Category Archives: All Politics Is Local

Renewing Democracy

Actually, the United States does not have a democracy. We do not elect our national leaders by popular vote. We elect them by people called electors, sent to Washington in early January every four years by the states after the presidential election.

Until January 6, 2021, few Americans paid attention to the electoral college, meeting after each presidential election to certify the vote. For most of our history, it functioned as a kind of rubber stamp after the November election.

Where did this “electoral college” come from? Some of our nation’s founding leaders, back in the late eighteenth century, didn’t trust the idea of ordinary citizens electing their leaders. They wanted a group of supposedly enlightened state leaders to actually decide on the outcome of the presidential election. Ordinary citizens would elect these “electors” who would then make the choice for them of the next president.

We all know how that turned out.

Nothing humans devise is perfect. We must constantly fine tune even well-thought out designs. After the January 6, 2021 calamity, perhaps we should examine the idea of political parties, whose development the founding citizens didn’t foresee.

One suggestion for overcoming the power of political parties is ranked choice voting. Voters rank political candidates on their ballots instead of voting only for one.

Another is overcoming gerrymandering. Gerrymandering allows winners of an election to create voting districts that don’t reflect the population density but instead create weird districts that tie the favored party into divisions that favor them.

Regardless of the methods chosen, we need voting laws which decrease the power of parties and increase the power of individual voters.

The Winter Ahead

Growing up in the shadow of the Cold War, I remember the joy we felt after Soviet Union satellite countries began throwing off Soviet rule and establishing democracies. Was that only thirty or so years ago?

Ukraine now braces for Vladimir Putin’s reawakened desire for a Russian empire as winter clamps down. Democratic governments worldwide have moved toward more autocratic rule. Xi Jinping has consolidated his rule in China, though lately his Covid lock down has caused problems.

Of course, we have no guarantee that changes in either Russia or China would bring in more humane regimes. Given the trends lately, some are understandably pessimistic.

Perhaps the greatest risk is to the country that has, since the mid twentieth century, been seen as the guarantor of democracy, the United States.

Trembles from the January 6th 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, as well as continuing threats from groups espousing armed insurrection, continue to worry us. That numerous courts have upheld Joe Biden as the legally elected president of the United States seems not to matter for some. If you lose, the present pattern seems to be, you simply ignore the facts and declare a fraudulent election.

One major reason the United States was victorious in the long Cold War against the Soviet Union was the staying power of U.S. democratic traditions. Despite our nation undergoing long needed changes to overcome racial sins of the past, the people hung together against outside enemies.

We overcame huge disagreements, yet were united in holding to and even increasing our democratic practices.

Now we spend too much time fighting simply to remain humane and to overcome insidious slurs. And almost daily, it seems, moral pygmies decide to use guns to hurt as many people as possible.

How can we overcome these harmful trends even as winter provides an even more challenging environment?

Courage, perhaps, to uphold those who attempt civil discussion about real problems. Common sense to ignore those who would waste valuable time on lies or meaningless accusations.

Loving Our (Political) Enemies

Today, we are faced with a rise of what is called “Christian nationalism.” In this movement, the Christ story is supposedly tied to America.

This comes close to proclaiming the worship of a country. It also elevates political parties to claiming almost godly status. If our side loses, we, being God’s people, must prevail even if it means physically overcoming the other side, as was attempted at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Christianity can be championed in at least two ways. Too often, the church of the early modern era chose the political, nationalistic route: Those who didn’t follow the prescribed belief of an established church risked being killed, tortured, or exiled.

Though they certainly had their faults, the revived Christian groups of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries chose a decidedly better way of championing Christianity. Groups of Christians, not countries, were more likely to carry Jesus’ story to the non-Western world. This movement included “good works” like feeding the hungry and setting up schools, in home countries as well as on mission fields.

Today, we risk falling again into the trap of “might makes right.”

“Democracy is currently facing an unprecedented crisis, both in the United States and around the world.” (Daniel K. Williams, “The Forgotten Christian Cause: Preserving Democracy,” Christianity Today, October 17, 2022)

We are all sinners, prone to error. Until we recognize that we are not capable of playing God ourselves, democracy may be in danger.

