Listening to Plato and Madison

Someone has to tell our congress, both parties, that the sentiment Mr. Lincoln spoke of: government of, by and for the people, applies today just as it did 150 years ago. In our day, we see politicians ignoring the will of the people and voting yea or nay simply to stand with their party or with a particular base of that party.

I have never liked the symbolism in deliberative bodies of the term “whips”, it conjuring up Dickensian images of cajoling or bantering members of the House or Senate to vote a certain way because the party demands it. Even worse are those who agree to vote in the proscribed way in exchange for pet projects or bills that benefit a few people who parenthetically may well be major contributors. Inducements like that may come terribly close to corruption to “we the people” but they are merely Washington’s brand of insider trading.

Consider Mr. Nelson of Nebraska and his similarly named colleague from Florida at the critical moment of the healthcare debate. Shameful is not the word for their actions.

Are we really so naïve as to believe that pharmaceutical and petro-chemical companies, insurance and banking interests really believe in the precepts of either major party? Hardly: as their donations indicate: they give money for one thing only: votes.

It is not an accident that our key legislative branch is called the House of Representatives. Indeed it is what separates a democracy from a republic. These individuals were elected to be our spokespersons. Unfortunately, the reality is not that. The cost of remaining in office dictates that money is the major factor. Major donors, major companies, major industries call the shots much more than individuals or groups of individuals. Political action groups get on the evening news but do not come c lose to the power wielded by lobbyists and their funding sources.
James Madison who wrote much of our Constitution fully understood the difference between a democracy and a republic. Sadly, many citizens today do not.

The republic form of government he and the founders gave us empowers the people with the responsibility to elect representatives at all levels from local government to Washington. Idealistically and no doubt at times naively, we vote for these individuals because they are intelligent men and women who should be able to reason their decisions based on evidence presented to them, their personal understanding of the matter, and also, expectantly, the views of the people who elected them.

The theory is that we should not elect anyone simply because they have taken the party line consistently nor because they passed some litmus test. Madison would recoil at the very thought of that. He envisaged individuals who had the capacity to think and reason and not to be tools of the leadership, irrespective or party allegiance. The House votes on legislation not the parties but sadly this has changed.

Can individual congressmen challenge the current format? Regrettably they and therefore we are often compelled to follow these edicts because the party leadership will summarily withhold funding for those candidates who don’t toe the line or pass these tests. That is why we see the Republican Party crumbling: Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania, Lincoln Chafey in Rhode Island, even General Colin Powell: not acceptable to the Republican “base”. This is the same base that reportedly denied Senator McCain his choice of a running mate and in doing so probably cost him any chance he had of winning. This is the base that will not listen to what even the majority of the people even in their own party say. Rather they listen to demagogues and ideologues.
Litmus tests for Roe v Wade, sanctity of marriage, stimulus packages, global climate change are hauled out and if not agreed without question, the wrath of conservative pundits crashes down on potential candidates. There is a new term: “primary them”: and it is not the sole prerogative of the Republicans. Ask Joe Lieberman.

Even as the minority party, The Republicans would rather fund a primary challenge than support a party incumbent who is opposed to the death penalty or is pro choice. This is the base speaking.; not the vox populi but a small contingent of self appointed individuals who feel they are chosen to lead their party and at some point the country as a whole to a imaginary world of happiness as evidenced by wealth, power and status.

Republicans do not have a corner on this market. Democrats have similar one-sidedness as evidenced by actions of the Majority Leader and Speaker adding hundreds of pages to a healthcare bill before anyone can read them and expecting the faithful to vote on trust while failing to communicate in a meaningful way with the party in opposition.

I purposely did not use the term “loyal opposition” as it does not apply. Neither party appears to be loyal to the people and if not to them, then to whom? Pharmaceutical industry? Labor Unions? Oil and Coal interests? The lists are long but it is from these groups that money, the only fuel that really drives politics, comes. Loyalty to those who elected them takes a very distant back-seat in most processes except when it is election time.

Today the American people, two out of three in some polls, are saying we need meaningful changes in how we pay for healthcare. The Republican Party “base” cries socialism to scare us and sadly it does many. Presidents back to Truman have been trying to change healthcare to no avail. Yet the people entrusted to do this have wonderful policies for themselves, their families, and their staff and they are not losing their health insurance. However, by their adamancy not to modify the current system, they are proving they care little for those who could benefit from universal coverage.

