That the society needs to change with respect to the principles just discussed is, one notes, only the more true because of a matter becoming clearer after scores of years of active, and activist, government. Government activism has, to be sure, improved this country greatly. But not because government is competent. Government is largely incompetent at almost everything it does. Even our military, which regularly speaks of principles that one wishes all would follow -- honesty, duty, honor, concern for one=s men, etc. -- has shown itself to mainly not be competent in war after war; we do win conventional wars like World War II, Gulf I and the beginning of Gulf II, but only by virtue of overwhelming resources, and when it comes to non-conventional wars -- Viet Nam, subsequent phases of Gulf II -- we do badly. One writer=s view is that it is simply symptomatic of massive governmental incompetence at every level if even our military is inept, particularly since the military, unlike most of government, at least talks the talk of desirable principles -- although, on the other side, it is unhappily true that the military, while talking the talk, often does not walk the walk.
Exactly why government is massively inept is not something that is immediately obvious. Perhaps it is because, as conservatives think with much merit, there is no profit motive to gauge competence. Perhaps it is because of government=s bureaucratic mindset, or because people in government get no benefit from taking risks and can be greatly harmed by taking them. Perhaps it is because the principle of unified command is rarely followed. Perhaps it is all of these things. Who knows? All that one does know is that for whatever reason or combination of reasons, government usually is not competent. (One notes, incidentally, that a reasonable number of business leaders who attended the most recent World Economic Forum at Davos agreed that politicians are not competent.)
So, if government is not competent, if it is usually incompetent and grossly wasteful at almost every level, as this writer believes, why is it that activist government has improved the country greatly? -- has helped avoid post depression economic disasters, has been instrumental for civil rights and women=s rights, at one time was a great aid to education, and so on. Well, one of the fundamental reasons for this, in this writer=s judgment, is that government, bad as it is, was a counterweight to an often overly greedy, corrupt, humanly insensitive private side, was an antidote to a capitalistic system and human hatred run amok. And why had the capitalist system and human hatred run amok? Because too many people, including ones in positions of economic power, followed lousy values. They ignored, or cared little for, honesty, a reasonable concern for others, a brake on personal greed, or even competence and diligence if they could succeed without them (as CEOs personally have in spades in the last ten or fifteen years).
There is, in all of this, a lesson for those who seek reform. It is one that some writers on economics have drawn -- but that far too many reject -- when discussing why one country advances and prospers but another does not. It is the lesson that culture is all. If a nation=s culture is one of striving for competence, honesty, hard work, concern for others, etc, you are going to have one kind of country. If a nation=s culture is the opposite, as seems to be extensively true throughout most of what is called the third world, throughout much of the mideast, major parts of Asia, much of Africa and elsewhere, you are going to have a different kind of country.
That culture is all cannot be stressed enough. It likely is the single most important idea in this posting. It is an idea that is race-free, ethnicity-free, gender-free, and economic-class-free. It applies to everyone. It is its culture that mainly or even exclusively determines a nation=s fate, and that certainly does so far more than any other single element.
This all has great importance for those of us who wish to see a better America. Especially because of government=s incompetence, it is crucial that those on the private side do the right thing if we are to have a better, reformed society. And for a better, improved society it is therefore key that bad cultural values and practices, and those who follow them, come to be looked down upon, reviled, anathematized, be seen as bad ideas and people. It is likewise key that good values and practices, and those who follow them, be looked on as exemplars. Psychological pressure, in the form of how people view practices and persons, will be all important, because how people view practices and persons is the key to how individuals and nations act. Those who seek reform must commit to pushing desirable values and reviling bad ones, and to doing this even though it will not bring quick victory because the triumph of better values is necessarily a long term business.
* * * * *
Let me turn now to consideration of some underlying factors of long standing that are behind much that is wrong today. One wishes to discuss, first, an idea that even a few weeks ago might have struck me as without support, yet now has some serious backers. The idea is that we should get rid of the Electoral College or, at minimum, find a way around it. Whatever reasons existed for it in 1787-89 no longer exist, and it is in fact a disaster. Were it not for the Electoral College, the Hayes/Tilden imbroglio of 1876 might not have occurred, with its corrupt political bargain that enabled the South to institute 90 years of Jim Crow. Were it not for the electoral college, Al Gore would have won in 2000 beyond peradventure, and, whatever one may have thought of Gore -- and this blogger thought so little of him and the Democrats that he did not vote for Gore -- it is inconceivable that Gore would have been as horrible as Bush. (Curiously in 2004 Bush won by 3 million plus popular votes, but a switch of only 60,000 votes in Ohio would have caused him to lose in the Electoral College. Can you imagine the Republican outrage if that had happened? If it had occurred, Republicans would be leading the charge to get rid of the Electoral College.)