“Democracy in the U.S. will succeed only if parties on both sides are ‘willing to allow their worst enemies to govern if they win an election.’” (Historian James Kloppenberg, quoted in the Williams article.)

 

Christian Nationalism? Which Christianity?

Recently, we’ve seen discussions about saving “Christian America.”

What would it look like to “save Christian America”?

Which Christian America would we save?

A generally establishment Protestant Christian America? An evangelical Christian America? Would it allow citizenship for those practicing Roman Catholicism? What about Greek Orthodoxy?

Not atheists or Jews or Muslims, I suppose. That does, however, seem to suggest taking a lesson from some Middle Eastern countries which uphold Islam as the state religion. Is making some form of Christianity a test for holding office any better than Iranian mullahs dictating an Islamic government?

Unfortunately, saving Christian America might end up like saving Christian Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Religious wars devastated Europe. Christians who didn’t agree with other Christians killed their Christian enemies with sword and torture while presiding over mass devastation of the countryside.

Getting to practical considerations, what kind of litmus test would we require of seekers after public office? What must they swear to uphold in order to have a “Christian” America?

Maybe we could just require Christian office holders to “follow Jesus.”

Of course, one test for a “Jesus follower” might be a test Jesus mentioned, the “last judgement test.” The only ones accepted at the end of the age are those who followed Jesus in his concern for the “least” people—the poor, jailed, hungry, and so on. Possibly we could make this a criteria for leadership.

 

That Voting Privilege

There may have been an election or two for which I was eligible to vote and did not, but I don’t remember it.

I once searched out a notary public in Kotzebue, Alaska, to notarize my vote. I have voted absentee from Saudi Arabia, Tunisia., and Washington, D.C.

I have voted in various towns in the United States: Jackson and Adamsville in Tennessee, Oak Park in Illinois, and other towns in California and Georgia, whose names I barely remember.

As a U.S. Foreign Service officer, I have helped overseas Americans cast absentee ballots for their home states when they were abroad in foreign countries.

My connection with voting began early. I played around polling booths growing up in Nashville, Tennessee, where my parents helped as poll volunteers.

Also, of course, I have lived in countries where citizens couldn’t vote, where elections were not held at all.

These experiences cause me to wonder why so many Americans don’t bother with voting.

I’m particularly saddened by the efforts of a few misguided individuals to discourage some Americans from being able to easily vote.

Perhaps, they need to experience what it’s like to live in countries where only privileged individuals have a voice.

Turning the U.S. Into a Democracy

The United States, at this time, is not a democracy, that is a country ruled solely by its citizens. The founding of the country certainly was at the forefront of the movement to give power to citizens, compared with most other countries in the world at the time. As the years passed, however, we did not build on this beginning as we should have.

We have certainly progressed from those white mostly upper class men who hammered out a constitution for the new nation in the late 1780’s. The progress, however, has been slow and incomplete.

It took us almost a century to rid the country of slavery, and the racism that lingers from that time still impedes us. The election of senators by citizens and not state legislatures was granted in 1913. Women weren’t give the right to vote until 1920.

We also are burdened, as we discovered on January 6, 2021, by a relic from the past, the electoral college. This gives power to individual states to elect the president rather than to the popular vote. It also allowed for the growth of political parties, not foreseen by many of the country’s founders at the time.

One suggestion for giving more power to citizens over political parties is the institution of ranked-choice voting. Voters rank candidates by choice. The two candidates with the most votes win. They could be from different political parties, the same party, or have no party affiliation. It would tend to give more power to voters and less to political parties.

Who knows? In time, perhaps we might eventually tackle the problem of gerrymandering, in which outsize power is given to party leaders to set voting boundaries.

Taking Democracy for Granted?

Watching events in Britain following the death of Queen Elizabeth II has given me a new admiration for a country that has practiced an evolution of democracy through centuries of existence. To an outsider, the British form of government is a gigantic hodgepodge of laws and practices and traditions. Yet it works as a democracy.

