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1.1.    Symptoms of a Democracy in Trouble                           (Top)

The American Ship of State is badly off course. The material well being of major segments of the U.S. population has improved since the birth of this nation. However, the promise made in 1789 in the Preamble to the United States Constitution is as follows:

"We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

This promise has not been kept. The American political system is not serving the purposes for which it was ordained. Instead, there has emerged a "shadow government" that responds primarily to big money and mega-corporate power and generally serves the ends of special interest groups at the expense of the general welfare.

In the beginning, the founding fathers authored a remarkable constitution that has endured to this day. As so eloquently stated in the preamble, the drafters envisioned a government that would further the pursuit of life, liberty, justice and happiness for all of its citizens and the formation of a more perfect union. Interestingly, and central to this work, the founding fathers did not contemplate that U.S. citizens would govern themselves directly. Sharp divisions in social and economic conditions, correspondingly high levels of illiteracy and a relatively small elite of educated men (and even fewer women), the British legacy of a monarchy and control by the aristocracy, and a deep-seated fear of tyranny of the majority associated with direct democracy combined to produce a much more limited role for the people generally.

What emerged was a system of representative government under which the chief executive (the President) and members of the House or Representatives were to be elected by the people (meaning qualified voters). A felt need to reserve control of the government to a select group of influential and educated men was reflected in the fact that members of the U.S. Senate were to be elected by state legislatures (themselves elitist in character) and women enjoyed no right to vote at all. It was not until 1813 that Senators were popularly elected and women could not vote until 1918.

The founders believed that the system of checks and balances that they created, which included a Supreme Court that beginning with Chief Justice John Marshall has enjoyed judicial supremacy, would prevent abuses of power by the executive or legislative branches. However, the Justices of the Supreme Court are to be appointed for life and are not accountable to the people except as the Court might treat the Constitution as a living document that reserved the ultimate power to the people and as the individual justices act with integrity and in a non-partisanship manner.  Whether the Court has acted with integrity and non-partisanship is a question of growing concern.

Because the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments) was added virtually contemporaneously (1791) with the adoption of the original constitution and as part of a deal to gain adoption of the Constitution as written, the amendments generally are viewed as part of the original document. As such they could and often have been interpreted in the context of a social and economic setting that was anything but democratic, as that concept is generally understood. Consequently, the guarantees embodied in the Bill of Rights could be seen as protecting the vested rights of a landed gentry and only secondarily as inuring to the benefit of citizens generally.

It took a tragic war of secession, the Emancipation Proclamation and the so-called Civil War Amendments (the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments) to even begin the formal undoing of the institution of slavery and the concomitant denial of citizenship and the franchise to vast numbers of African Americans. The struggle for voting power for Blacks, Hispanics and other "minorities" continued long after the Civil War and into the 20th Century. There is ample evidence that despite the Civil Rights Movement and Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s and 1970s, as recently as the 2000 Presidential election that large numbers of persons legally entitled to vote were disenfranchised through various forms of defacto discrimination.

In short, from its inception, and to this day, the U.S. system of government was not in form intended and in operation has not involved citizens generally in their own governance. A democracy is a government by the people. Consequently, to refer to our present system as a democracy is something of a misnomer. Governmental power has remained firmly in the hands of professional politicians and the two major political parties and their financial backers. Even as the populace has become better educated and more aware of events and the conduct of those in control participation has grown relatively little in the last century and, using the 2000 presidential election as an indicator, has declined.

A number of forces work to limit wider participation in governance. Among the most significant is a sense of powerlessness on the part of large numbers of eligible voters. Surveys regularly disclose that many voters believe politicians are corrupt and their behavior beyond the average voter's control. Adding to this perceived powerlessness is a dramatic change in work habits and the fact that millions of eligible voters are working more hours than ever and, even with two bread winners, are struggling to make ends meet (or to keep up with the Joneses or achieve the materialistically based American dream portrayed in the mass advertising with which they are constantly bombarded). Thus, voters must have not only the legal right to participate but be willing and able to do so.

The staggering costs of running for office have meant that elected officials generally are beholden to special interests with deep pockets. It remains to be seen whether the recently enacted campaign finance reform legislation will do much to change this harsh reality. In recent years the hold of party regulars over the levers of power has been strengthened by an increasingly monolithic news media that conveys a single, glamorized and sensationalized and often factually distorted message packaged by the party in power, the Pentagon, immensely powerful business conglomerates and foundations and think tanks. The competing viewpoints necessary to both an inclination to participate and to do so wisely have been sadly lacking.

The legal and institutional framework works to limit participation, both directly and by inducing voluntary drop out. The Senate, itself, because it gives some people (in small states) more voice than others, is a structural disenfranchisement, as are the winner-take-all system of the electoral-college system and district gerrymandering. Likewise, the campaign laws ultimately give voice to some and take it away from others. In our view, these structural problems and the fact that these consequences persist year after year, election after election has turned off the participation of many people.  It is our contention that the system in its current manifestation is flawed insofar as the level of popular participation needed to check the power of big money special interests has been stifled.

We further believe that the basic premises on which the governmental framework was based are no longer true. The exclusion of the masses was based on the assumptions that the masses were not qualified to participate (for a variety of reasons) and that even if the masses were qualified there participation would not be possible because of spatial and temporal obstacles. Today, the number of educated and informed citizens is vastly larger and growing and advances in communications technology based on the Internet make widespread participation feasible. We add that to the extent that being "qualified" meant having the knowledge and skills appropriate to times and having a "stake" in the system (land ownership), then today's professionals as a group would be more qualified than most of our representatives and certainly they have as great a stake in the system.  Moreover, the world has become so complex and things happen so fast that decision-makers NEED wide citizen participation and that such participation is in fact absolutely essential. In these respects, the realities have outgrown the American political system thereby steering the American ship of state further and further from the bold promise made by the founding fathers.

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