There are other important reasons too, electoral reasons, to get rid of the electoral college, e.g., because of it, only about 18 states are in play in a presidential election, with the rest of the states being sure things for one candidate or the other. So the candidates ignore the 32 or so Asure thing states,@ and citizens there have less incentive to participate in the campaign or to vote. Participation in politics decreases -- today it is, indeed, fairly minimal, due partly to the Asure thing state@ phenomenon. For all these reasons, then, we should get rid of the Electoral College, which is a disaster continuously waiting to happen, as in 1876 and 2000 (albeit not in 1824). Of course, there can also be subsequent disaster when a president wins both the popular vote and the Electoral College vote (e.g., Buchanan, Hoover). But in the latter circumstances, when disaster has struck it can at least be said that this was not because of a perversion that made a mockery of the popular vote.
As said, until recently this writer would have thought B perhaps ignorantly-- that a claim that the Electoral College should be eliminated, or worked around, would have been ridiculed. But near the end of February, a new organization announced that it was publishing a book, and working, to do that very thing. At its jumping-off press conference, the supporting speakers included John Anderson, Birch Bayh and the head of Common Cause, Chellie Pingree. The organization has developed a relatively simple idea that will result in the popular vote winner becoming President even though the Electoral College is retained. (I don=t yet know how the idea will work if nobody wins a majority of the popular vote, so that one of, say, three candidates obtains a plurality not a majority of the popular vote.) Subsequently, in mid-March, The New York Times ran a lead editorial supporting the new group=s idea. The existence of the new organization and the support of people and institutions like Anderson, Bayh, Pingree and The Times indicate that the idea of getting rid of or working around the Electoral College is no longer so far out.
An idea related to getting rid of the Electoral College is that we should in some way alter our single member district method of election (in effect our winner take all method of election) for the House of Representatives. Like the Electoral College, single member districts discourage the entry into politics of people who have important ideas not consonant with the conventional wisdom of Republicans and Democrats. It discourages the formation of new, independent parties -- a result which is of course approved by our politicians, pundits and political scientists, but one that can surely be debated, as can the conventional wisdom that there would be instability if third parties or independent candidates had a chance. One notes that the system of winner-take-all single member districts has resulted in 95 percent of the seats in Congress being Asafe@ seats, being seats for which there is no real contest -- a result that creates entrenched corruption.
There are lots of suggestions about what kind of multi member districts or proportional representation should replace single member (winner take all) districts. There have been some alternatives in the past, and there are some alternatives being used now in local elections. What alternatives should be used can properly be lengthily debated. At this point, the only thing this writer is sure about is that there should be some changes -- at minimum, there should be some experiments with alternatives in some places, as a prelude to widespread change.
Let me turn now to another matter which, like the Electoral College, goes back to 1787-1789.
This country was conceived in original sin in 1787-1789. Without mentioning the word, the Constitution supported slavery: it said the importation of slaves could not be stopped until 1808 (most Americans do not know it did this), it required fugitive slaves to be returned (even fewer know this), and -- the heart of what I wish to talk about here -- it provided that every slave should be counted as three-fifths of a person for purposes of a state=s representation in Congress and the electoral college. (Can you believe it? A slave was three-fifths of a person!) What this meant was that the South had a disproportionately high number of Congressmen, and a disproportionately high number of electors in the electoral college, because slaves -- who could not vote, were not allowed to learn to read, were whipped and beaten, were hunted by patrols at night, were ruthlessly separated from families, and were made to work like dogs for relatively short lives -- were used to increase the South=s political power. (Of course, one is cynically tempted to say, it could have been even worse -- the South=s power would have been increased still more had each slave been counted as five-fifths of a person, as a whole person.)
This increase in the South=s representation in Congress and the Electoral College had dramatic consequences. From 1789 until 1860, the South always had vastly disproportionate political power and usually controlled the Congress, the Presidency and the Supreme Court, either by dint of Southerners themselves being in the pertinent seats or by such seats being filled by so-called doughfaces, who were ANorthern men with Southern principles.@ It was not an accident that the first Congress to sit after the Southerners walked out in 1861 passed three laws which dramatically altered the country but could not be passed while the Southerners were still around: Congress passed the Morrill Act, which provided for land grant universities, now long a crucial part of our system of higher education; it passed the Homestead Act, which provided western land free for those who would work it and thereby opened the west; and it passed the transcontinental railroad bill, which knit the country together.