I’m concerned about my own country of America in comparison. You would think, considering our traditions of self-government and “government by the people” and our Constitution, we would be just as firmly certain of our democratic traditions here.

Yet, we’re the ones who almost lost, if not the republic, something close to it with the storming of the Capitol to prevent the counting of electoral ballots on January 6, 2021.

Writes Adam Russell Taylor: “It’s both alarming and bitterly ironic that false claims of a stolen election continue to be used to make a truly stolen election increasingly possible.” (“Democracy Can Be Easily Taken for Granted,” Sojourners, Sept/Oct 2022)

In that same issue of Sojourners, Rose Marie Berger writes of the recent visit of seventeen international religious leaders to Ukraine. (“Come and See.”) They were answering an appeal from requests on Ukraine social media for religious leaders to visit Ukraine in solidarity with the Ukrainian people.

She commented on the false religious teaching of Putin and others seeking to build a country around “a particular ‘race or tribe.’ It’s what happens when religion cloaks ethno-nationalism with a veneer of mortal rectitude.”

The temptation of political power is strong. Some would even use religion as a weapon to gain that power instead of as a path to God.

Lose the Republic or Lose an Election?

Does the idea of democracy—people rule—come from an optimistic view of humankind or a pessimistic one?

Do its adherents believe that people, given the chance to rule, will always (or most of the time) choose the best leader? Do they believe that the alternative, dictatorship or oligarchy, would prove too liable to corruption?

If you believe that power spread widely will naturally result in good rulers, you will be be disappointed in some of our U.S. elections. (I don’t mean only in the 21st century.)

On the other hand, if you believe that the people are going to elect bad leaders at least once in a while, you may weather the occasional bad leader with more optimism.

A problem arises when a significant number of people are not willing to accept the view of the majority (or of electors, given our electoral system.) After the past election, some who voted for the losing candidate were so disappointed in the outcome that they could not accept the evidence of multiple investigations and court cases indicating that Joe Biden had, in fact, won against Donald Trump.

It couldn’t be, they proclaimed, that Trump didn’t win. Surely, he represented what the people wanted. They seemed unable to understand that they had backed a losing candidate.

Of course, loss this time is wrapped up in strong opinions about particularly divisive subjects like abortion and public school curriculums, to name just two.

Perhaps it’s a lesson each generation of Americans must learn: rule by the people (or their electors) means we lose sometimes—even in matters that deeply concern us.

Congratulate the winners and start working for the next election. Be grateful for the promise of a next election.

Return to Political Patronage?

James A. Garfield served the shortest term of any U.S. president. Sworn in on March 4, 1881, he was assassinated a few months after taking office by a disappointed seeker for a political job. The assassin was one of many seeking a government job, not because of any expertise, but because of simple loyalty to a politician.

Garfield’s tragic death led to a movement resulting in our modern civil service. Our government seeks to hire employees because of ability, not because of loyalty to an individual.

Max Stier (“Opinion: The Patronage System Was Corrupt. It’s Threatening a Comeback,” Politico, August 2, 2022) writes: “Today, our nation’s 2 million career civil servants swear loyalty to the Constitution, not fealty to an individual president. They’re hired based on their ability and skills and cannot be fired for partisan or non-merit reasons. These protections provide civil servants with the latitude to offer unvarnished advice, to execute important policies and report illegal activity and misconduct without fear of retribution.”

Yet, some are calling for a return to the corrupt ridden patronage system. Presumably, if the patronage system were returned, civil servants, to avoid losing their jobs, would be tempted to report only news the president wanted.

Remember when former President Trump tried to overcome a weather report about a hurricane? He insisted that his incorrect statements about Alabama having been in the possible path of Hurricane Dorian were true , even altering a forecast map with a permanent marker. Government forecasters, not fearing for the loss of their jobs, stuck to the true forecast.

One of the stark differences between democracies and dictatorships is the freedom democratic sources are given to deal with facts and truth

Without unbiased government reporting on numerous subjects from foreign affairs to unemployment, presidents could hide any facts damaging to their power.

