Time For School: U.S. Democracy Is Not Mob Rule
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Our democracy is dually understood, not duly. One group calls it the angry mob, and the remainder of us consider it We The People. Guess who considers a democracy an angry mob? The fearful wealthy aristocrat and plutocrat believe that if the poorest 90% had their way, they would, like a mob in an emotional stupor, completely level the economic conditions of every adult American. Should these wealthy, flap-sweats fear such a democracy? Yes, and no.
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First, while any political structure can be misused, democracy is at least as safe, secure, and sensible as any other system. It all depends on how you approach it. Second, there are the Republican Form of Government aficionados, and their sycophants that deny democracy is mentioned in the Constitution. They are merely cherrypicking the Constitution to fit their narrow view of all things. For example, the Supremacy Clause, or Article 6, provides for near pure democracy to occur in state referendums.
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Democracy is also shorthand for a Liberal Democracy, which I consider a philosophy of changing what has outlived its usefulness, or should never have been in the Constitution. It was this democratic action that made possible the amendment to end slavery, enfranchised black men, gave women the vote, and the like. The Republican Form of Governmentnarrowcasters are often averse to such changes, especially not on their schedule.
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I am not aligning with, or denying the value of a RFoG. My view is that our nation works best when both liberaldemocratic changes can be made, and we have balancing forces, which include republican, unalterable truths, as well checks on the system. The problem is relying too much on natural law, unalterable truth claptrap developed by ancient, interred-in-granite, white, multi-gender-phobic men.
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Realize that the Republican Party, and a Republican Form of Government can be at times, two separate things, as with the Radical Republicans of the 1860s. These legislators were different than the backward, stagnant, and originalist form of today. The conservative side of the political equation has almost no interest in discovering new truths. That is why liberal or progressive ideas, and democratic change flexibility, are so threatening to them.
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The Republican Party of the last fifty years has seen the Constitution as providing no wiggle room for new truths. This selfish-evident truth of a restrictive nature is recorded in their use of constitutional amendment suffocation since 1971. That year the 26th Amendment was ratified; it lowered the age of voting to age 18.
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Though the 27th Amendment, a 203 year old laggard, concerning congressional compensation, was ratified in 1992, it was a mere bookkeeping asterisk. In no way was it a new truth. Otherwise, our ability to advance any new found self-evident truths into the Constitution has been halted by Republican majorities as they have multiple times stopped theEqual Rights Amendment (ERA). Clearly an ironic, and hypocritical, twist of their logic, where it is fine to use their mob-majority rule to deny Democrats access to our supposed mob rule democracy.
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Gay marriage, and other LGBT rights clearly do not fit in their Republican Form of Government. This never as you go,until Republicans decide, idea was employed to block those self-evident truths the same way it was used by Antebellum Southerners to block the abolition of slavery, and Jim Crow Southerners and nativist / racist Northerners to hold on longer to anti-miscegenation laws. The majority wants what the majority wants until another majority wants what they want, but only if it is a Republican majority. Their centuries-long dominant conservative mob is justified; only the democrats’ liberal-progressive mob should be left wanting.
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Do I want a democracy to swing from one extreme to the other every two years? No, of course not. But this ancient fear is floated as a dead red herring today. Could an Athenian pure democracy be a problem? Yeah. Maybe. That said, we would not ever get to develop that type of democracy. Why can I say that with a significant level of assurance? That is because conservative political structures, and positions will always be with us; eliminating enough of the nation’s conservative bent to have our way is very unlikely. However, the pendulum must swing somewhat beyond the originalist confines of their inflexible constitutional theory.
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What the poor and oppressed want is not the unilateral authority that the Republican Form of Government has had at its disposal for nearly all of the last two and a half centuries. The downtrodden want a chance to be clearly heard, and their realities legitimately and persistently dealt with. The pendulum also must swing wide enough to insure a complete, and consistent level of quality general education for all, and particularly in the area of civics. Additionally, it is vital we push it to disrupt and dismantle all illegal, unethical, and abusive discrimination, and to achieve greater equality for all in the spirit of Abraham Lincoln.
