Even the best government and political system has flaws; we have to work on an imperfect system and may be able to enact only limited change. I will avoid talking about rigged or fake elections, though I feel that it is a growing concern. However, I will stop short of saying that I believe democracy is truly dead at the time I'm writing these lines.
I have observed politics in United Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, and now in the United States of Europe. Most often, it was not democracy because there was an almighty leader following a vision no one could agree with.
DYSFUNCTIONAL POLITICS
From an early age, I have thought politics didn't work. For some reason, even though the process looked entirely democratic, we always ended up voting for parties instead of people, and hence, always seemed to elect the wrong people. It has been my observation that once in power, leaders rarely do what the people actually want. It always ends up in disaster, and sometimes we even re-elect the same horrible people, and no one can understand why.
It is really a question of transparency about who we do elect to power. Who are they truly deep down, do we even get to really know, considering all the lies we are being fed all the time?
I have never bought into anything about communism or socialism; for some reason when they came to my universities to recruit new fresh minds, I never got on the boat.
I remember "The Social Contract" of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Hobbes and Locke and most especially, "The Prince" of Machiavelli. I know that the American political structure was inspired by Charles de Montesquieu who lived in France from 1689 to 1755, and who also inspired the French political system. Unfortunately, his famous theory of the separation of powers no longer works. It is obvious to anyone that this separation of powers no longer exists, or at least can easily be circumvented.
I simply want to talk about politics at its most basic function and structure; because this is what I feel does not work and ultimately fails us all. This is what can give the power to anyone to start a world war or destroy an entire economy for the wrong reasons.
PARTIES MUST GO
A radical change in the structure itself is required. Basically, the The idea of political parties needs to go. It is the most outdated and impractical concept in politics. More so because in this day and age, the line is so blurred between party lines, there is not much difference if you vote for one or the other.
The only difference is a few main "wedge issues" such as being for or against gay marriage, abortion, women's rights; should we give more money to big corporations; should we give more money to the poor; and finally, the big argument that cannot fail to win you an election: should we have tax cuts and who for and continue a tax code that is punitive to the powerless and gives a pass to the powerful.
Now, these few issues truly have nothing to do with any political party, for most of the time they will be no more than attempts to garner votes of special interests. These can be debated anyway by all the elected representatives. If you paid more attention to the personal beliefs and ideas of local representatives instead of the political party you will vote for, you would know if the person you're about to elect will be a little tyrant and betray you completely or not.
That little group of local politicians is really all you need to study in order to vote, nothing else. By electing a political party, you most likely vote for the representative of that party without knowing anything about who that person truly is and what that person can truly do for you (or to you). Most of the time these people are so powerless anyway, their elections are more like a formality for a party to get into power, and then the Prime Minister and his Cabinet, or the President and his appointees take over the show.
So in essence, you will be ruled by a very small group of people. And your local representatives, you will know very little about, and they will be powerless anyway, without a voice of any kind. You see the problem?
THE PRICE OF POWER
By getting rid of political parties and coming back to basics, we will also eliminate another growing concern in actual politics. Now parties are spending so much money on their elections, it goes into the millions if not billions. What does this tell you? That only rich candidates can now get into power. Where do they get the money? This invites bribery, corruption, conflict of interests, and now we're destroying Iraq to take over their natural resources, because who paid for the American Elections? Petroleum companies.
The current party system is a problem, but parties per se?
The current system, which essentially is a duopoly designed to create enormous barriers to anyone outside two parties, does defeat real democracy and needs to go. But people are going to coalesce for political purposes, whether you call the results parties or not. So trying to eliminate parties is a lost cause.
We do need to eliminate all the arrangements designed to preserve the duopoly - the failure to require a majority vote to elect, the lack of any runoff system for most elections, a Federal Election Commission composed only of people with gross conflicts of interest, barriers to ballot access, the host of laws based on the assumption of two parties, etc.
The result should be multiple parties that can be regarded as serious and a greater opportunity for different political ideas to get a hearing.
Right now, different ideas are shut out of the political process, even if they have majority support - like a change in national priorities, which is far more important than the narrower ideas that the duopoly candidates discuss. It can't even be mentioned. The duopoly parties won't hear of it, and the MSM won't even publish letters to the editor about it.
by
Bill Samuel (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 225 comments)
on Friday, July 11, 2008 at 8:51:04 PM
I see that you present interesting ideas, thank you for adding to the debate. I hope others will follow. You also present new problems I had not identified when one considers political parties.
I am not certain if I agree that somehow breaking this idea of a duopoly would be enough. I have been in countries where there were four main credible parties who got many votes, just like in Canada in the last 15 years with the Bloc Québécois and the Reform Party. Nothing changed, it was the same thing. The Liberal government, once in power, was simply less powerful because it did not have a majority. There were three parties in the last national election in the United Kingdom, this too made no significant difference.
You said: "But people are going to coalesce for political purposes, whether you call the results parties or not." I thought of that, and yes, it is probable that it will be the case, unless somehow we insure by law that it cannot officially be done.
Otherwise, it does not matter much, let them unite in some form or other. It is obvious they can still state if they are leftist, centrist or rightist. At the very least, whatever the main trouble that a duopoly brought, should have largely disappeared by then. Or else, we will not get rid of those main problems identified in my article.
Ordinary citizens need to be able to go into politics without having to be accepted as such by a party, and without having to be filthy rich or have a rich sponsor to get heard. Being part of a political party should not insure your success or your failure in politics. You need to be elected for yourself, for your own aptitudes and abilities, not because you are a representative of the Democratic or the Republican Party.
And once in power, you need to have a voice, not have to follow the party line. If you are so truly for a law to be passed, why should you vote against your will because your party leader tells you so? These problems won't go away unless parties go.
Perhaps as you say we could keep political parties, but then, many other changes would be required to solve these problems and bring back democracy. Let's hear all solutions, and somehow let's find a way to implement them.
It is unlikely that the actual politicians will want to operate these changes. They have already found many ways around such difficulties, they always find a loophole to do what they wish, and so any solution needs to be "little dictator" proof.