Returning to Madison and his use of Plato as one of the foundations for our government: Plato believed that morality must be based on objective truth and must be reconciled with self-interest. That is, morality must be in the interest of the individual. This simple premise is all but absent in the unbending doctrinal approach of party politics today. Politicians speak of the “Founders” but truly they take little or no notice of what these brilliant men foresaw when they gave us our Republic.

Degeneration of leadership is brought about by leaders focusing on the interest of their own offices and with their own profit and not as both Plato and Madison envisaged with the welfare of the individually governed, the very people that elected them. Further, economic self-interest and political power must be kept separate and not be allowed to work in combination to the disadvantage of the state or the people the state represents.

Harmony, Plato believed, is in the remuneration both of the state and the individual. Conversely, a dictatorial government with a disenfranchised people will fail. Division fostered by the conflict between the interests of individuals with those of the state is the cause of this failure.
History has shown this to be correct. Will our grand experiment be next or are we in truth a work in progress that can self correct. Let us hope it is not too late.

Today, the American people are looking to their government to listen to them, not to lobbyists; not to political donors; not to talk radio pundits; not to party spokespersons but to who the first three words of our constitution proclaim: We The People.

Ranting of Revered Robertson

The Reverend Pat Robertson, he who claims to converse one on one with God, now says that the tragedy in Haiti is retribution for a deal reached with the devil centuries ago by the forebears of the current stricken Haitian people.

From what I have heard and read from this man of the cloth, this should be categorized as a cross between dangerous and ludicrous with more than a little narrow-mindedness, bigotry and senility thrown in.

It sounded to me like a re-make of The Devil and Daniel Webster or more recently The Devil Went Down to Georgia.

His nonsensical claim however is shoddier as it endeavors to explain away the horrific death and destruction of a helpless poverty stricken people by introducing a fallacious claim that two hundred plus years ago their Haitian ancestors made a contract with the devil to throw out the French.

Assuming the Deity chose to get involved in human tragedy: you would have thought He would have had some previous reaction to Genocide in Africa, the Holocaust in Europe or the Tsunami catastrophe in Asia. And yet history, modern and written, does not bear this out: not since Joshua at Jericho at least.

Moreover, the esteemed Reverend’s ranting if considered logically would align the Creator with slaveholders and that, even to real fundamentalists, must, by definition be anathema. Well, maybe not to all of the Revered Robertson’s flock.

Or did Robertson forget God's Covenant with Noah never to destroy the world again; or perhaps he thinks that only applies to floods? Perhaps he believes the Mississippians and Louisianans had a similar contract and therefore Katrina and its aftermath was truly a quasi-legal matter? Now that is predestination!

On the other hand, any time you can make an argument that ends up with blaming the French, there just might be a scintilla of reason!

But I’ll leave that discussion for some other time.

The Humanity of Rush Limbaugh

I refer to of Roger Ebert’s 'You should be horse-whipped’ comment to Rush Limbaugh following Limbaugh’s twisting American Haitian refugee assistance into a defamation of President Obama. It reminded me of H. L. Mencken who defined a demagogue as "one who will preach doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots."

I think there may be a better way to quiet this particular demagogue using Florida law to do so. The Baker Act declares that people who are “a harm to self or harm to others” may be involuntarily committed. As we already know that Mr. Limbaugh meets the test of the former though his admitted prescription drug abuse and we can now attribute his Haitian relief ranting as self declared evidence of the latter.

If nothing else it may compel this modern day Joe McCarthy to move elsewhere - assuming anyone would have him.

One last note, my tongue in cheek rhetorical taunting could be an example to Mr. Limbaugh. Sadly however, the use of irony which makes otherwise rude criticism appear somewhat more polite necessitates a degree of second-order interpretation, a sophistication often lacking in people with dementia.

A Scary Number

I don’t remember ever experiencing the hatred against almost anyone let alone the man we the people elected our President just one year ago. It is not just the vitriolic attacks from extreme right wing writers and talk-show hosts; that was easily but sadly predictable. They are the same people who ignored the fact that the approved federal budgets did not include the two wars because that would show what the country’s tenuous financial condition really was; the same people who eagerly proclaimed belief in a fictitious link between Bin Laden and Saadam; the same people who to this day think that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Remember the appointed leader of the Republican Party, the anointed candidate for President trying to continue the smoke and mirror economics with his utterance “the fundamentals of the American economy are sound” when almost every economist not connected with the party in power said otherwise.

