The failure of democracy
Democracy must have a good PR agent. While war in the national interest is considered questionable at best, war in defense of democracy is held to be admirable and, indeed, the only way to get the anti-American left behind a military action is for the United Nations to invade a sovereign, albeit insufficiently democratic country in the name of establishing democracy.
I'm against it - democracy. I'm especially against the mutated variant enshrined as its highest form here in America and I'm pleased to withhold my consent from the fraud which purports to be a fairly elected representative government by exercising my right to not vote in federal elections.
Now, I realize that this flies in the face of some of our most cherished national myths, but hear me out. The system envisioned by the Founding Fathers restricted the right to vote, not primarily out of sexism and racism, but out of a historical awareness that providing a voice to society's less productive always ends in tears. It was not only blacks and women who were denied the original vote, but also the majority of white males, for this very reason.
Was this elitism? Certainly. But there is elitism in every political system, primarily because it is the elite who are most capable of gaming whatever system in which they find themselves, and openly acknowledged elitism is far preferable to the hidden sort. Since the dawn of time, it is only the elite, (admittedly, a small percentage of them), who have shown themselves capable of thinking beyond their own narrow interests. The wealthy patrician George Washington turned down the crown that was offered him as did the aristocrat Cincinnatus before him - one has a hard time imagining a Boston fishwife or Roman slave doing the same.
Do you really think that an elite does not guide our so-called democracy? Then consider how the federal judiciary routinely steps in to find "unconstitutional" any legislative measure of which it does not approve, regardless of whether the measure a) has anything to do with that which is written in the Constitution, or b) reflects practices which were demonstrably acceptable to those who wrote the Constitution. Interesting to note that democratically enshrined laws which favor the statist and deconstructionist cultural agendas are immediately cast in stone, while those which oppose them are undermined repeatedly until they are destroyed.
This critique of democracy does not even begin to delve into the gerrymandering of House seats which has resulted in less turnover in the Congress than in the British House of Lords, or the nepotism which recently set two second-generation politicos against each other in the presidential election. An analysis of the near-identical governing practices of the two parties in our two-party system would require a book - not a column - but it would show that the two are, for all practical purposes, effectively one.
Do I recommend a return to the past? Not exactly. But I would limit the right to vote to the productive, defined by those whose living does not depend on government of any level or on another individual. If you were a subsidized farmer, a welfare recipient or a stay-at-home mom, you would not vote. Even soldiers would not vote - history shows that those paid to fight have a strong, (and quite understandable), tendency to avoid it whenever they are given a choice in the matter. I understand Al Gore already favors this.
Outrageous? Perhaps, but for those of you who would defend democracy, I have a simple question: If mob rule is such a desirable thing, should we not work toward expanding it in order to realize its full benefits? Modern technology obviates the need for representative democracy, which is clearly an outmoded relic of the 18th century, and tradition aside, there is no good reason every bill that goes before Congress should not be voted on by the entire American people.
Thanks to the Internet, there is no logistical problem. The information load? Please, representatives and senators don't even pretend to read the massive tomes on which they are voting. It's time to look democracy in the eye, people. Is it to be one man, one vote - or not? And if not, why not?
I will take the notion of democracy's inherent virtue seriously when its self-styled defenders do. Until then, I stand by my assertion that modern American representative democracy is nothing more than a fig leaf on the inexorable advancement of the global state.