Should America establish an “Electronic Democracy”?
History is littered with the bones of failed nations, some were republics, some were dictatorships, some were kingdoms. The republic style of government was created with hopes of being a better form of government, but it’s bones are also littered among the failed attempts of what some hoped was a better form of government.
America is now 235 years old and has a debt of 15 trillion dollars that is equal to it’s gross domestic product, so America is technically bankrupt. It now fits the pattern of a collapsing republic; being old and in deep economic trouble. Also, America is being ripped apart by different ethnic groups and a clash of ideas about America becoming more like Europe’s socialist model (a historically proven failure), or remaining a republic based on individual rights and free enterprise.
There are many reasons for this, one being that Congress just can not give up on it’s wild spending habit. It looks like our Congress people are spending our tax money to buy friends so that they will be re-elected. They reached the spending cap and instead of reducing spending, which is what the spending cap was designed to do, they raised the limit on spending. This will surely bring America to bankruptcy. Term limits may be a solution for this; but new congressmen will only fall into the Washington trap of special interest groups with a lot of money to buy influence that will perpetuate the problem.
But (as stated) since historians say the death of a republic is common, maybe the people of America should look for a different solution. A return to the principles in the American Constitution as advocated by groups like the Tea Party may be a solution, but then what will prevent Congress from ignoring the Constitution again? Yes the Constitution certainly worked for a long time and caused a rise in prosperity the world does not see often. But if the government ignores the Constitution, the only solution is for the people to restore it and fix the problem that caused this.
Is an “Electronic Democracy” a solution that should be considered as a way to restore the Constitution?
Consider this– if you add up all the people on the decision making level of government, it will add up to less than one tenth of one percent of the population, that is 0.01% of the population. This is a very small percentage of the population and so can be easily influenced by rich and powerful corporations. This is certainly a big part of the problem.
On the other hand, if an electronic democracy is established, that gives the people decision making power and as is typical, if only half the people vote; this is about 150,000,000 people. As rich as some people and corporations are, they certainly do not have the money to buy off 150,000,000 people. It will be a government immune from the effect that money has on politics. This can be good thing.
Some people say that this will be mob rule that will harm small minority groups. But look at the South from just after the Civil War to around the year 1960, it had the Jim Crow laws that denied African Americans many rights that are established in the Constitution. It will be pointed out that this abuse was committed in a Republican form of government and this only stopped when a majority of citizens rose up and fought for the rights of minority people. So, this proves that a republic can and often does harm small groups of citizens and that the majority fought for and protected the rights of small groups of abused citizens.
Other people say that if a majority rules a nation that the nation will quickly go bankrupt because they will all vote to spend so much money that this will quickly lead to a nations bankruptcy. The first argument against this is the fact that the American republic is already doing this with its reckless spending. Another argument against this is the example that ancient Greece gives us. In ancient Greece the majority of citizens made all decisions for the nation state that Greece was. They decided on all spending issues, social issues, roads and bridges, temples– even on going to war or not. And the result of this is that Greece became such a great nation that it is remembered even today as the cradle of civilization and as a nation that made great advances in the sciences, engineering, art, mathematics, astronomy and architecture. This is what having a real democracy did for the people of Greece. It gave them a sense of power, they knew that they were the masters of their own fate and this released in them such powers of creativity that they remain one of the most honored civilizations that history has ever known.
Or, to look at this another way; YES the citizens were in control of government spending, but the difference with them is that they were spending THEIR own money. Not at all like America today where one group of citizens wants to spend other citizens money. Since the Greeks were in control of their own money they made sure that it was well spent. Their city was clean, their schools effectively gave real education to the citizens children of Greece, their army and navy were the finest the world had seen up to that time. Yes they spent their own money but since they were in control of it, it was WELL SPENT.
Still another argument against direct democracy is that it has already been tried with electronic voting machines and they didn’t work. Consider this, most banks use electronic ATM machines to do a lot of their banking business. Now if these electronic machines work for banks that will not tolerate any financial loss at all, why then don’t these ATM machines work in electronic voting. The answer to this is that the people that installed them are the people who do not want to loose their privileged positions in government. I mean, the last thing they need is for the public to realize that they can make their own decisions and they do not need the government to make these decisions for them. This can certainly be trouble for the powers that be. Or to look at this another way, consider that any individual making decisions will make decisions that favor himself, but when you have 150,000,000 people making decisions, the decisions made will favor the group, not the individual.
Also, remember that the first words on the American Constitution are:
“We The People”.
Don’t take my word for this, read the newspapers of today to find out the mess America is in, then read up on ancient Greece and compare. Then you decide if an electronic democracy is the answer. Then watch and read different news sources, watch MSNBC, CNN and Fox News– compare, learn to think, and make up your own mind. Then leave a comment here.
Jose Lugo, editor ddtv.org
Tags: News
