OpEdNews » Redefining Democracy Bottom Up

I think and have read that much of the world's power is in the hands of a few big companies and that they run the government. Eisenhower told us to look out for the "military industrial complex." It has now grown to be the military industrial pharmaceutical agribusiness university complex. Everything seems to get sucked up into an upside down pyramid with more and more power at the top. Every time the Democrats get in they clean up the mess so that the Republicans can come in and use the good work to their benefit. Why fix things when the fix only benefits the fat cats eventually? Why not back off and let the mess self-destruct?

I once was talking to an Indian man and I told him I thought that the ways of the Indian culture were horizontal egalitarian and cooperative with almost totally shared property. (the Indian tribe was also a tribal matriarchy and our system is a civil patriarchy). I told him I thought that the way of the white man's culture was vertical, elitist, competitive and believed in almost exclusive private property. I told him that I thought that if the two culture's mixed we would have a perfect androgynous or liberated or double-sexed culture. It would be a horizontal/vertical, egalitarian/elitist, cooperative/competitive, system, with shared and private property. And, it would be both matriarchal and patriarchal. The Indian man told me that the Indians had already thought of that. If so, it is a pity no one listened.

In addition if one has a locally-alive small group like a tribe or new-age community, then one has a one-person-one-vote system that works because the small organization enables everyone to know who they are electing. If government starts at the bottom and works slowly up from communities acting together to city and state and country, it might actually be possible to elect the best person in the country to the office of president.

As things are, the one-person-one-vote is largely a sham, as all too often you are given a choice of one of two paid puppets of the big corporations. If representative government is arrived at after a simpler one person one vote, (on a level such that the elected person is known by the elector), then the representation can be real.

A government "of by and for the people" is possible. But without the fundamental bottom up democracy of one-person-one-real-vote, the top down democracy or representative democracy has to be a sham.

It is absolutely essential that the country be an integrated whole where power is not added but multiplied. Ten plus ten is twenty and ten times ten is one hundred. A vote that is like ours, our American way of voting, is a mere sum of votes, and is not powerful. A voting system where people vote from the context of small living democratic units or communities, enables the power of multiplication. When each community elects its best, (and in a small community you know who the true leader is) then all these fine people go to the city and elect the best of the best and on and up. The power of multiplication has worked and democracy becomes real. At the top, the elected leaders then truly represent the people and a bottom-up/top-down democracy can be circular and self-sustaining.

The cyclic power of true government would have such a multiplying kind of momentum that when it finally takes root on Earth there will be no stopping it. With the little guy truly empowered (his bottom up democratic power) and many others like him elect a true representative of the people, then such a person could then do the job of real top- down -representative- democracy, and then you are in business.

Until we have a synthesis of the ways of third world peoples, like the Indians, with the ways of the now-dominant white man's ways, we will not have anything remotely resembling true democracy.

Therefore, my interests are with trying to start a small real local community. Many others are doing the same. I read that there are, in the U.S., 100,000 people living in "community" today. I feel this is the only hope of this planet.

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Joel S. Hirschhorn is the author of Delusional Democracy - Fixing the Republic Without Overthrowing the Government (www.delusionaldemocracy.com). His current political writings have been greatly influenced by working as a senior staffer for the U.S. Congress and for the National Governors Association. He advocates a Second American Revolution, beginning with an Article V Convention to propose constitutional amendments. He is Chair of the Independent Party of Maryland.
Joel S. HirschhornJoel S. Hirschhorn is the author of Delusional Democracy - Fixing the Republic Without Overthrowing the Government (www.delusionaldemocracy.com). His current political writings have been greatly influenced by working as a senior staffer for the U.S. Congress and for the National Governors Association. He advocates a Second American Revolution, beginning with an Article V Convention to propose constitutional amendments. He is Chair of the Independent Party of Maryland.

