How We Make Wrong Choices

In these early days of spring there is a continuing unrest spreading across the nation. My email box is being filled each day with information coming out of Washington and elsewhere about the condition of our country. Last week, there seemed to be as many people looking for a government shut down as there were people on the other side wringing their hands, wanting the government to stay open. Every person and organization that sends information has an opinion about what needs to be done to fix the latest crisis we are facing. There is almost a wrestle mania attitude running through some people’s thoughts as they try to make sense out of what makes no sense to many people. There are those who insist that their opinion is the only one that will work and for any who do not line up in agreement with them they are being assigned a place in the nether world.

 A friend offered this solution: “Open the top of the Capitol and pour them all out and start over.” While I understand that feeling, it sounds as if that would lead to anarchy with no leader or rule and would, indeed, create more problems than could ever be solved. The argument is being made by many people from whom I hear that the current crop of elected leaders is failing in their attempts to bring solutions and we would be better off starting over. While I understand the temptation the solution seems to have, the question arises as to who would then replace those who are in office now. Are we sure that the next crop of leaders will do any better than the ones we currently have? Many would respond by saying they could not be any worse. That is an unknown. We always take a risk anytime we come to the place of holding an election. There is always the passion and emotion of what the hot button might be in the country and the voters run mostly on passion and emotion in selecting candidates and nominees.

The solution I offer takes time and effort on the part of the voters. It is not too early to begin to think about candidates for the next election cycle. We know that President Obama has already kicked off his campaign (some say he never stopped campaigning) for his 2012 Presidential run. On the Republican side, dozens of candidates seem to be lining up to take a run at the nomination. There will be, as always, a long list of independent candidates for the office of President of the United States of America. As I speak before various groups across our state, the questions have already started as to who I think the nominee will be for the Republican Party. Upon being invited recently to speak to a group of concerned and active citizens in South Georgia, the person issuing the invitation said, “We want you to be prepared to tell us who you think is the front runner for the Presidential Election of 2012.” It is now time that we as citizens need to be informing ourselves on the issues and where the candidates stand on those issues. I know that unemployment is high and many are seeking jobs with little time to be thinking about the next election. I know the international situations continue to mound larger and take time to consider, which again leaves little time to be thinking about the next election. With a long list of excuses, we could all act as if we have no time to become informed on the issues and positions of possible candidates. I would suggest that we are in this situation today because we have waited too late and known too little about the candidates we have elected to office. As a political activist and pundit, I find that it is a full time job to keep up with what is taking place at all levels of government. I also find information is more easily available than ever. I contend that there is no excuse for not knowing the candidates and their positions on all the issues. As citizens, we must become informed and then be willing to tell others what we know about the candidates and their positions. We cannot afford to continue to make wrong choices.

Ray Newman:  All Rights Reserved

America Is Not A Pure Democracy

Other countries are facing civil war. There are riots, mobs, overthrowing of governments, and regime changes taking place in almost all of the nations of the Middle East. Recently, mobs have been gathering in the United Kingdom, and in some of the states in our country calling for change or lack thereof to certain laws. Our nation, upon being founded, made a decision to become a representative democratic republic. The establishment of law and following the rule of law is to be paramount in a representative democratic republic. There are some people (even politicians), who have the mistaken idea that we are a pure democracy in America. That is not true. A pure democracy is a government of the masses. In a pure democracy, every decision that is to be made in government is made by a vote or some other expression by the masses. Being a representative form of government, the people (thus the phrase, “We the people), elect at determined election times the people who will represent their wishes and values and authorize them to make laws and set regulations that will govern.

 As there is a time when those who are elected to represent the people no longer represent the wishes of the people, at the next scheduled election other people are then elected that will promise to represent the wishes of the people. It sounds complex and it is. It might have a desire to be simple, but when the people elected misunderstand their role and begin to set and pass laws that do not represent the wishes of the people, there is a push back on the elected representatives. There were some of our nation’s founders who wanted to see a pure federalist form of government. That form of government would not have allowed for state or local governments. The entire law making assignment would have been granted to the federal government.

We have seen a twist on this concept of representative republic over time when the elected representatives have not wanted to follow through with their assignment and have tossed the ball, as it were, back to the people for a vote on an issue and called that a true democracy. We have seen this done many times in recent decades in California when the people there are called upon to vote on almost everything that is to be made into law. That seems to be a great way for the elected representatives to place the blame on the people in case a bad law is approved by the people. We are seeing this lived out in our state with the concept of having local votes on the Sunday sales of alcohol in package stores. Many of the same elected officials who expect to be applauded for that attitude recoil at the idea that any should ask them to break their constitutional assignment in passing laws that raise taxes on the people not allowing the people to vote on the issue.

An uninformed public continues to chant that the people must decide. The people have every opportunity to decide at the ballot box when they elect the people who will represent them until the next election. There is not enough money or time to hold all the elections that would be necessary should we somehow come to a place of a pure democracy that would require the people to make all the decisions concerning every law. During the last several election cycles there has been so much voter apathy one could see where we might be at a place that some people would insist on the people deciding, because they know that then only a very small percentage of the registered voters would really care enough to become informed on the issues and even a smaller number would care enough to invest the necessary time to go to the polls and vote on election day.

In a real representative democratic republic, the people would be informed on the candidates they are electing and hold those elected to the values on which they ran and were placed in office.

Call me naïve but I am still waiting for the elected politicians to come to the point to understand they are accountable to the special interest group known as “citizens” who elected them to office. We are at the point in our history where we must insist on a real representative democratic republic form of government, not a pure democracy and certainly never a mobocracy.

Ray Newman:  All Rights Reserved