Writes Stier: “The arbitrary firing of tens of thousands of civil servants by a new administration could not only put the nation at risk, but potentially hamper the government’s ability to effectively deliver important services, from veterans’ benefits and Social Security to farm programs and ensuring military readiness.”

Do we want truth from government reports or political propaganda pieces?

Stopping Before the Water’s Edge?

Arthur Vandenberg, Republican senator from Michigan (1928-1951), is credited with saying that American politics “stops at the water’s edge.”

We take this to mean that although U.S. political parties may favor different directions for the country domestically, we are united in our international policies. In other words, we care for our country too much to be divided in dealing with the rest of the world.

Though not always (Vietnam comes to mind), Americans do tend to support international policies of whoever is governing. The problem usually is with our national policies. Here agin, however, it’s not simple disagreement. We do not simply disagree on direction for our schools, or on the amount of attention paid to our racial history, or on police actions, or on abortion, or on a host of other matters. Now we are tempted to believe that our side must win even if it means ignoring democratic principles.

Some of us don’t really believe in elected governments. Some of us would cheerfully override constitutional checks if we think we can get away with it.

Our country isn’t a pure democracy, of course. The states have more power than individual voters because our constitution allows two senators for each state, regardless of that’s state’s population. The division of powers between executive, legislative, and judicial also is in constant flux.

However, the danger comes when we advocate forceful overthrow of our government by small armed groups, as the events of January 6, 2021, demonstrated.

Rule by popular government is far from perfect. It certainly does not always elect the best leaders. However, allowing a small group to oversee our government is far more dangerous. The temptation to dictatorship, to the use of government for our own selfish purposes, is always present if only a small group governs. In a democracy, we can change peacefully.

At least we can, if we will individually allow the other side the right to win.

Primary Election 2022

The voters’ pamphlet for our 2022 Washington state primary election arrived in our mailbox. The election is to be held August 2.

I opened it up and was surprised to see eighteen people running for the position now held by Senator Patty Murray, including Senator Murray. I cannot recall when this many candidates were contending. It seems a bit much.

The various parties for which the candidates have declared include the usual Democratic and Republican parties, but also: Socialist Workers Party, no party preference, JFK Republican Party, Independent Party, and Trump Republican Party.

The candidates for our representative to the U.S. House include these parties: Democratic, Republican, MAGA Republican Party, no Party Preference, and Conservative Party.

Is the large number of both candidates and parties an attempt to muddy the water so we will give up and not vote? Or perhaps the idea is to spread out the candidates so that current office holders will be overwhelmed and thrust out of office, overtaken by some unknown candidate?

I confess I don’t know, but after listening to this past Tuesday’s congressional hearings on the January 6 2021 riots, I’m more concerned than ever for our serious involvement in voting.

All Politics Is Local

Grace Olmstead left her community in small-town Idaho for a job elsewhere, as did many, perhaps most, of her school mates. She now lives with her husband and family in Virginia. Her book (Uprooted: Recovering the Legacy of the Places We’ve Left Behind) is a very personal study of the movement, of which she is a part, that so threatens the farms and small town communities of rural America.

From her childhood, she remembers small farms growing a variety of fruits and vegetables, surrounded by supporting small towns. Today, many of those towns have emptied out or become suburbs. Farms are larger and grow more monocultural crops. Monoculture is the sowing of one homogeneous crop instead of a healthy mixture of crops and orchards and tillage.

I sympathized with her writing. I grew up in a suburb of Nashville, Tennessee. My father and my mother’s father were part of the movement from the rural Southeast that left similarly challenged small towns and rural areas in that part of the United States.

One of my aunts owned a farm in middle Tennessee. She sold mineral rights to a phosphate company. I’m not sure how much she knew about business dealings. At any rate, the company mined the phosphate, but did not restore her land.

Olmstead interviewed many families in her hometown and elsewhere, attempting to understand what is at stake if America becomes a land of faceless suburbs and monocultural farming.

Her conclusions have to do with community. Toward the end of her book, she realizes that lack of community is one reason the farmers and small towns were unable to band together to protect their interests.

