American Democracy: soft despotism?
Before arguing, I strongly suggest to look up Alexis de Toqueville and his essai Democracy in America. It is originally written in french but there are translations:
Thus, After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.
I have always thought that servitude of the regular, quiet, and gentle kind which I have just described might be combined more easily than is commonly believed with some of the outward forms of freedom, and that it might even establish itself under the wing of the sovereignty of the people.
Our contemporaries are constantly excited by two conflicting passions: they want to be led, and they wish to remain free. As they cannot destroy either the one or the other of these contrary propensities, they strive to satisfy them both at once. They devise a sole, tutelary, and all-powerful form of government, but elected by the people. They combine the principle of centralization and that of popular sovereignty; this gives them a respite: they console themselves for being in tutelage by the reflection that they have chosen their own guardians. Every man allows himself to be put in leading-strings, because he sees that it is not a person or a class of persons, but the people at large who hold the end of his chain.
By this system the people shake off their state of dependence just long enough to select their master and then relapse into it again. A great many persons at the present day are quite contented with this sort of compromise between administrative despotism and the sovereignty of the people; and they think they have done enough for the protection of individual freedom when they have surrendered it to the power of the nation at large. This does not satisfy me: the nature of him I am to obey signifies less to me than the fact of extorted obedience. I
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It is the despotism of one's own lack of will. As the old adage goes: those who stand for nothing fall for everything. Most people have not the character to guide their own development, they allow their friends, the media, their church, political parties, and hedonistic cultural figures to mold them into Frankensteinian monsters. When people are given political freedom, it terrifies them so much they adopt a new master: the blind pursuit of hedonistic pleasure. Not that it is any better in authoritarian regimes. Most life is wasted in either system, either without direction in a democracy or as fodder for the realization of the ambitions of some dictator or politburo. 1
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Most people are like ants, they simply follow the person in front of them and the person in the front is following the government. It takes character to stand up against a system in power and to call that system out when they believe it has too much power. Television, radio, paper adds all mold people to think in a certain way when what people really need to do is think for themselves. It is sad to say I live in a time that i dont trust my government. They lie and cover up their lies with more lies either because they either mess up or do something intentionally that they know the American people wont be happy with. They hide truths from the American people because they believe the average person isnt informed or educated enough to understand them. If the government simply strived to do what was right and what was best for the people instead of pursuing their own interests and deciding what to share we would be better off. Candidates for leadership should be more interested in whether they are serving the best interests of the people than working their way up the government ladder and building their resume. I fear for the lack of true American leaders that have filled the governments ranks over the years. We need to rebuild our government with fresh faces and Honest to God Americans! Heres a start, government officials should get paid the Federal minimum wage. See how fast the roaches scatter with that. Only a true American would lead this country for sub standard pay. Give the rest of their salary to our teachers. 1
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You ask for the impossible. There will never be an altruistic government or politician and there never was. The main reason for this is the people are stupid, they want what is bad for them. So an altruistic politician is forced to tell the people "no". At this point a demagogue steps in and tells the people "yes" and what a surprise the altruist loses. Another reason is again because the people are stupid. This time they want something but don't want to pay for it. An honest politician would have to lay out a real balanced budget while the demagogue can say that not only can we give the people what they want, we can do it while cutting taxes! |
