there was what he perceived to be an unhealthy antagonism between democrats and the religious, which he relates to the connection between church and state.



DeToqueville figured the above out a hundred years ago.



Most of us can’t figure it out today.



Are we better off today than we were just eight years ago when we were a democracy?



Ah, that is the critical question is it not.



Think about how many American lives were sacrificed in how many wars to keep the democratic hope alive.



That should do it for most of us.



Les Aaron