Elections: Making Sense of the Senseless

I have no profound insight to offer as a result of the election, but was thinking about the main presidential candidates and what they represent.  I read a sapiential comment from the desert fathers which made me think about candidates in the election.  As with many sagacious sayings one has appreciate them by meditating on them.

It is why art museums place benches in the galleries – to give the viewer time to take the art in, to appreciate the details and all that is captured in the art. [Interesting that a bench gives us time!]   Or, it is why one has to sit in the garden for a bit to fully appreciate all the colors, scents, movements of the flowers to truly imbibe all that is being offered to us.

Though I read this some days before the election and I thought it relevant to our election, it didn’t help me decide how to vote for I remained unconvinced that our candidates possessed all the virtues praised here.

An old man used to say, ‘Wisdom and simplicity form the perfect order of the Apostles’ and of those who examine closely their rules of life and their conduct, and to this Christ urged them, saying, Be  harmless as doves and subtle like serpents (St. Matthew 10:16). And the Apostle [Paul] also admonished the Corinthians to the same effect, saying, ‘My brethren, be not childish in your minds, but be as  babes in respect of things which are evil, and be perfect in your minds’ (1 Corinthians 14:20). Now wisdom without simplicity is wicked cunning, and it is the subtlety of the philosophers among the pagans of which it is said, He catches the wise men in their own cunning (Job 5:13; 1 Corinthians 3:19), and again, The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain (Psalm 94:2; 1 Corinthians 3:20).

And simplicity without wisdom is the foolishness which is prone to error, and concerning this also  the Apostle spoke, and he wrote unto those who possessed it,  saying, I fear lest, even as the serpent led Eve into error by his craftiness, so your minds also may be destroyed in respect of your simplicity which is towards Christ (2 Corinthians 6:3). For they accepted every word without testing it, even as it is said in the [Book of] Proverbs, The simple man believes every word “ (Proverbs 14:15).     (adapted from The Paradise or Garden of the Holy Fathers (Volume 2), Kindle Loc. 3403-13)

There is a difference between wisdom and intelligence just as there is a difference between knowledge and wisdom.  In the wisdom of the desert fathers there was a recognition that even wisdom had to be combined with other virtues to be of value.  A criminal can be very wise and knowledgeable about his illegal activities.  Politicians can be astutely wise but that can mean only that they are wickedly cunning if they lack integrity and humility.  There can even be a person who has a certain simple straightforwardness but who lacks wisdom – that becomes nothing more than total foolishness.  Folly is sin according to the Bible (Proverbs 24:9; Mark 7:22)

Election Loses and Regrets

This is about all I’m going to say about our current election.  I don’t endorse candidates or political parties.  As a parish priest, my job is to pray for this country, its president, the congress, supreme court, its armed forces, all civil authority and for all its people.  I do this no matter who wins the election.  My prayers are not based on election outcomes, but upon my faith in the Trinitarian God’s love for creation including all people on the planet.

It is no wonder that Americans suffer from election fatigue.  From the moment the presidential election is decided, the political parties and machines begin gearing up for the next election.  Running campaigns has become a full time process, not just once every four years but every day of every year.  The political parties and PACs raise millions of dollars to spend on electing candidates, but how much does anyone invest in actually doing governance?  How much time and energy do the political parties, the PACs, the political pundits put into helping these candidates learn to govern in a democracy in a diverse society?  Precious little, which is part of the terrible money imbalance in American politics.  Political office is treated as “for sale to the highest bidder” rather than as the means to serve the nation and to lead the free world.

As soon as the election is decided, political parties and political fundraisers begin focusing all their time and energy on the next election and getting their party’s candidates elected.   If they invested in good candidates who could actually govern and who could help build American democracy we all would be better off.  They however are really interested in investing in winning and holding on to power, even if they have no wise or virtuous candidates to put forth.   How much better for us all if they focused on how to make the American democratic process work and on how to help our leaders govern our country in the 21^st Century with its diversity, all its many issues and problems and with the world as it is today (not as we wished it were).

