The Right’s recent repudiation of democracy is perplexing. We grew up learning and believing that democracy was one of our most sacred rights as Americans. For more than a century, America’s most successful century, democracy was the foundation of our government’s legitimacy, and the ethical basis for all U.S. policy, repeatedly invoked as the justification for entry into numerous armed conflicts abroad.
Today, it’s not hard to trace the root of the anti-democracy fervor gripping the American Right. It comes from the numerous propaganda farms that infect various media, funded and controlled by today’s wealthy ruling elites and our nation’s enemies abroad. It casts into doubt the fabric of American values. It is accompanied by the dubious claim of Constitutional “originalism” that repudiates several critical changes to the Constitution since it was ratified.
Not long ago, the political Right demonized the Left as “elitists”. In that case, “elitist” was a code word that meant college professors who taught the principles of social justice, i.e.: equality under the law, democracy and civil rights. Yet, the founders’ concept of republic included some of the most flagrant examples of elitism in U.S. history: slavery, denial of rights for women, unequal distribution and curtailment of citizens’ rights, and the Electoral College. These were integral to their elitist government construct. Was the country wrong to abolish slavery, to facilitate the integration of women and previously unrepresented classes into the electorate, to eliminate the elitist mechanism for choosing U.S. Senators by switching to a popular vote?
How did elitism become great again?
It’s not too hard to understand that, in colonial America, this elitism was an easy concept to accept. The colonials were, after all, mandated to be loyal, obedient subjects of the British Crown…until they decided to start a revolution. Maintaining the idea that “some citizens are more equal than others” wasn’t too hard to sell for the existing ruling class at the moment we became a new nation. That’s how they’d always lived, that was their entitlement, and they were the ones with the most wealth and power to protect. So, they, the U.S. founding ruling class, had no trouble rationalizing an elitist institution like the Electoral College. (We should also examine the recent corruption of the word, “entitlement”.)
Many of the founders talked of the “tyranny” of majority rule; no more than their version of the “let them eat cake” trope. The paternalistic idea that a select group of white males, mostly landholders and wealthy leaders, would and should run the country, and that the vast majority of citizens should not be troubled by that, and must trust “their betters” to serve their best interests, was a sardonic facsimile of the monarchy/oligarchy against which they had just led an armed rebellion. (It is ironic, in today’s anti-democracy fervor among “conservatives”, that the rebels’ core complaint, their lack of representation in the government, became a prominent feature of those oligarchs’ new U.S. Constitution.) Nearly 250 years later, this paternalism is an intolerable anachronism. Civilization has matured beyond such elitist notions.
We’ve always been more than merely a republic. A republic is a form of representational government, but that concept does not mandate any method of choosing the representatives. China is a republic, its vast populations are served by representatives in Beijing. But, only the Communist Party can choose these representatives from their own membership. Do we strive to be no better than subjects of the authoritarian elite, like China?
In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wrote that “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”. If we agree with that principle, then, what is the best of method of obtaining that consent? Democracy is the only method, the only basis upon which a republic can claim legitimacy.
The national news media gets 10 points for reporting the Georgia atrocity just the way it happened. The footage included brave Representative Cannon's arrest. They showed President Biden's remarks including the "sick" comment. But, the most demonstrative thing was the photo of the bill signing. Only white men of a certain age surrounding a despicable governor who chose to have a painting of the Callaway Plantation above his head. PERFECT! A picture really is worth a thousand words. Kemp is a moron; that's a word I rarely use. Stacey Abrams and Rep. Cannon are coming for his kind, and millions of us will be right by their side.
Start calling Georgia the Fascist Republic of Georgia. There is talk of removing the Golf Tournament, The Masters and the Baseball All Star game from Georgia. The Masters is in a couple of weeks, so will not happen. I am a golfer and I call the Masters, Plantation Golf. A bunch of rich whites control it and have black labor. All Star game maybe. Especially with support by the players.
