It's hard to avoid labels. I am a proud political dissident. Could the majority of Americans be dissidents? Think of the two-thirds of the country that believe the nation is on the wrong track, the 52 percent that believe politicians are dishonest, the majority that do not vote, and the vast majority that think of themselves as centrists, libertarians, moderates or independents, rather than liberals, Democrats, conservatives or Republicans. And definitely think of the many thousands of Americans out in the streets in recent months to protest the Iraq war, and the larger numbers reading Internet sites to sidestep the mainstream corporate media. Dissidents exist because placing faith in mainstream politicians is as delusional as George W. Bush believing that sending more American soldiers into the Iraq cauldron is justified. It flies in the face of reality, experience and sanity.
The great paradox is that so many people still desperately place faith in politicians. It's as if through magic or divine intervention some super-honest, non-corruptible, brilliant and charming Democrat or Republican can reform the system. And make us feel good again, restore quality to American democracy, and fight economic inequality by rejecting and stomping on all the evil corporate and other special interests that have robbed we the people of our country. Someone that will actually put the interests of working- and middle-class Americans above those of rich and powerful elites.
So what should American dissidents put their faith in?
I have long sought the answer to that question to avoid existential depression and despair. And also to avoid doing what most Americans do to dull the pain: compulsive and distractive consumerism. This is just fine with mainstream politicians. Debt-ridden consumers are so much easier to govern than active dissidents. As George W. Bush has preached on many occasions, neo-patriotism equates to personal borrowing, spending, shopping and consumption.
Other than protesting, I have arrived at two things worth putting my political faith in. And faith is exactly the right word. They require devotion and commitment as an act of faith. There is no way to prove that they will materialize or, if they did, that they would deliver all that is needed. Yet, to keep putting faith in glib, power-hungry politicians is plain nuts, based strictly on actual history.
My first answer is third parties. At critical times in American history third parties have come to the rescue and greatly improved our nation. We need more political competition. We need some third party to become competitive to Democrats and Republicans in local, state and federal elections. Some party that does not advocate fractious issues that divide, but rather presents a set of principles that bring American dissenters together to collectively pursue substantial changes in our political and governmental system.
Yet, third parties have not done well in recent decades, despite having highly committed members, albeit in relatively small numbers. The two-party duopoly has convinced most people to think of votes for third-party candidates as wasted. And so in every election many – and perhaps most – voters end up voting for the lesser evil Democrat or Republican, and eventually regretting it. Many others reject placebo voting. They have properly lost political faith.
My second answer is less understood and just as undermined and sullied by the two-party duopoly and other status quo defenders. It is to compel Congress to obey Article V of the Constitution that says it "shall call a convention for proposing Amendments" if two-thirds of state legislatures apply for one. That numeric requirement is the ONLY constitutional requirement for an Article V convention. Now, here is an absolute truthful fact. Applications have been submitted from 50 states – actually over 500 applications. An official with The John Birch Society – one of the nations's far, far right-wing groups – when confronted with that fact said: "had we ever reached the requisite number of state applications, a convention would indeed have been called." I could not believe that this anti-government, pro-constitution group could actually have such faith in Congress. Or was that just a fanciful excuse for opposing a convention?
Still, we must ask: Why has Congress not called an Article V convention? The answer is simple.
Both Democratic and Republican members of Congress have not wanted to share the constitutional power to propose amendments with the states. Institutionally, Congress has defied Article V to keep power. As Russell L. Caplan noted in Constitutional Brinkmanship: "Congress has never kept regular track of incoming convention applications, and there exists no official catalogue of the applications adopted by the states since 1789." Researchers have had to dig through many documents to build an inventory of state applications (see www.article5.org).
While Congress has acted surreptitiously, many people and organizations on the left and right have steadfastly and openly opposed an Article V convention. What do they have in common with Congress? They want to maintain the status quo that gives them ample opportunities to control government. For decades they have successfully implanted fear into the public consciousness. They especially like to talk about a "runaway convention," able to overturn our Constitution, destroy our democracy, and rob us of our civil liberties and freedoms.
Indeed, at a 1998 House hearing on a bill to amend the Constitution, Republican Charles T. Canady said: "The specter of a 'runaway convention' seems to have been accepted by many as a convincing political argument." In 1995, when both houses of the Virginia legislature passed a resolution to limit Article V conventions, one reason cited was "many states are reluctant to ask Congress to call a national convention for fear of creating a 'runaway convention' that might undermine the delicate constitutional framework the forefathers worked so hard to establish."
