Democracy
has become the state religion of the United States.
Americans, by and large, extol it with great fervor.
Many of our leaders, including President Bush, are
committed to spreading it around the globe. And we
respect no political process that isn’t based on
the concept of one person, one vote.
It’s
about time we put this democracy thing in context.
If we don’t turn a jaundiced eye to the extreme
view of democracy, we are likely to find ourselves
caught in the political paralysis the French have
brought on themselves.
For
weeks, tens of thousands of workers, students and
other Frenchmen have taken to the streets of their
cities to protest a new law intended to reduce
France’s apparently intractable youth
unemployment, which is 22 percent nationwide and as
high as 40 percent in some urban areas. To encourage
employers to hire young workers, the law makes it
easier for employers to fire workers under 26 years
of age.
In
a recent editorial, the Wall Street Journal
described this French stalemate as a symptom of an
ailing democracy. This kind of popular protest was
minted in France, beginning with its 1789 Revolution
and, more recently, in the May 1968 student revolt
and last fall’s violent protests in the suburbs of
Paris and in other urban areas.
Signs
of democratic excess aren’t confined to France, of
course. Our own national spending orgy, the
opposition of Jesse Jackson and others to any
elections in New Orleans unless and until democratic
perfection can be assured and the thousands of local
fights over zoning where democratic processes are
hijacked by NIMBY opponents are simply
representative of a pattern. If numbers of people
can be mobilized to achieve a political objective of
whatever kind, you can bet an organizer is poised to
seize the opportunity, regardless of the negative
impact on property rights, political and social
stability or the economic health of the community.
One
such project to exalt the extreme version of
democracy as the guarantor of the Good Life is the
Campaign for a National Popular Vote, which seeks to
neutralize or circumvent the ancient Electoral
College that adherents to the new national religion
despise so intensely. Their battle cry: “Vox
populi vox Dei.” (“The voice of the people is
the voice of God.”)
This
devotion to government by plebiscite is what led
France to the Terror. It is leading government at
all levels in this nation to dysfunction.
Responsible citizenship, self-reliance and mature
decision-making are being displaced by interest
group politics, manipulation of political and
governmental processes for selfish ends and
lawmaking calculated to appease the most shrill and
well-organized.
It
is often close to mob rule. Political pandering no
longer offends most voters. They demand it.
The
generation of Virginians that contributed so
significantly to the American Revolution, a new
Virginia Constitution and, ultimately, the United
States Constitution and the Bill of Rights would be
appalled by politics in the 21st century. Although
those Virginia leaders of the 18th century were
almost evenly split between Federalist and
Anti-Federalist sentiments, they all shared the view
that, for our government to function well, the
extreme version of democracy — government by
plebiscite — must be rejected. For them, civic
virtue, limited government, self-restraint and
self-reliance were essential to good governance.
Virginia
is moving away from those values toward a form of
governance we will soon regret. What the lesson of
present-day France should teach us is once we enter
that New World, turning back is mighty difficult.
--
April 3, 2006
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