The political machines pick candidates who can win elections, not necessarily those who are capable of governing.  The political machines spend tens of millions of dollars on getting people elected, but nothing on training them in governace – how to work in, with and for a democracy.   Forget having a candidate be a statesman, as they will have no time for that – their purpose is only to win elections.   Any wonder that the Putins of the world have an easier time being statesmen, being world leaders and getting things done?   The Putins of the world can set goals and accomplish them while American presidential candidates are forced to short-shortsightedly focus on winning elections.  Putins can conquer enemies, American presidential candidates have to conquer the electorate which turns half of the very people they are supposed to serve into enemies of sorts and the rest into the vanquished.  This is why negative elections seem to work so well, in my opinion.  Americans have forgotten that both political parties and all elected candidates are supposed to represent and serve all the people not just the ones that agree with them.

Presidents are said to have about 100 days of their first administration to accomplish anything.  We spend 1461 days to elect a person who apparently is only going to be able to accomplish anything about 100 days in four years.   The rest of the time (935 of their four years) they will spend campaigning for themselves or others in their political party.  The elected politicians have to cater to those who financed their election and to the talk show hosts and their legions who endlessly criticize the politician.  Apparently,  the politicians weren’t elected to lead, but only to cater to money and to continually appease the squealing media wheels.  The “next” election looms over everything elected do not because of the electorate but because of the big money and big voices.

The media superstars, not elected by anybody, dominate the airwaves and the Internet and so it appears also the thoughts of the many who listen to them.  They fire up their base so that the president and congress have to spend most of their time paying attention to the political machines and to the media commentators rather than to issues before them.   The media moguls do not want the politicians to see anything except through their lens.  Don’t pay attention to the issues but only to those who loudly yell about the issues.   But these commentators do not pay attention to or care about  what strengthens democracy in a diverse culture.  Rather they really advocate against democracy and in favor of a one party system, with their own way as being the only acceptable way to see the world.  The word dictator comes from a Latin word meaning  “to say often, prescribe, to speak frequently.”   All talk show hosts are dictators.  Why do we listen to them?  We should favor democracy not dictatorship.  We are addicted to them and the next thing they might say, which is what also comes to haunt and fixate the politicians.

We invest so heavily in the elections but do not invest in governance.  We need to change the system so that it works to strengthen democracy not tear it down like the media people and political chieftains do today.  Their goal is purely to get their people elected.  But that isn’t necessarily what is good for the country or the world.

There is in our country the wonderful freedom of speech, which unfortunately the Supreme Court says includes setting no limits on how much money people can spend or raise on elections.  But we the people should learn “freedom of listening.”  We can turn off all of the political talk show people.  We can stop listening to or watching political ads whether from the airwaves or on the Internet.  We need to find something better to do with our minds, like learning more about democracy and how it works, why it is so important to our lives and what we need to be as voters to make democracy work.  We should shake off our own laziness of listening to dictators and encourage politicians to be statesmen and leaders.  If we don’t like their ideas we vote them out of office.  Those candidates in favor of democracy should also support the idea that they can be removed from office rather than spending all their time and energy making sure they stay in office.

I have never made it my position to comment on “who” to vote for in an election.  However, I do value American democracy and consider it a strength of our nation.  I do think our current election trends and the power ceded to political parties and to media talk show hosts is weakening democracy.  We need to work on changing the system, and then we would get better candidates.

In a democracy, the majority decide which direction the country will go.  Political parties can hold to an ideology, but face the reality that their beloved convictions can’t win a majority of voters.   They can change their position to try to create an alliance of voters to win the election, or they can hold on to their ideology but lose elections.  What shouldn’t be accepted is that they try to buy elections or to have their unpopular ideas win through deceit or negative campaigning.  If they can’t convince us that their ideas are good for the country, even if painful, they need to try harder, improve their message, or find a combination of ideas that convince us to vote for them.  In my opinion as it is they instead just spend all their time and energy trying to get their candidates elected with no regard for how that effects the country. For them the end justifies the means, no matter what price democracy has to pay.   Their goal is to stay in power not necessarily to strengthen the American democratic process.  We voters can changes this, but we have to change our habits to do it.

