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The Federalist Diaries
The Falling Dominos of Democracy, Part 10
Banking
establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.
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The
spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that
I wish it always to be kept alive.
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I have
the consolation of having added nothing to my private fortune during my
public service, and of retiring with hands clean as they are empty.
Thomas
Jefferson, 1743 – 1826,
third
President of the United States, the principal author of the Declaration of
Independence, and one of the most influential Founding Fathers for his
promotion of the ideals of Republicanism in the United States.
In part 1, we learned that our elected
representatives represented many more people than they did in the past.
In part 6, we read a compelling assertion that our country was in
decline, followed by the possibility of reversing that decline through
greater public participation in governance.
In part 8, we learned how an “overpopulation” of constituents was
adversely affecting election campaigns, while in part 9 we looked at
solutions to bring us better election campaigns.
Did you bristle when, during an interview on
“Sixty Minutes” a couple of years ago, President Vladimir Putin, when
asked about the institution of a nondemocratic practice in
Russia
, pointed to the election of our President in 2000 by the U.S. Supreme
Court?
Our democracy is far
from perfect and there is not
going to be a quantum leap forward which would make people like President
Putin pause and say, “America
is far ahead of us.”
We have failed in
America
to address the fundamental problem of an “overpopulation” of
constituents, which has several undesirable consequences.
Our current attempts to fix our democracy do nothing to address
overpopulation, which means that our attempts would be, at best, only
somewhat effective.
If we believe that
democracy is the best means to increase the quality of life or, said another
way, to do the least harm to large numbers of people, we must start thinking
and acting outside the box, which is not to say that we should do something
illegal, but, rather, that we should stop thinking within the confines of
the status quo. A major, albeit
imperfect, step in that direction occurred in 1999 when the voters of the
City of
Los Angeles
amended the city charter in order to create neighborhood councils, of which
there are now eighty-nine, each of which receives a $50,000 annual budget from the
city. And if we look below to
“Fun Facts about
Illinois,” we see that it is not odd to
deal with an overpopulation of constituents by increasing the number of
elected representatives and opportunities for constituent participation.
December 13, 2007
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