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Larsen: Whither goes the republic?
A loss of balance could threaten democracy
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Democracy is a messy and inefficient way to govern a nation. And the more people who participate and the more open democracy becomes, the messier and more inefficient it gets. "We, the people," then, has a tendency to morph into "we, the mob."
This doesn't make democracy any less appealing as a governing form; it merely means that the more people who participate, the more difficult it becomes to reach the consensus necessary for effective governing.
Democracy in its purest form — complete rule by the people — flourished in ancient Greece, specifically in Athens. Except for isolated experiments, pure democracy has not been the main form of a national government since about 322 B.C., when Philip of Macedonia and his son, Alexander the Great, exerted control over the former Greek city-states.
A simple reason exists to explain why democracy in its purest form does not exist in today's world — economy of scale. In the democratic Greek city-states, especially Athens, only adult male citizens could cast votes. In the fourth century B.C., Athens had about 30,000 adult male citizens. Other cities in Greece could muster only 1,000 to 1,500 eligible voters. Corinth, a major power, had, at most, 15,000 adult male citizens. That might seem like lot of voices to weigh in on the issues of the day, but they most likely did not deal in the minutiae of the day — no Spartan bridge to nowhere, no subsidies for olive growers in Delphi, no purchasing of surplus feta cheese to distribute to the needy in Thermopylae.
Contrast that to the United States today. Upward of 200 million people could be eligible to weigh in on the issues Congress deals with daily — from the war in Iraq down to a proclamation recognizing the holiday of Diwali (an annual festival celebrated by many southern Asians as a time for thanksgiving and prayer; the resolution was referred to committee in 2005 and remains there). With the nearly 50-50 split in the House and Senate creating gridlock and lost opportunities to enact pressing legislation, imagine what governing would be like with 200 million voices clamoring to be heard.
Thankfully, the Founding Fathers realized a pure democracy would not work.
"Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths," James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 10, Nov. 23, 1787.
"Democracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure," John Adams wrote in "An Essay on Man's Lust for Power," Aug. 23, 1763.
The founders came up with a better idea — a democratic republic. The people, in a true democratic fashion, elect representatives to craft the laws and policies that guide this nation's direction. That the founders' idea has lasted for 220 years with only minor glitches in execution gives proof to their wisdom.
Yet, signs have been emerging in recent years that some segments of the populous have become restless because their agendas have been ignored. Conservative Christians who want to enshrine in law their particular definition of marriage. Open-space advocates who have stripped city governments of the power to plan effectively for growth. Disgruntled voters who forced the recall election of a sitting governor, into which more than 150 candidates tossed their hats, turning the election into a three-ring circus.
This penchant for "we, the people," wanting to circumvent the republican structure of government in favor of the democratic structure, does pose an inherent danger to this nation — a serious blow to, if not the loss of democracy itself — as Madison and Adams so eloquently pointed out.
No, this does not come as a call to rein in the democratic process, merely to restore the balance that has served this nation well during its long life.
Without that balance, the nation ends up with ineffective government — representatives too afraid to take unpopular stances, speak truth to power or push needed reforms for fear they will lose the support of this group or that group or any group that can make or break them come election time.
No better example of this exists than in the current campaign for each party's presidential nomination. It has become a race of sound bites and waffling and overly cautious statements.
But this, too, comes from people leaning more toward unfettered democracy than toward the checks and balances a democratic republic provides.
More on that next week.
— Richard Larsen is a deputy opinion page editor at The Star. His e-mail address is rlarsen@VenturaCountyStar.com.
Posted by chair on August 14, 2007 at 12:52 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Larsen has a good idea misapplied. The national problem is that our federal government is too powerful vis-a-vis the states. Locally, the "planning" he refers to is nonexistent -- our cities are controlled by developers and landowners. Again, the problem is money. One answer is to remove money entirely from any decision-making process via publicly-financed elections, and to limit our national government strictly to those functions outlined in our Constitution.
Posted by sslocal on August 14, 2007 at 11:21 a.m. (Suggest removal)
"remove money entirely from any decision-making process via publicly-financed elections, and to limit our national government strictly to those functions outlined in our Constitution".
I agree. When we remove money given by big corparations and others it would focus on the person rather than the sound bite.
The current list of POTUS canidates scares the poop out of me.
Posted by imn93002 on August 14, 2007 at 12:32 p.m. (Suggest removal)
As long as the Supreme Court continues to rule that money is the same as speech and that corporations have the same rights as real humans, which it has done for over 100 years, money will NEVER be removed from politics! Every campaign finance law that Congress comes up with that limits who and/or how much money is given to politicians has been decimated by the Supreme Court. It has now become a systemic monster that cannot be controlled without a revolution, hopefully at the ballot box. I would be willing to bet that it WON'T be Dems or Repubs who effect such changes.
Posted by cassandra on August 14, 2007 at 7:46 p.m. (Suggest removal)
The notion of corporations a persons give corporations more rights than actual people. It is a misuse of Constitutional protections and should be challenged directly by the legislature.
Posted by cassandra on August 14, 2007 at 8:24 p.m. (Suggest removal)
A friend of mine on the other side of town posted this comment and it didn't show up on my screen. She sent it to me and I thought it worth posting. Neither of us has any idea why it didn't appear.
Here it is.
It's a mistake to become ideological about the forms of government when so much depends on specific contexts. Also leaping from one stereotype to another, as Larsen does, is not serious analysis.
For starters, Athens was scarcely a model democracy--citizenship was essentially a hereditary right vested only in males in certain families. Well born females led sequestered lives to preserve the purity of the line. Slaves were numerous. Only about 10% of the residents participated in this alleged democracy.
Lately, elections hardly express democracy and representatives aren't representative. Fraud, particularly electronic voting fraud, is rampant. Who knows who was honestly elected and who not. Most certainly the heads of the Republican ticket were not, and the evidence is clear for anyone taking the trouble to look at the numbers. Moreover there exists no real opposition party--the Democrats being almost as bad and the Greens essentially defunct. The people have no one to represent them.
Also democracy requires that the citizenry have access to information on which to base their decisions. The old truism that Freedom of the Press exists only for those who own one has never been more obvious. Whether it be selling the war or claiming that the Downing Street Memos were not "news" or ignoring the realities of peak oil or global warming, the corporate media have failed to deliver relevant information and engaged in disinformation.
Only in local government, where one knows the people and the local conditions, does the ordinary person have much of a say.
It is instructive that the majority of Americans want Cheney impeached, global warming addressed, and the US out of Iraq--all of which seem like rational, sensible goals, not those of a stampeding mob. Will our representatives get that for us? Doesn't look like it, does it.
Posted by nannyfo1 on August 15, 2007 at 12:31 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Absolutely! There are tons of issues that common people want addressed that are being ignored. When given the opportunity to vote, states have passed amendments defining marriage as being between one man and one women. These have passed by a landslide in every state given the opportunity to vote.
Posted by sslocal on August 15, 2007 at 2:19 p.m. (Suggest removal)
To rant about impeaching Chenny or Bush begs the question, why? What they do is not criminal. Wrong yes, but not criminal.
I suggest that the more you or anybody else rants, the worse you look. Logical arguments win the day, not rants.
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