Never mind.

All that is history as is the fact that more Americans died in Iraq than on 9/11 and all the other combined terror attacks against America (Kenya, Tanzania, USS Cole, First WTC); never mind that the raison d’être for the war were wrong and logically therefore the deaths of so many thousands of our young men and women and the wounding of multiple thousands more is by definition of logic morally wrong.

Never mind.

Ignore that, that and so much more. Ignore facts and re-construct history. Most important, don’t write e-mails even remotely criticizing the first nine years of this new millennium; this period that Time magazine has rightly called the Decade from Hell.

Never mind.

Better you think to write or paraphrase or forward to countless others hatred of your, yes your President; the man who has been in office ten months. Tell people he is not qualified because he was born in Kenya; tell people he is a Muslim as if that alone would be bad? Call him a mongrel. Criticize every detail about him, his parents; call his mother a whore and his father worse. Tell the readers that his wife slept her way into college and that her brother is just a dumb jock.

Writing or forwarding these things must bestow a warm and fuzzy feeling; perhaps something to share with your children or grand-children. Your legacy to them; something to be proud of.

While you are at it, don’t bother with “Love thy enemies”.

Create stories about “real agendas”; scare the American people with innuendo about element upon element of one person’s life or decisions or writings knowing that he will not answer because he is what we the people elected him to be: President of the United States and no President ever involve themselves in arguing against such hateful discussions nor should they. Other than President Truman (note to the vitriols: the title goes with the name) who threatened a writer for demeaning his daughter’s singing ability, or President Franklin Roosevelt defending his Scotty, Falla, slander and liable actions are rarely taken by sitting Presidents.

Blame everything that happens even if it happened long before January 20th, 2009 on “the current occupant”. Blame him for dithering when the person who uttered this blame himself ignored the Afghan situation for years. Why should facts matter?

Never mind.

Of course President Obama collapsed the economy and ruined healthcare and made GM make cars that no one wanted and made us dependent on Chinese imports to a level that is staggering. At the same time he ordered the downfall of Lehman and single-handedly created credit default swaps to effectively crash the housing market worldwide. What power this one man has and all in ten months or even more for six months before he was even sworn! Oh and yes, tell people his oath like is birth records was false.

Dig up articles from minor publications written by lesser known people and offer these as evidence of something when the only thing that undertaking proves is the wisdom of the Founding Fathers who gave us the First Amendment.

While you are at it you might want to read it: that one simple sentence also allows people to peaceably assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Town Hall meetings driving out people who do not think your way or tea parties that bar any contrary opinions seem to disregard this.

Never mind.

Listen to the Joe the Plumbers; they must speak for America, no?

I see e-mails comparing the President both to Hitler and to Stalin which if not so disgusting would be humorous as these two individuals are tantamount to being book-ends for right and left extreme views. Do the writers know this or even care?

Never mind.

I see a talk show host who after being told by his producer during his presentation that the premise for his daily rant was false as it was taken from a Sunday Satire column responds not with an apology or even a criticism of his writers. No, he responds by saying that he believes that there is some truth in everything and thus he stands by what he has uttered. Not amazingly but expectedly, his followers agreed. Why should we not be surprised with everything else being tossed about for public consumption?

I do not understand hatred or loathing or revulsion; it serves no real purpose except perhaps to incite people to violence. We are a violent people; much more than most other civilized countries. Do we need more violence? Do we need more leaders killed? How many developed and educated countries can count Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Kennedy dead; Presidents Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, Frankin Roosevelt, Truman, Ford, Reagan who were attacked. That is ten out of 43 - almost 25%.

Do the authors of these writings and those who send them on to millions of people give a momentary thought to the possible consequences? Please let them remember that all rights like Free Speech mandate by designation corresponding responsibilities.

Why am I writing today? I have been thinking about it for weeks but recently I heard a number that chilled me: 400%. Four Hundred Percent.

That is the increase in threats against President Obama since he was sworn in.

Please let us not reap what we sow.

That we must mind.