Democracy : Foundations Under Attack

Democracy is defined as “a social covenant between people who agree to recognize the equal right of each person to live according to his or her beliefs and values, so long as he or she recognizes the corresponding right of others to the same.”

The democratic ideal includes freedom, personal fulfillment, social justice, inclusiveness, and the enfranchisement of the disenfranchised: “government of, by, and for the people”; “political, social, or economic equality”; “the absence or disavowal of hereditary or arbitrary class distinctions or privileges”; and “a state of society characterized by tolerance toward minorities, freedom of expression, and respect for the essential dignity and worth of the human individual with equal opportunity for each to develop freely to his fullest capacity in a cooperative community.”

The foundations of our beliefs as Democrats and as members of a democracy are at the heart of what went into the founding of this country, and each citizen should make the time to find out for themselves just what those foundations were. Our founding fathers were secular humanists and deists, not Christians. Their idea was that all religious faiths should be welcome in this country, and that all people should be free to practice their religions without fear of persecution. They did not favor Christianity over any other religion, in fact, they were against the sanctioning of any one religion because it would lead to the exclusion of all others. But it wasn’t just religion, it was also the idea of freedom… “liberty and justice for all”… freedom from tyranny and oppression… freedom to choose one’s “destiny,” etc.

MJD. a young, first-year law student asked me : Why not just play as Rove does and try to gain power and then once that happens instill our ideals?

Because, unlike Karl Rove, we actually believe in our ideals and in the foundations of this thing we call “democracy” and to play the same game as Rove would mean being hypocrites and losing the trust of our fellow citizens. The whole foundation of democracy is that the fate of our country and fellow citizens is in the hands of the citizens themselves, not in the hands of the privileged few (like Rove and Associates).

“The important question,” as Alexander Hamilton so eloquently put it, “is whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.” The answer to that question is an important one to the future of all Americans, and by extension, to the rest of the people in the world (since we are now a world power). He goes on to say: “Among the most formidable of the obstacles which the new Constitution will have to encounter may readily be distinguished the obvious interest of a certain class of men in every State to resist all changes which may hazard a diminution of the power, emolument, and consequence of the offices they hold under the State establishments; and the perverted ambition of another class of men, who will either hope to aggrandize themselves by the confusions of their country, or will flatter themselves with fairer prospects of elevation from the subdivision of the empire into several partial confederacies than from its union under one government.” So, you see, what they sought was the uniting of all people, not division and divisiveness.

High ideals, indeed.

‘Here is the impression that a great many Americans have been left with, especially our men and women in the military and their families: We went to war in Iraq, first, to defend our country against terrorists, second, to liberate that country — selflessly, at great sacrifice, not out of self-interest.

These are false impressions, and the president continues to create and reinforce them.

Are they lies — or are they merely exaggerations, misleading statements, mistakes, rhetorical excesses and so on. Linguists study such matters. The most startling finding is that, in considering whether a statement is a lie, the least important consideration for most people is whether it is true!

The more important considerations are, Did he believe it? Did he intend to deceive? Was he trying to gain some advantage or to harm someone else? Is it a serious matter, or a trivial one? Is it “just” a matter of political rhetoric? Most people will grant that, even if the statement happened to be false, if he believed it, wasn’t trying to deceive, and was not trying to gain advantage or harm any one, then there was no lie. If it was a lie in the service of a good cause, then it was a white lie. If it was based on faulty information, then it was an honest mistake. If it was just there for emphasis, then it was an exaggeration.

These have been among the administration’s defenses. The good cause: liberating Iraq. The faulty information: from the CIA. The emphasis: enthusiasm for a great cause. Even though there is evidence that the President and his advisers knew the information was false, they can deflect the use of the L-word. The falsehoods have been revealed and they, in themselves, do not matter much to most people.

But lying, in itself, is not and should not be the issue. The real issue is a betrayal of trust. Our democratic institutions require trust. When the president asks Congress to consent to war — the most difficult moral judgment it can make — Congress must be able to trust the information provided by the administration. When the President asks our fighting men and women to put their lives on the line for a reason, they must be able to trust that the reason he has given is true. It is a betrayal of trust for the president to ask our soldiers to risk their lives under false pretenses. And when the president asks the American people to put their sons and daughters in harm’s way and to spend money that could be used for schools, for health care, for helping desperate people, for rebuilding decaying infrastructure, and for economic stimulation in hard times, it is a betrayal of trust for the president to give false impressions.”

[Source: “Betrayal of Trust” by George Lakoff, AlterNet, First Posted September 15, 2003]

Recall that the self-appointed rulers of the world — Bush, Powell, and the rest — had declared forthrightly that they intended to carry out their war whether or not the United Nations (UN) or anyone else “catches up” and “becomes relevant.” Some would argue that the 49% of Americans that voted Democratic on November 2nd would also be considered “irrelevant” to this administration, not withstanding that if the rest of the world had been allowed to vote in this last election, the results would be dramatically different.

“Bush’s supporters demand lock-step consensus that Bush is right. They regard truthful reports that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and was not involved in the September 11 attack on the US — truths now firmly established by the Bush administration’s own reports — as treasonous America-bashing. […]

Bush’s conservative supporters want no debate. They want no facts, no analysis. They want to denounce and to demonize the enemies that the Hannitys, Limbaughs, and Savages of talk radio assure them are everywhere at work destroying their great and noble country. […]

Today there is no one to correct a lie once it is told. The media, thanks to Republicans, has been concentrated in few hands, and they are not the hands of newsmen. Corporate values rule. If lies sell, sell them. If listeners, viewers, and readers want confirmation of their resentments and beliefs, give it to them. Objectivity turns listeners off and is a money loser. […]

By substituting fiction for reality, the US media took the country to war. The CNN and Fox News “journalists” are as responsible for America’s ill-fated invasion of Iraq as Cheney and Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Perle.

With a sizable percentage of the US population now addicted to daily confirmations of their resentments and hatreds, US policy will be increasingly driven by tightly made-up minds in pursuit of unrealistic agendas.

American troops are in Iraq on false pretenses. No one knows all the fateful consequences of this mistaken adventure. Bush’s reelection would be seen as a vindication of aggression, and more aggression would likely follow. A continuing expenditure of blood, money, alliances, good will, and civil liberties is not a future to which to look forward.”

[Source: “The Brownshirting of America” by Paul Craig Roberts]

The common meaning of despotism is “a government or political system in which the ruler exercises absolute power.” Thomas Jefferson does not restrict absolutism solely to an individual: “The concentrating [of powers] in the same hands is precisely the definition of despotic government. It will be no alleviation that these powers will be exercised by a plurality of hands, and not by a single one.” Yet, the greatest miscarriage of this administration will be to empower a “star chamber” judicial bench to interrupt or even destroy the meaning of human and civil rights.

When codified into the public realm, the whims and greed of the general population are only superseded by the lust for power from the supposed “elites” who really rule. The catch is, whether there is a remnant of an honorable community that recognizes the violation of the public trust and resists the forces which design and implement servitude.