Even her own kin, she finally realizes, were not willing to exchange independence for community. Because of their unwillingness to stand together against vested interests of large agribusinesses, they eventually lost the battle.

The result, she writes, is that “for all of its libertarian claims of freedom and autonomy, Idaho and its resources are often chained to the whims and demands of vast economic interests and powers.”

Even governmental help in the form of economic handouts, she says, “emphasizes individual farming families without looking at their larger context and communities.”

In these days, when a pandemic has driven us even more into our own private enclaves, we might profit by taking a look into our devastating lack of community.

Russia’s Pet Poodle?

“The polarization of American society has become a national security threat.”

So writes Fiona Hill in “The Kremlin’s Strange Victory,” (Foreign Affairs, November/December 2021.) Hill served as an intelligence officer dealing with Russia and Eurasia under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

In time, Hill writes, the United States has moved surprisingly close to Russia “as populism, cronyism, and corruption have sapped the strength of American democracy.”

Especially under President Donald Trump, the country moved in the direction of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Trump, according to Hill, admired Putin, who “adjusted Russia’s political system to entrench himself in the Kremlin.”

Trump desired to do the same thing, she writes. “He saw the United States as an extension of his other private enterprises: the Trump Organization, but with the world’s largest military at his disposal.”

Americans must defeat the corruption of the American political system as well as deny Putin the ability to exploit America’s current dangerous divisions. Politicians should cooperate with the private sector, Hill says, “to cast light on and deter Russian intelligence operations and other efforts to exploit social media platforms.”

She suggests the importance of investing in people to tackle “inequality, corruption, and polarization.”

Keeping a democracy in this age of social media takes discipline: to read newspapers instead of tweets, to read a book instead of depending on visual media.

Democracy without discipline dies. It’s much easier to follow a Hitler or a Putin or a Trump, loud voices untethered to any life lived in the service of others.

I am God Politics

Recently, during a local election in our normally quiet small town, political fighting has turned ugly. Election signs have been vandalized and hateful words exchanged.

Why?

Most of us say we believe in a peaceful exchange of power according to what the voters decide. Traditionally, the candidates campaign, the voters cast ballots, the votes are counted, and the one with the most votes wins. While the electoral college may cause problems in the presidential election, simple rule by majority is normally the case in local elections.

This November we are electing members of the local school board and our city officials. The vindictiveness of national politics has affected even these elections.

The idea of the gracious loser is an American tradition. John McCain, in his concession speech on losing the election to Barack Obama in 2008, gallantly wished Obama his support and praised the system that elected him and dealt McCain his loss.

Recently, too many of us have spurned his example, nationally and locally. Instead, we’ve chosen to act like those who support charlatans like Putin in Russia or dictators like Lukashenko in Belarus. Some of it is a clinging to power, but some of it, I think, is an arrogance that presumes we have complete truth.

We choose democracy precisely because no one has complete truth. The best we can do is let the majority rule. We have freedom of expression to state ideas peacefully challenging the majority. In the extreme, if one disagrees with the majority, one may offer civil disobedience, but even this should be peaceful, not a presumption that we have eternal truth. We are all imperfect human beings.

It is supreme arrogance to disrespectfully treat those with whom we disagree. We are all imperfect human beings.

Fighting Reality

One rainy day when my oldest son was a preschooler, I told him he wouldn’t be able to go outside to play because of the weather.
Me: “It’s raining.”
Small son: “No it’s not.”

My son wished to overcome a reality he did not like by pretending that the reality did not exist. I am reminded of this episode when I read of those who question Donald Trump’s losing the U.S. presidential election in 2020.

Despite numerous court decisions upholding Joe Biden’s win, some of Trump’s followers insist: “No, he didn’t.”

Normally in a supposed democracy like the United States, the winner, as directed by the Constitution, takes office. The losers may grit their teeth, but they follow the usual concession of power.

Not this year.

Just as we mortal beings sometimes fight the reality of dying, some Americans fight the death of the America they knew in years past.