The fallacy in your thinking

Our entire political system under control of the two-party plutocracy is far too corrupt and rigged to think that it is ever possible to get root reforms through voting. We need a heavy dose of direct democracy and for that we need to use what the Founders gave us in the Constitution but Congress has refused to let us have -- an Article V convention in which state delegates can consider proposals for constitutional amendments; there is so much to learn at www.foavc.org, and please join our group...

by Joel S. Hirschhorn (135 articles, 37 quicklinks, 63 diaries, 540 comments) on Friday, August 15, 2008 at 1:39:29 PM

I am a hippy that never dropped out. I have held on to impossible idealism and will not give up. I think the human race is a ticking time bomb and we are at the last tick. So what is the good of slow careful pragmatism that allows time for it all to happen with less than miraculous speed ? Right now we need near-impossible idealism or we need to go extinct so we can stop killing our planet. Other life forms may need it after we have almost destroyed it. Humans seem to be a very clever but unwise...

to see more of bio, click on member name
Theresa PaulfranzI am a hippy that never dropped out. I have held on to impossible idealism and will not give up. I think the human race is a ticking time bomb and we are at the last tick. So what is the good of slow careful pragmatism that allows time for it all to happen with less than miraculous speed ? Right now we need near-impossible idealism or we need to go extinct so we can stop killing our planet. Other life forms may need it after we have almost destroyed it. Humans seem to be a very clever but unwise...

to see more of bio, click on member name

I agree with you Sir

First of all I am very thankful for the invitation to join your group and I will definitely check it out.

In addition I would like to say that I appreciate your point. Nine out of ten new age communities do not last long at all. It will take a long time for humans to be able to create sustainable communities on the land and to leave the densely overpopulated cities behind.

And at the moment we do not have a long time as we have a president poised and planning to drop nuclear bombs on Iran, all but insuring that our planet is thrust into a third world war.

Perhaps our best partial attempt to create the first beginnings of community is to do just what we are doing and that is to engage in meaningful dialogue on internet sites like this one.

Humans have lost the ability to navigate the one thing that is perhaps most characteristically human, the ability to share with each other in a meaningful group and cultural experience. That great human ability of creating an extra-genetic cultural experience and heritage is something that has been taken over by a patriarchal state so long we have warped this unique human ability almost past recognition of what it could be.

If we do not reinclude into the human arrangement all humans, regardless of economic class, age, sex, race, etc in other words reinclude humans into the human race, then the looming threat of extinction of this species is a certainty and will then be a blessing as we will have lost any reason to survive.

by Theresa Paulfranz (7 articles, 1 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 28 comments) on Friday, August 15, 2008 at 2:10:52 PM

Constitutional Rights are not Given by the Constitution

I have checked out your fine site, Mr. Hirschborn. And thanks again for the invitation to do so. You mention that we the U.S. citizens should be aware that the constitution enables us to petition for changes in our constitution. I quote your site...

Article V of the Constitution of the United States provides that "on the application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, [Congress] shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments...". The Founding Fathers of our nation recognized the importance of providing this means by which the citizens of our country could initiate amendments to change and/or clarify the Constitution; the fundamental document which they intended to be not only the blueprint for our federal system but also "the supreme Law of the Land".

I thing that article five might work if one had an honest and peaceful government. But ours is not. Our government does not respect that all governmental powers are essentially supposed to be the expression of the will of the people. Bush's presidency was not won by a fair vote of the people but my rigged elections. And our president has said he thinks the constitution is "only a piece of paper". The most incredible manuscript imaginable is only powerful if the people in charge honor its ideas and ideals. At this point it is not relevant any more what our constitution says but what we do.

The people have the right to demand that their government represent them wether the constitution says so or not. That is not a right conferred by the constitution but a right conferred by the fact that God made us all equal. If any man stand in a higher office than any other man he should do so with two equal and opposite rights and two equal and opposite reasons. Those rights are these...1. A true representative of the people has the right to be exalted to high power conferred by those abilities and intent, and 2. He should also deem himself the humble servant of the people for the exact same reason, that he is a true representative of them and must therefore serve them as their mouthpiece.

Only by realizing that power confers responsibility does any governmental representative honor the inalienable fact that all humans are humans and of the same species and with the same basic rights.

On the second page of your site,www.foavc.org, you quote Abraham Lincoln. ...

"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.

Since it is probably impossible to achieve amending our constitution or our government we are left the only other recourse..as Lincoln said.."overthrow it".

And as unlikely it is that we should topple it from the bottom up I think that it is more unlikely at this point that we should be able to topple it from the top down.

True we can not do a quick assembly of new age communities fast enough to stop this run away government but there is state secession.

by Theresa Paulfranz (7 articles, 1 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 28 comments) on Friday, August 15, 2008 at 3:15:29 PM