Because it walked out in 1861, the South lost its power until the corrupt bargain of 1876, when it began its march to resumed hegemony in national councils. For scores of years it controlled Congress through the seniority system. Southerners were appointed to the Supreme Court, and, starting with Woodrow Wilson, we began to once again get Southern Presidents, especially since 1964, a 42 year period when, depending on how you look at it, either four or five out of seven elected presidents (and either four or five out of eight overall) have come from the old Confederacy (i.e., over half of those elected and half or more of all have come from the old Confederacy, including Johnson, Carter, Clinton, and Bush II. Bush I could also be included if one wants, because he made his career in the old Confederacy though he was born a Yankee.)
Exactly why government is massively inept is not something that is immediately obvious. Perhaps it is because, as conservatives think with much merit, there is no profit motive to gauge competence. Perhaps it is because of government=s bureaucratic mindset, or because people in government get no benefit from taking risks and can be greatly harmed by taking them. Perhaps it is because the principle of unified command is rarely followed. Perhaps it is all of these things. Who knows? All that one does know is that for whatever reason or combination of reasons, government usually is not competent. (One notes, incidentally, that a reasonable number of business leaders who attended the most recent World Economic Forum at Davos agreed that politicians are not competent.)
So, if government is not competent, if it is usually incompetent and grossly wasteful at almost every level, as this writer believes, why is it that activist government has improved the country greatly? -- has helped avoid post depression economic disasters, has been instrumental for civil rights and women=s rights, at one time was a great aid to education, and so on. Well, one of the fundamental reasons for this, in this writer=s judgment, is that government, bad as it is, was a counterweight to an often overly greedy, corrupt, humanly insensitive private side, was an antidote to a capitalistic system and human hatred run amok. And why had the capitalist system and human hatred run amok? Because too many people, including ones in positions of economic power, followed lousy values. They ignored, or cared little for, honesty, a reasonable concern for others, a brake on personal greed, or even competence and diligence if they could succeed without them (as CEOs personally have in spades in the last ten or fifteen years).
There is, in all of this, a lesson for those who seek reform. It is one that some writers on economics have drawn -- but that far too many reject -- when discussing why one country advances and prospers but another does not. It is the lesson that culture is all. If a nation=s culture is one of striving for competence, honesty, hard work, concern for others, etc, you are going to have one kind of country. If a nation=s culture is the opposite, as seems to be extensively true throughout most of what is called the third world, throughout much of the mideast, major parts of Asia, much of Africa and elsewhere, you are going to have a different kind of country.
This all has great importance for those of us who wish to see a better America. Especially because of government=s incompetence, it is crucial that those on the private side do the right thing if we are to have a better, reformed society. And for a better, improved society it is therefore key that bad cultural values and practices, and those who follow them, come to be looked down upon, reviled, anathematized, be seen as bad ideas and people. It is likewise key that good values and practices, and those who follow them, be looked on as exemplars. Psychological pressure, in the form of how people view practices and persons, will be all important, because how people view practices and persons is the key to how individuals and nations act. Those who seek reform must commit to pushing desirable values and reviling bad ones, and to doing this even though it will not bring quick victory because the triumph of better values is necessarily a long term business.
* * * * *
Let me turn now to consideration of some underlying factors of long standing that are behind much that is wrong today. One wishes to discuss, first, an idea that even a few weeks ago might have struck me as without support, yet now has some serious backers. The idea is that we should get rid of the Electoral College or, at minimum, find a way around it. Whatever reasons existed for it in 1787-89 no longer exist, and it is in fact a disaster. Were it not for the Electoral College, the Hayes/Tilden imbroglio of 1876 might not have occurred, with its corrupt political bargain that enabled the South to institute 90 years of Jim Crow. Were it not for the electoral college, Al Gore would have won in 2000 beyond peradventure, and, whatever one may have thought of Gore -- and this blogger thought so little of him and the Democrats that he did not vote for Gore -- it is inconceivable that Gore would have been as horrible as Bush. (Curiously in 2004 Bush won by 3 million plus popular votes, but a switch of only 60,000 votes in Ohio would have caused him to lose in the Electoral College. Can you imagine the Republican outrage if that had happened? If it had occurred, Republicans would be leading the charge to get rid of the Electoral College.)
There are other important reasons too, electoral reasons, to get rid of the electoral college, e.g., because of it, only about 18 states are in play in a presidential election, with the rest of the states being sure things for one candidate or the other. So the candidates ignore the 32 or so Asure thing states,@ and citizens there have less incentive to participate in the campaign or to vote. Participation in politics decreases -- today it is, indeed, fairly minimal, due partly to the Asure thing state@ phenomenon. For all these reasons, then, we should get rid of the Electoral College, which is a disaster continuously waiting to happen, as in 1876 and 2000 (albeit not in 1824). Of course, there can also be subsequent disaster when a president wins both the popular vote and the Electoral College vote (e.g., Buchanan, Hoover). But in the latter circumstances, when disaster has struck it can at least be said that this was not because of a perversion that made a mockery of the popular vote.