I would recommend listening to the TED Talk: Democracy on Trial for further thinking about democracy and its importance and why we need to strengthen it through the election process rather than weaken it by allowing ourselves to become part of the partisan polarity problem.  I think a total reform of the party driven primaries would be helpful.   Let all candidates from all parties be put into a common pool in the primaries, and the voters decide who are the top two candidates – no matter what party they are from.  The general election would have the top two vote winners in the primary face off.  That way all candidates in all elections would have to offer a message that appeals to all or the most voters.  This I think would help end the parties become more polarized through the primaries and then offering no middle ground for voters.  I’m sure this would create other problems, perhaps some unseen at the moment, but it would help change the tenor of the election process now at work in America.

The Power of God and of the State

It is a presidential election year in the United States, which as I’ve noted before tends to cause a fair amount of angst in my fellow parishioners.  This year’s election has been even more troubling.  Often people are afraid what will happen if “the other” party wins the election.  This year people seem anxious and afraid even if their party wins.  Here is a quote from Russian Orthodox theologian Paul Evdokimov describing what the proper power of government is from a Christian point of view.  All of the things we might think of as the duties of government have a spiritual basis.

“Here there is a direct analogy with evil. God does not suppress it automatically by his omnipotence. Likewise he does not suppress social inequality by force, but makes it a spiritual victory over the passion of possession. In extreme cases, public authority ought to intervene. However, the state is not called upon to realize the Kingdom of God on earth. Its task is to prevent the world from becoming a hell and thus to place limits against the progression of evil among us.” (In the World, of the Church: A Paul Evdokimov Reader, p 88)

 Government, big or small, cannot create the kingdom of God on earth.  As Evdokimov notes God Himself does not “suppress social inequality by force.”  Rather Christ appeals to us to overcome our passions by voluntarily engaging in a spiritual warfare.  As Christians we should strive for a spiritual victory over our self-centered interests by making love our aim (1 Corinthians 14:1).  Sometimes the government has to intervene when social inequalities exceed what is humane, when the powerful behave inhumanly and the poor are dehumanized.  But he sees this as the exception, not the rule.   Certainly in history Christianity changed the all powerful Roman Empire, but did it without violence and without an election.  It was a change of hearts that occurred in enough citizenry to make a difference.

As Evdokimov notes the task of the state “is to prevent the world from becoming a hell.”   That in itself is no mean task.  It is of course made even more difficult if the election itself seems like hell!   The role of the state according to Evdokimov is “to place limits against the progression of evil among us.”   Evil however is not a nation with an army whom we can fight with conventional weapons.

“Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the equipment of the gospel of peace; besides all these, taking the shield of faith, with which you can quench all the flaming darts of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Pray at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints…”   (Ephesians 6:11-18)

What it means for us is that politics is not purely secular with no religious element.  Evil is a theological concept.   Without God we cannot win that battle against evil.  Without God, we will never even be able to agree on what evil is.  But even with God, we are not going to establish Paradise on earth through government or armies.  We can resist the forces of evil.  We can work to make sure the earth does not become hell by opposing evil.

Fearing the Times

Presidential election years seem to bring out a certain darkness in the hearts and minds of those who pay attention to politics.  People are disquieted by the uncertainty of the swirling, sometimes rushing, muddy waters of the election.

My church and my country could use a little mercy now
As they sink into a poisoned pit it’s going to take forever to climb out
They carry the weight of the faithful who follow them down
I love my church and country, they could use some mercy now

(Mary Gauthier, “Mercy Now”)

In the 21st Century, or so it seems to me, every four years Americans experience a great amount of angst and anxiety about the present and the future.  Political parties do a great amount of fear-mongering as the presidential election approaches, feeding the fear, dragging people down, rather than giving them hope.  This year seems especially rife and ripe for this descent into despair.