Trump’s win in 2016 was perfectly legal, but it was an electoral college win. The majority of voters favored Hillary Clinton.

Nevertheless, those unhappy at a changed America, and in favor of a country more like that of the one they knew in years past, were encouraged by Trump’s win. However, in 2020, the majority of votes for Biden was sufficient to also win the electoral college vote and bring in his presidency.

Regardless of election outcomes, however, the America of years past is not coming back. Americans have changed. That one may cheer those changes or despise them does not alter the changes.

We may be tempted to power—to try to force our way—when we are losing. We may be tempted to support democracy only when the votes come our way.

The question is whether we really want to wrest our way by undemocratic means, even by lies which have no basis in reality.

Democracy only works when democratic rules are followed. If your side loses, you can choose legal means to regain power next time: perhaps better organizing voters of your political persuasion, spending money for your candidates, or writing opinion pieces on public forums.

To refuse the reality of your loss, however, is to betray all the efforts of the United States during the Cold War to lead nations to accept democratic rule.

That Distribution of Wealth Thing

Why should the wealthy give up money they have accumulated (though not necessarily worked for) only for the money to be enjoyed by those who didn’t earn it? The dreaded “S” word, socialism, haunts these discussions.

But what about our systems of public education? Aren’t free schools a distribution of wealth? We pay for them through taxes whether we have children or not, whether we send our children to them or, instead, pay for our children to receive a private education. Children of the poor may attend them as well as children of the more affluent.

We have decided that our communities and our nation as a whole will benefit from educated citizens.

Most of us believe roads and bridges and infrastructure should be maintained by our taxes. We believe this even though a poor person who pays little or no taxes (except perhaps sales taxes) can use the roads and sidewalks. We all benefit from cheaper goods facilitated by an efficient transportation system.

What about health care? Won’t the nation benefit from more productive citizens if they are in good health? To be sure, preventive care should be a major part of any health care system, not simply paying hospital bills. Obviously, some systems of health care are more efficient than others, as are systems of education, but the aim is a healthy population that will benefit the nation. Proper health care is an investment, like schools and roads.

The best investments yield gains in the long term. Some distribution of wealth is an investment.

Abortion Babies and Yemeni Babies

Some voters for Donald Trump in 2016 were “single value” voters. That is, they may not have liked Trump, but only one value was important to them in that election. Anti abortionists were one such group.

However, in voting for Trump because he would appoint conservative judges to the Supreme Court, they elected someone who devalued life in other ways.

Trump went against the will of the U.S. Congress in selling weapons used in the war between Saudi Arabia and the country of Yemen. Saudi Arabia and Yemen have been locked in a power struggle involving Iran for years. The war has resulted in horrific starvation for Yemeni civilians.

The horror led both houses of Congress, including Democrats and Republicans, to vote against selling American weapons to Saudi Arabia for use in Yemen.

Trump claimed that the need for Saudis to have weapons for the war in Yemen was an emergency, though Congress plainly did not think so. Further, Trump said, American arms manufacturers needed the money. In declaring an emergency, Trump overrode the will of Congress.

Saudi Arabia used American weapons to bomb hospitals and marketplaces in Yemen and to cut off food supplies to that country. Yemen now is suffering mass starvation.

The question: Are babies killed in Yemen by American weapons less important than babies killed in abortion?

That is the problem with assuming one issue as the only one in a campaign. Moral issues are never simple. Believing one can be solved by one election can lead to horrific consequences.

Trump Vote: Thumb in Your Eye

Trump has enthusiastic support among some Americans. They wear MAGA hats and cheer wildly at his rallies. They make up the true believers decrying a “fraudulent” election.

Why go against all evidence and support a man who has stolen from his own charities, failed in business, constantly lies, loves to insult and belittle, and shows concern only for himself?

I think many of Trump’s supporters cheer him because the country’s more favored citizens have abandoned them. Trump appears to accept them.

Many Americans lost out when our traditional manufacturing culture shifted to a more tech oriented society. Some also are suffering whiplash from a changed society in which more young Americans leave organized religion.