As said, until recently this writer would have thought B perhaps ignorantly-- that a claim that the Electoral College should be eliminated, or worked around, would have been ridiculed. But near the end of February, a new organization announced that it was publishing a book, and working, to do that very thing. At its jumping-off press conference, the supporting speakers included John Anderson, Birch Bayh and the head of Common Cause, Chellie Pingree. The organization has developed a relatively simple idea that will result in the popular vote winner becoming President even though the Electoral College is retained. (I don=t yet know how the idea will work if nobody wins a majority of the popular vote, so that one of, say, three candidates obtains a plurality not a majority of the popular vote.) Subsequently, in mid-March, The New York Times ran a lead editorial supporting the new group=s idea. The existence of the new organization and the support of people and institutions like Anderson, Bayh, Pingree and The Times indicate that the idea of getting rid of or working around the Electoral College is no longer so far out.
An idea related to getting rid of the Electoral College is that we should in some way alter our single member district method of election (in effect our winner take all method of election) for the House of Representatives. Like the Electoral College, single member districts discourage the entry into politics of people who have important ideas not consonant with the conventional wisdom of Republicans and Democrats. It discourages the formation of new, independent parties -- a result which is of course approved by our politicians, pundits and political scientists, but one that can surely be debated, as can the conventional wisdom that there would be instability if third parties or independent candidates had a chance. One notes that the system of winner-take-all single member districts has resulted in 95 percent of the seats in Congress being Asafe@ seats, being seats for which there is no real contest -- a result that creates entrenched corruption.
There are lots of suggestions about what kind of multi member districts or proportional representation should replace single member (winner take all) districts. There have been some alternatives in the past, and there are some alternatives being used now in local elections. What alternatives should be used can properly be lengthily debated. At this point, the only thing this writer is sure about is that there should be some changes -- at minimum, there should be some experiments with alternatives in some places, as a prelude to widespread change.
Let me turn now to another matter which, like the Electoral College, goes back to 1787-1789.
This country was conceived in original sin in 1787-1789. Without mentioning the word, the Constitution supported slavery: it said the importation of slaves could not be stopped until 1808 (most Americans do not know it did this), it required fugitive slaves to be returned (even fewer know this), and -- the heart of what I wish to talk about here -- it provided that every slave should be counted as three-fifths of a person for purposes of a state=s representation in Congress and the electoral college. (Can you believe it? A slave was three-fifths of a person!) What this meant was that the South had a disproportionately high number of Congressmen, and a disproportionately high number of electors in the electoral college, because slaves -- who could not vote, were not allowed to learn to read, were whipped and beaten, were hunted by patrols at night, were ruthlessly separated from families, and were made to work like dogs for relatively short lives -- were used to increase the South=s political power. (Of course, one is cynically tempted to say, it could have been even worse -- the South=s power would have been increased still more had each slave been counted as five-fifths of a person, as a whole person.)
This increase in the South=s representation in Congress and the Electoral College had dramatic consequences. From 1789 until 1860, the South always had vastly disproportionate political power and usually controlled the Congress, the Presidency and the Supreme Court, either by dint of Southerners themselves being in the pertinent seats or by such seats being filled by so-called doughfaces, who were ANorthern men with Southern principles.@ It was not an accident that the first Congress to sit after the Southerners walked out in 1861 passed three laws which dramatically altered the country but could not be passed while the Southerners were still around: Congress passed the Morrill Act, which provided for land grant universities, now long a crucial part of our system of higher education; it passed the Homestead Act, which provided western land free for those who would work it and thereby opened the west; and it passed the transcontinental railroad bill, which knit the country together.
Because it walked out in 1861, the South lost its power until the corrupt bargain of 1876, when it began its march to resumed hegemony in national councils. For scores of years it controlled Congress through the seniority system. Southerners were appointed to the Supreme Court, and, starting with Woodrow Wilson, we began to once again get Southern Presidents, especially since 1964, a 42 year period when, depending on how you look at it, either four or five out of seven elected presidents (and either four or five out of eight overall) have come from the old Confederacy (i.e., over half of those elected and half or more of all have come from the old Confederacy, including Johnson, Carter, Clinton, and Bush II. Bush I could also be included if one wants, because he made his career in the old Confederacy though he was born a Yankee.)
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