It may be of little cheer, but certainly our country has survived darker and more turbulent times.  1860 comes to mind or 1940.

The Orthodox Church certainly has been confronted with darker times.  The rise of communism seemed to spell an endless and unmitigated period of church suffering and shrinking, and hiding in the darkness which overshadowed everything Orthodox.

The world is marked by its ever-changing quality – empires rise and fall.   The uncertainty of the world is an ever present feature in the life of millions of people.     Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh spoke uneasily about the church entering a new age in the 21st Century:

“I have a very clear or rather gloomy feeling that as we enter the third millennium we are entering some obscure and complex and, in a certain sense, unwelcome period. As for devotion to the Church, our faith must certainly retain its integrity, but we must not be afraid of thinking and expressing ourselves openly. Everything will eventually settle into order, but if we keep just endlessly reiterating what has been said long ago, more and more people will drift away from their faith (I mean not so much Russia as the world as a whole), not because everything that was stated before is erroneous, but because the approach and language being used are all wrong. Today’s people and the time they live in are different; today we think differently.

I believe one must become rooted in God and not be afraid of thinking and feeling freely. ‘Freely’ does not imply ‘free thinking’ or contempt for the past and for the tradition. However, God does not need slaves. ‘I no longer call you servants, I call you my friends…’ I think it is extremely important that we think and share our reflections with him. There is so much we could share with him in this new world we live in. It is so  good and so important to think openly without trying to conform. Intellectuals with great receptivity must come to the fore by their thinking and writing. The Church, or rather clergymen and some of the conscious churchgoers, are afraid to do something wrong. After all these years when people could not think or speak openly with each other and thereby outgrow, as it were, the nineteenth century, there is much fear, which leads people to be content with mere repetition of what has been adopted by the Church long before and what is known as Church language and Church doctrine. This has to change sooner or later.” (The Wheel 4 | Winter 2016)

The Church unfortunately contracts and becomes entrenched exactly at a moment when opportunity presents itself for moving into a new century, for being renewed by the Spirit.  Fear causes the church to hide behind closed doors as the apostles did after the crucifixion of Christ.  Jesus, however, came into their midst and commanded them to go out into that world which they so feared and from which they wanted to hide.

So while we Americans face another presidential election and the negativity it will bring, we might consider the words of the newly elected president Franklin Roosevelt at his first inauguration.  Spoken in 1933, the problems besetting the nation at that time see very familiar to us today:

“So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is…fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. And I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

…rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and have abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.

The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.

Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing.   (Franklin D. Roosevelt, March 4, 1933)

There is hope.  We are still here, America survived the mid-20th Century and moved into more prosperous times.  The temptations of greed, selfishness and hatred are always there, as they always have been.  On a personal level, we can always choose better, no matter how leadership behaves.

Or, maybe we come to realize that in the world, human problems remain rather consistently – things though incredibly troubling and worrisome are not all that different from past times.  Democracy is a system which every few years calls for an election – because we are electing fellow citizens to lead us, it will always produce anxiety.  It will sometimes produce bad results, and sometimes miraculously, good emerges, nurturing and sustaining us for a life time.

 

Lies, Lies, Lies

I found pretty fascinating a show from the NPR program “On the Media“:  “Lies, Lies, Lies“.  I’m recommending it if you have about 50 minutes to ponder the truth about lies, and lying about the truth.