Yet some people see the truth. Writing in the Wall Street Journal in 1997, Roger Pilon of the libertarian CATO Institute made these salient points about an Article V convention: "With Nebraska as the only state with a unicameral legislature, it takes majorities in 75 of the 99 state legislative bodies in America to ratify any change in the Constitution. Looked at from the other direction, it takes only 13 such bodies to block any change. ...Are we really to believe that a runaway convention could get its schemes past the public? Are there not 13 bodies in this land that would rise to block all but the most popular of proposals? ...By overwhelming majorities, averaging 75 percent, Americans of every creed and color have come to understand that there is something fundamentally wrong with a system that has resulted, under modern conditions, in our being ruled year in and year out by a class of professional politicians. That situation is neither healthy nor right in a limited, constitutional democracy. Fortunately, the Framers provided a way to do something about it, a way to make substantial change while ensuring that our fundamental principles remain in place."
And Wendell Cox, speaking before the right wing American Legislative Exchange Council in 1995, asserted that "concerns about a 'runaway' convention are entirely unfounded." At the conservative Heritage Foundation James L. Gattuso concluded in 1988 that "there are numerous political and restraints which make it virtually impossible for a 'runaway' convention to rewrite the Constitution against the wishes of the American people."
The Framers gave us the Article V convention option because they anticipated that the federal government could become too powerful or just plain incompetent and ineffective. Dissidents know this has happened. The government has already been hijacked by all kinds of moneyed special interests and corrupt politicians. An Article V convention is like a fourth, temporary branch of the federal government – except that it is really a production of the states aimed at improving the federal Constitution. With enormous public and media attention its delegates would be far more difficult to corrupt by special interests.
What must be emphasized is that an Article V convention would have NO power to change the Constitution or do anything else other than to propose amendments that would have to be ratified by three-quarters of the states.
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 (more...)
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
Third parties are hopeless. I gave 4 years of my political life to the Green Party, and if I learned anything, it is that small alternative parties trying to play the same game the big boys play will be blown out of the water every time. The problem is that 3rd parties have to accept the electoral rules set by the main parties. Even worse, they tend to identify with those rules and end up perpetuating the system. A Green Party which replaced say the Democratic party, would get us nowhere.
Same with a constitutional convention. Why would anyone at this point believe that a constitutional convention wouldn't end up being controlled by right wing nuts, if not by status quo liberals. This discussion is full of vague stragetic analysis about how such a convention could be brought about. What's missing is a compelling list of constitutional changes people might actually get excited about. Hirschhorn needs to stop obsessing about tactics and look at a fundamental agenda addressing what's wrong with the current system. Only when that is established might a movement for a constitutional convention make sense.
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Kuzminski (6 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 93 comments) on Tuesday, Jan 30, 2007 at 8:58:45 AM
Okay, you have no faith in third parties and you do not have enough faith in our Constitution to want all of it faithfully implemented. So where do you place your political faith? The Democratic Party? And as to specific constitutional amendments I believe appropriate - read my book Delusional Democracy or the dozens of articles published on this site.
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Joel S. Hirschhorn (141 articles, 50 quicklinks, 65 diaries, 546 comments [2 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Tuesday, Jan 30, 2007 at 9:11:15 AM
Any kind of faith, of course, is a dangerous thing. It is a commitment to something non-evident, something which can be characterized in various and often contradictory ways (e.g., democracy). We don't need faith; we need realism. We have a constitution and political system generally which excessively concentrates political and economic power, and justifies doing so by some kind of faith, secular (neo-liberalism) or sacred (fundamentalism).
That goes for the Democratic party as well, certainly its leadership. What's interesting about the Democratic party is its grassroots resistance to the leadership. That grassroots may not be able to reform the party, but it is a large constituency which might yet somehow be a vehicle for productive political change.
My realist political philosophy is that of Jeffersonian democracy. Jefferson was more prescient about the concentrations of political and economic power that any other significant American figure. He called for the reestablishment of politics on a grassroots basis, on local assemblies or 'ward republics,' in his phrase. These would be the foundation of an accountable, bottom-up system. Similarly in economic life, we need to break the stranglehold of our centralized financial system, which makes the rich vastly richer while leaving most of the population mired in debts. 19th century Jeffersonian populists advocated direct access to capital in various ways, including non-interest loans available locally to citizens.
I haven't read your book, and wouldn't particularly do so on the basis of your piece. Why don't you just post your concrete ideas here?
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Kuzminski (6 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 93 comments) on Tuesday, Jan 30, 2007 at 10:18:37 AM
Regardless whether it is done by the Article V route or otherwise, something has to be done quickly before the rich folk steal everything. The statement that we need "Someone that will actually put the interests of working- and middle-class Americans above those of rich and powerful elites" is the crux of the matter. I like campaign finance reform myself but it is highly unlikely that these gofers will do anything against their own self interests.
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Bacchus (17 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 34 comments) on Monday, Feb 5, 2007 at 10:24:46 PM
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