Yes. America is a democracy
Don’t trip up as you walk in here: there’s two related arguments.
We hear the argument from some people that America is not a democracy because the Constitution doesn’t include the word “democracy.” That’s idiotic. It’s like saying a horse is not a horse because it doesn’t walk around with the word HORSE written on it.
This nation is a functioning democracy because it contains the mechanics. The Constitution says the people own the place. And the people run it. Except that since there’s acres of people, it’s a two-step process: we vote for representatives, they carry our wishes to the big decision-making buildings in DC, if we don’t like what they do, we vote them out. That happens.
Next. If you voted last time, you acknowledged that process. You used it. You use the democratic machinery, you have to admit it’s a democracy. Like if you use an elevator, and you say, “this is not an elevator,” then we’ll have to find a new notch on the IQ scale just for you.
Yes, this is a democracy, and the way it works, all the mechanics of it,
the representative workings the system is specified in the Constitution, so if you can read all that and still say America is not democracy, you’re no friend of reason.
But people do that. They insist it’s not a democracy, that it’s a republic. Do they realize what an insult that is, because if America is just a republic it gets classified with the likes of The People’s Republic of China, or Zimbabwe — which are republics only for the sole definition: they don’t have royalty running the country. We’re not like those. Also, we choose not to be run by the military. Not to be run by a church (well, except Utah). Not to be run by the ultra-rich who nobody voted for. Not by technical specialists who nobody voted for – because all of that is unconstitutional. And we cannot have no government because that is anarchy (although we have Libertarians, who are like anarchists with cars).
So if you have ever voted, don’t say this is not a democracy, that’s like riding a bicycle and saying, this is not a bicycle.
Listen, if you’re conservative, last eight years, you voted for Bush. Twice. Remember him – the one with the smirk on his face on television while he talked about killings? We all watched that smirk thinking: somebody put the right string on the wrong yo-yo. But you remember what he said? Said he was bringing democracy to 
foreign countries. Now. Would he say that, if America itself wasn’t a democracy? Obviously not. So the man you voted for, Mr. Bush, believed in democracy here.
And you voted.
Next. The second related argument is a bit different. It says: America may be a democracy, but it should not be. At first when you hear that, you think, that idea is off the short bus.
We’re not done. No, as unAmerican as it is, that’s an argument you
hear. The argument says that American is worse because it is a democracy. They say, beware mob rule, saying he nation would do better is it was run by an elite, who got up there by survival of the fittest.
That is not from the Constitution. Because the framers of the Constitution believed in the greatest good for the greatest number. It’s an argument from Social Darwinism, and it says life is a struggle and physical survivors are the leaders we want for this nation. It’s an argument that says, it doesn’t matter what method the fit survive, they are still the best. The argument never did made any sense, it’s a bitchy, saturnine point of view that competition is brutish, the idea that strength is more important that goodness.
Wrong. The fittest members of society are not the best. They are only the strongest. So, you want the nation should be run by weightlifters?
But these people keep running their argument ‘America should not be a democracy.’ Some survivalist ideology so scrappy it almost looks like dragged through a Tijuana animal shelter. You read their websites, your computer starts blinking red. – In some ways, however, if they do read blogs and spray their vapid opinion around, they are at least stirring the information part of democracy.
Then they tell you it’s not a democracy.
These are people who tell you America is not a democracy, and then they’re first in line at the polling booth. Who does that? They followed the candidates, talked up the one they like, trashed the one they didn’t like, voted and then: it’s not a democracy.
Gears jammed.
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Keeping the pilot light on
Since the late 1970s and Ronald Reagan’s inauguration we’ve seen supply side economics, deregulation, an explosive growth of free markets, the sapping of union power.
The Left’s objective is still vague. Liberalism gets its spirit from equity, justice, and collective action. That spirit is all but broken, witness the precipitous inequalities in America, witness the virtual disappearance from our language of terms like “the common good,” witness unions at their all-time low memberships, witness the Supreme Court retreating from enforcement of anti-trust laws.
During the Bush administration, the Left’s tolerance melted into passivity. Energetic leftists of the 1960s, once in the media spotlight, grew wealthy and cautious.
Not just that. Any spirit on the left was also broken down into fractions. Watch a peace march, a good place to find leftists, and you saw a sea of different banners, for as many different causes. All of them good. But there is no center.
The left reached another crisis point. Since then, an agitated search for what’s to blame.
It’s partly the money. The left needs to find something else besides wealth. Today, everybody in America sleeps safe under a star, the idea that one day, they will be rich. Americans navigate their whole lives by that star. So commercialism dominates everything – and it has saturated even the left. Commercialism everywhere. Lefties worry about their credit score and worry about security.
Sold out.
This President has abandoned any serious atteempts at facing up to the banks. It looks like loss of nerve.
Which way to turn?
After Obama took the presidency, the first order of business was the economic collapse – undoing the money mess created by the Bush administration. Rebuilding our infrastructure. Rebuilding our schools. – But all of those had the tone of cleaning up somebody’s old wreckage. Fixing health care. Job by necessary job. But all that is not ‘forward.’
It’s partly that Liberals have lost their ‘forward.’ This is as deep a crisis as our submission to Wall Street. It is a collective loss of nerve.
There’s no fallen flag to grab up in the Liberal movement because there is no longer any flag.
Congress has no unified ‘forward.’ The American people have no unified forward. Once, we had the Occupy Movement. It suffered from lack of any forward agenda, and caved to police action. So now liberals talk about their frightening college debts or get fearful about retirement. Since we have no more effective restriction on exorbitant interest rates, they sap anybody’s courage.
The heart of the matter is that there is no new ideology.
There’s few leftist commentators, talk show liberals who churn the air like windmills.
But no coherent new theory, to unify.
Except here.
Only on this blog can you read whetherexploitation is ethical. Only here can you read about the contradiction between the American workplace – undemocratic and authoritarian – and the surrounding democracy. Read why social inequality is a killer (there’s new scientific evidence). About the long shadow of materialism. On widening corruption. Here the zero-sum concept is explained. Read how, in the long run, exorbitant greed may threaten democracyitself. A brief summary of opposing Right and Left philosophies here andhere.
Opinion is power.
But every year for the last 30 years, debate has faded; the left almost became mute. Liberals have avoided theory confrontations. Not in Congress, not at beer parties.
Every time that happened, the left’s light dimmed.
Left ideology. This blog is where we keep the pilot light on.
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How the Right dominates
People are fascinated by conflict.
The Right wing is energetically shoving blame for the national economy onto the Left. One of the right’s bullies, Bill O’Reilly, dealt out his thrashings on t.v.
Right wing commentators run an ostentatious tyranny. It is the source of the public’s fascination with the Right.
The Left considers itself too nice for this bruiser style. The Left simply doesn’t have head-crushers like Limbaugh and O’Reilly. There is no Fox News on the left, and right-wing radio shows vastly outnumber left-wing. The Left thinks that being morally good, maybe showing a tolerant sense of humor, should be enough to prevail.
It is not, and the Left has no real idea how to push back. So the Left, with its natural compassion, its collective action, its trust, its usury laws, are all being put through the meat grinder.
Surviving a reactionary
One look at this man and you know you’re dead: here.
Civil war looming within the Democratic party?
The Democratic party has lost its soul. Here’s why.
If our children are being raised on Ayn Rand, we’re in trouble
– here’swhy.
Left Blog
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