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Monday, March 21, 2005Just stumbled on Cicero's response to something I posted about filibusters the other day. While I was writing about filibusters and he responded with thoughts on the courts, I think there's common ground here. Specifically, we both see a democracy that is dubious of letting the people govern. Cicero is right on the money when he notes that the right and left both put up with usurpation of power by the courts in the belief that the court will guard the most hallowed parts of their agendas from the teeming masses. The filibuster, of course, is a species of the same thing. Once, the Senate existed to protect the elites from the hoi polloi who would likely dominate the House. At the time, the Senators were even appointed - by the governors - as a means of assuring that the political classes controlled the upper chamber. The filibuster is a poor attempt at recreating the fussy temperament that earlier Senates are supposed to have had. By making it hard for the Senate to do anything, you make it a brake on the House, in effect.When our Constitution was adopted, insulating the people from power may have made some sense. We knew our rights as Englishman, but not exactly, and we were familiar with the rule of law, but not necessarily fond of it. Creating a wall between the people and power made sense in this context. And it was a fair exchange, since with the Bill of Rights there existed a corresponding wall between power and the people's everyday lives. However, when democracies - and peoples - grow up, there needs to be an evolution in the arrangements. The early American Republic was blissfully inconsequential in many ways. Many people identified with their states, rather than with the emerging nation, and for many people the governor was more important than the President. For better or worse, things have changed with the American Republic over the last two-plus centuries. As a people, we are more mature. And the government that exists and acts in our name is much, much bigger. Many are unhappy about this, but it's their forbearers' fault. Trusting in elites to tinker with stuff in Washington led to the folks in Washington tinkering with more and more while too many took their goodies and pretty much kept their mouth shut. And we are now in the same conundrum as the people in Arab kleptocracies - we have some measure of responsibility for who we let govern us. Thankfully, we have greater say in the matter. But we've got to use it. To use one's say in a democracy, however, doesn't just mean collecting your "I voted" sticker every two years. It requires reading the papers and following the news as carefully as one would follow a stock after having popped in a pretty penny or two. It requires knowing what's up and what you think about it. And it requires communicating to our elected officials just what you, as one who consents to be governed, thinks about how things are being done. Complaining about Congress is fun, but if you want them to actually do something, you've got to make them fearful that they're being watched by the people who get the final say on their employment. If I could count on my boss only coming by every two years and then, on seeing the place in a shambles, saying "Carry on," that wouldn't be much incentive for me to mind the store now, would it? But we do this with our elected officials all the time. And we get the lousy, overreaching, overindulgent government we deserve just as sure as a completely inattentive boss would deserve an underperforming department or bankruptcy for his company. It's kind of funny. Cicero wants to stop protecting the pols from the people. I think we need to stop protecting the people from themselves. For the people, just as surely as the pols, count on the courts, count on filibusters, count on the very intransigeance of government to protect them from the consequences of casting ill-thought ballots for people who talk all the more quickly for not taking the trouble to think things through. We should get the government we deserve, and often do. It is ill-considered, intemperate, more responsive to the last idea voiced than to a deeper understanding of cohering notions of what the major institution in our society ought to be doing. But more often, our marvelous founding fathers and our not so marvelous courts come together to allow us to vote for idiots in the confidence that someone will clean up after us. We vote for lower taxes - and the new senior center. Vote for moral values - and the sanctity of a libertine culture. Vote for a war - and for bringing the troops home. There's a lot of prattle about the parties, about the elites and yada, yada, yada, but we live in a society where you're freer to rant, rave and be a general nuisance about your beliefs than just about anywhere else. If we were willing to take the time to speak out and listen to others, the marketing departments known as our political parties would soon issue product conforming to our tastes. But when we mindlessly buy the spiced up politics up the extremes left and right and count on the courts to water it down, we find ourselves in precisely the soup we're in. We the People deserve to have abortion banned in some states, legal as hell in others. Deserve to not be able to get premium wines if we live in the wrong state. Deserve to be screwed over by police departments more eager to seize potentially drug-related assets and collect red-light fees than to keep our homes and streets safe. We deserve to be forced to make our voices heard, if only so we can find out how ridiculous we are. But we have to take the first steps. We can't expect the elites to take our politics seriously if we don't. So if you're mad at the court today, don't be grateful for it tomorrow. Stick to your guns and demand more democracy if you're prepared to live with the consequences of you and your drinking buddies making policy. Otherwise, give thanks to the courts for saving you the trouble of truly exercising your own citizenship. I think it's clear where I stand on this. Nixon is reported to have said, "The people have spoken, the bastards." I think we'd be better off if we all took a great enough stake in the system to find ourselves muttering the same thing from time to time, rather than drifting through a society where, like the Senate of old, power is invested in those at several removes from the people. On a side note, Cicero makes some good points on the Schiavo case here. 
posted by gbarto at 6:16 PM |
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