These, the disdained, find their champion in one who sneers at the rules and thumbs his nose at the politically correct. He rails against liberal media who appear to his followers as opposed to their beliefs and way of life.

In her book, Strangers in Their Own Land, Arlie Russell Hochschild writes of Republican voters who dislike the party’s favoritism of big business. Nevertheless, they vote Republican because they believe this party favors God and family.

Trump, the personification of the spoiled rich grifter, provided rallies for those pushed out of the mainstream to vent against the America they believe has turned its back on them. They equated his behavior as opposition to the system that failed them.

Trump was a disaster and was voted out of office. Those who decry false accusations of a “stolen” election must accept one of the most certain election results in U.S. history

The winners, however, cannot ignore those who put Trump in office in 2016, many of whom voted for him a second time. Come January, we may experience a very divided government: president of one party, congressional power split, Supreme Court with a majority appointed by the other party.

If the government is going to function with such divisions, we must begin by respecting those who differ from us. That is to say, greatly differ: over everything from gender rights to police power.

The only way we will survive the possibility of stalled governing when we face such great divisions is by accepting that each side will win sometimes and lose other times—even lose on issues dear to them.

We must lose in good grace, then work to change the situation through persuasion and the next election.

In addition, worker training, fairer wages, basic healthcare, and a host of other issues must be
addressed soon.

Creaky Democracy

We sometimes forget that our American democracy is the beta test for modern democracies, the early model.

The U.S. Constitution was ratified in the last decade of the 18th century. Men were still wearing waistcoats and breeches. Women wore long dresses and caps.

The idea of the people completely ruling themselves still wasn’t trusted even by the writers of the Constitution. They appeared to hedge their bets on this new form of government, with straitjackets that still constrain us today.

The direct election of senators wasn’t allowed by the Constitution until 1913. Women couldn’t vote until 1920.

Many of us have been shocked in the past few elections to learn that we the people do not directly elect our president and vice-president. The person sitting in the oval office directing our domestic and foreign affairs may rule by favor of a minority of voting Americans.

Writes Larry Diamond: “Our election systems were not built for the modern era.” (“When It Comes to Democracy, the U.S. Is Showing Its Age,” The New York Times, 1 Nov 20)

How do we move to a more democratic form of government? How develop a judicial system freer from political favoritism?

These are questions we must wrestle with if we want a truer democracy in the coming years. How do the people obtain the power when a minority will have to cede that power?

That Abortion Question

Many evangelical Christian voters would never consider voting for Donald Trump if he hadn’t taken them hostage with the abortion question. Many of them otherwise despise much in his personal life and in his administration.

Now he’s appointed a judge to the Supreme Court who may upend the decision many evangelicals hate: Roe v. Wade.

However, even a judiciary sworn to overturn all abortion will not stop abortion any more than the 18th amendment (the only amendment to be repealed) stopped the drinking of alcoholic beverages.

Abortion is becoming easier. Soon an abortion pill or two, guided by advice over the telephone may mean the end of abortion clinics with marchers attempting to shut them down.

Abortion pills can be passed to those desiring them much easier than bootleg liquor was passed to those overcoming the prohibition of alcohol.

Jesus, whom evangelicals profess to follow, refused to accept the political way of bringing in his kingdom. He refused the crown. He chose the much harder path of discipline and sacrifice.

Throughout the centuries, when Christians have chosen to use state powers to advance their religion, this choice has led to the corruption of Christianity and its loss of both followers and moral power to change society.

Evangelical Christians have chosen to fight abortion too late in the game—after a baby has been conceived.

Young women and men have been lured by our current self-centered entertainment trap. Sexual decisions are governed by the same lifestyle that gives us the obesity trap: eat all you want of whatever you want.

Discipline of physical desires is not the condemnation of physical desires but the better use of them.

Passing through the school of self discipline is not a belief in “someday you will enjoy a mate and have it all,” but something far more meaningful. A few are called to be celibate for life; most are not. All young people, however, need a period of learning and growth and discipline.

Young women, especially, need to find their directions in life irrespective of their relationship with men.