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Equality through democracy does not mean destroying private property, or everyone getting a gold star, and the same salary despite their achievements. We are all incentivized differently; so leveling off the reality of the human spirit cannot be the goal. However, the ghosts of tyranny should not be applied to every leveling concept. Expanding our ideas about how we treat and see our neighbor is not a mob action. The Constitution cannot hide from the needs of society, and the realities it does not understand, and did not foresee. That is why We The People are needed as well.
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I use the word leveling mainly because it frightens the christian nationalist, and the wealthy. The other reason is due to our dangerous lack of inequality boundaries. The science shows that inequality harms people. Extreme health, education, housing, and wealth inequality puts our whole experiment in danger, whether you call it a democracy, a republic, or both.
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Of course, extreme can mean different things to different people. That is why We The People are here, to regularly reconsider our positions, and make sure they are up to date, something a Constitution does not innately, or directly facilitate. Our ideas of self-evident truth and natural law, have been changing since the dawn of time. Do we swing too far one way or another? Yep, we have, and we will. But the fear of potential errors cannot make us slaves to the past.
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Have you ever noticed that the great mass of Americans on the poorer side of the top 10% are still considered the rabble, and the mob, when it is the Republican Form of Government type that fight and have fought against full access for all to high quality public education? This is the recent Republican Party, since 1980, and was the 2nd generation of slave owners, and Jim Crow Democrats, not necessarily prominent founders.
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While a better educated populace would not overcome all the “mob rule” concerns, complete access to 21st century education opportunities for all should be a foundation of a system infused with democratic elements. Instead Republicans are always trying to dismantle public education that will separate us into factions, not bring us together.
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Conclusive Remarks.
There are foundational laws that we should not break. That being said, we must have the ability to rid ourselves of those foundations built by the uninformed, bigoted, or future ignorant. We The People must carefully consider our changes, and reassess them regularly to avoid trending too long in the wrong direction. Previous theories of government and rights held us in the wrong direction for decades.
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The Constitution must be flexible enough to handle changes. Inalienable rights are not immediately self-evident to every single citizen at the same time. Like freedom from slavery, and gender rights were not self-evident, and inalienable decades and centuries ago. Allowing people to be harmed physically or mentally, and discriminating against individuals, merely because a small or large group feels it is necessary, no longer makes sense.
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The way to improve outcomes is not doing the same thing over, and over again that has never actually worked. The poor do not need to always be with us in the same way they were 200, or twenty years ago. With 800 billionaires in this nation, there should not be millions of people in dire straits. While some portion of those in a negative place have done it to themselves, this is a sweeping generalization without actual context, or statistical reality.
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Our system does not need to be death’s door, and debtors’ prison laden. The top 10% of Americans, who knowingly allowed our savings and income to be reduced via crony capitalism, the last four decades (chart: above), can invest back that money, and more to help the destitute, civics illiterate, drug addicted, inadequately educated, and dying. Our avenues of democratic action provide the tools to do the required leveling.
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The “free” market is free to ignore societal problems. Good Americans are not free to ignore societal problems. We The People can use our democratic facilities to ameliorate those problems. Taxing the wealthy progressively makes it possible to cover the narrowness of capitalism. The “free” market should have no more control over the nation’s economic direction than We The People do over the government. But the role of the wealthy must be reduced. So let the games continue; but with a new counterbalance.*
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There is no better investment than in our people, and our society. We cannot waste the peoples’ money, but we also cannot allow our peoples’ potential to go to waste. Finding reasons not to improve the situation of those who are struggling is openly hidden in the Republican Form of Government’s centuries of shameful and greedy obfuscation.
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Go ahead, try to weasel out of the Constitution a justification for ignoring societal problems. We will forcefully push back, with all our democratic might and rights, against any schemers who attempt to tax dodge obvious problems for which a society like ours can, and must do much more to change in a positive direction.
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*The WTP System is my proposal and technology that will wrest the power away from wealthy elitists, conservative demagogues, and crony capitalists who feel We The People cannot rule ourselves.
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By Richard The Chwalek.
The political process is necessary, but insufficient. Our democratic institutions are restrained and compromised for…richard-the-chwalek.medium.com
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