The Right’s recent repudiation of democracy is perplexing. We grew up learning and believing that democracy was one of our most sacred rights as Americans. For more than a century, America’s most successful century, democracy was the foundation of our government’s legitimacy, and the ethical basis for all U.S. policy, repeatedly invoked as the justification for entry into numerous armed conflicts abroad.
Today, it’s not hard to trace the root of the anti-democracy fervor gripping the American Right. It comes from the numerous propaganda farms that infect various media, funded and controlled by today’s wealthy ruling elites and our nation’s enemies abroad. It casts into doubt the fabric of American values. It is accompanied by the dubious claim of Constitutional “originalism” that repudiates several critical changes to the Constitution since it was ratified.
Not long ago, the political Right demonized the Left as “elitists”. In that case, “elitist” was a code word that meant college professors who taught the principles of social justice, i.e.: equality under the law, democracy and civil rights. Yet, the founders’ concept of republic included some of the most flagrant examples of elitism in U.S. history: slavery, denial of rights for women, unequal distribution and curtailment of citizens’ rights, and the Electoral College. These were integral to their elitist government construct. Was the country wrong to abolish slavery, to facilitate the integration of women and previously unrepresented classes into the electorate, to eliminate the elitist mechanism for choosing U.S. Senators by switching to a popular vote?
How did elitism become great again?
It’s not too hard to understand that, in colonial America, this elitism was an easy concept to accept. The colonials were, after all, mandated to be loyal, obedient subjects of the British Crown…until they decided to start a revolution. Maintaining the idea that “some citizens are more equal than others” wasn’t too hard to sell for the existing ruling class at the moment we became a new nation. That’s how they’d always lived, that was their entitlement, and they were the ones with the most wealth and power to protect. So, they, the U.S. founding ruling class, had no trouble rationalizing an elitist institution like the Electoral College. (We should also examine the recent corruption of the word, “entitlement”.)
Many of the founders talked of the “tyranny” of majority rule; no more than their version of the “let them eat cake” trope. The paternalistic idea that a select group of white males, mostly landholders and wealthy leaders, would and should run the country, and that the vast majority of citizens should not be troubled by that, and must trust “their betters” to serve their best interests, was a sardonic facsimile of the monarchy/oligarchy against which they had just led an armed rebellion. (It is ironic, in today’s anti-democracy fervor among “conservatives”, that the rebels’ core complaint, their lack of representation in the government, became a prominent feature of those oligarchs’ new U.S. Constitution.) Nearly 250 years later, this paternalism is an intolerable anachronism. Civilization has matured beyond such elitist notions.
We’ve always been more than merely a republic. A republic is a form of representational government, but that concept does not mandate any method of choosing the representatives. China is a republic, its vast populations are served by representatives in Beijing. But, only the Communist Party can choose these representatives from their own membership. Do we strive to be no better than subjects of the authoritarian elite, like China?
In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wrote that “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”. If we agree with that principle, then, what is the best of method of obtaining that consent? Democracy is the only method, the only basis upon which a republic can claim legitimacy.
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ANTI-DEMOCRACY
-Steve Leyton
The national news media gets 10 points for reporting the Georgia atrocity just the way it happened. The footage included brave Representative Cannon's arrest. They showed President Biden's remarks including the "sick" comment. But, the most demonstrative thing was the photo of the bill signing. Only white men of a certain age surrounding a despicable governor who chose to have a painting of the Callaway Plantation above his head. PERFECT! A picture really is worth a thousand words. Kemp is a moron; that's a word I rarely use. Stacey Abrams and Rep. Cannon are coming for his kind, and millions of us will be right by their side.
Fox News brainwashing its weak minded viewers.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/jersey-gym-celebrated-fox-news-163036073.html
How can you be proud to be a Republican, when all that your Party does is lie, cheat and steal?
Start calling Georgia the Fascist Republic of Georgia. There is talk of removing the Golf Tournament, The Masters and the Baseball All Star game from Georgia. The Masters is in a couple of weeks, so will not happen. I am a golfer and I call the Masters, Plantation Golf. A bunch of rich whites control it and have black labor. All Star game maybe. Especially with support by the players.