Inspired by this year’s presidential presidential campaign, it covers recent American history related to lies and truth, politicians and the press.  Though we hate when politicians lie to us (or maybe, more truthfully we just hate when those we oppose lie, we are more tolerant when the candidates we favor lie), the fact is politicians often say things they think that people want to hear.  As Psychologist Maria Hartwig comments:  “People want the truth if it fits with what they want to hear.”  So politicians are tempted by us and what we want to hear.  We like the truth if we agree with it, otherwise we are willing to dispense with it; so too, politicians.  Additionally, as the program points out, truth can become fashionable, or go out of fashion – I found that segment of the show to be fascinating – how the political process treats truthfulness and truthiness.   Politicians are willing to use truth when it is convenient and ignore it when it isn’t, and to twist it when that serves their purpose.  Politicians also know they can be punished for telling the truth as people don’t always appreciate the candor when they want to hear what agrees with their own preconceived ideas.

Is truth self-evident? Or, does the self not rely on the evidence when it comes to the truth?

One referenced quote in the program, I had to look up because it seemed such a classic political twisting of phrases.  The master communicator President Ronald Reagan speaking from the Oval Office:

“Let’s start with the part that is the most controversial. A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not. As the Tower board reported, what began as a strategic opening to Iran deteriorated, in its implementation, into trading arms for hostages. This runs counter to my own beliefs, to administration policy, and to the original strategy we had in mind. There are reasons why it happened, but no excuses. It was a mistake.”  (March 4, 1987)

His heart and best intentions told him it wasn’t true even though the facts and evidence told him it was true.   A classic case of “never let the facts get in the way of what you want to believe.”  or “Don’t believe everything you think.”   He so interestingly phrased it:  the facts and evidence aren’t giving him the truth, they are telling him what isn’t true.  Not a case that he couldn’t handle the truth, he handled it very well.   Douglas Adams described it well: “I don’t believe it. Prove it to me and I still won’t believe it.”

Reagan masterfully admits, “It was a mistake” which avoids any admission of intentional wrong behavior and also allows him to avoid having to admit he lied.

President Reagan was not the first president to handle truth, facts and evidence, as if it were modeling clay needing to be shaped by the artist.  This year’s presidential campaign shows he won’t be the last either.

“It’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.”  (Mark Twain)

It’s Only Money

I have through my blog shared ideas – mostly things I’ve read.  I read mostly materials related to Orthodox Christianity, but do peruse other things.  I read the article, “The United States of Insolvency”, by James Grant in the 28 April 2016 issue of TIME.  THE 2016 United States debt is

$13,903,107,629,266.00.

As Grant writes, “Let us pause to reflect that a billion is a thousand million, and that a trillion is a thousand billion – or alternatively, a million million.  It’s a measure of fix we’re in that the billions hardly seem worth talking about.”  Them’s lots of dollars.  The magazine reports that currently every man, woman and child in the US would have to pay $42,998.12 to erase the national debt.  As another comparison, Grant says if the US government were a typical American household it would have an annual income of $54,000/year and it would be spending $64,000 a year and carrying a credit card outstanding balance of $233,000.  Most of us can understand that math doesn’t work.    Grant goes on:

“I merely observe that sound money and a balanced budget were two sides of the coin of American prosperity.

Then came magical thinking. Maybe you had a taste of modern economics in school. If so, you probably learned that the federal budget needn’t be balanced–it’s nothing like a family budget, the teacher would say–and that gold is a barbarous relic. To manage the business cycle, the argument went, a government must have the flexibility to print money, to muscle around interest rates and to spend more than it takes in–in short, to “stimulate.”

Oh, we have stimulated.”

I actually never took economics in college.  The idea of a balanced budget for the government always made sense to me.  But I’ve not found many politicians to vote for, who seemed to share that idea.  Rather what I heard was that President Hoover was criticized for trying to balance the budget at the time of the Great Depression, and his actions are even blamed as the cause of that depression.  When Reagan was president, I heard many say a balanced budget wasn’t needed as long as the economy was growing.  So apparently whether the times are economically good or bad it is never a time for a balanced budget.   That doesn’t make sense to me.

Eight years ago there was all kinds of talk about the growing national debt and what to do to stop it, but this year it has not been the main focus of the presidential candidates.  Candidates probably are glad that Americans have attention deficit minds when it comes to politics.  The hot issues of a few years ago are put on the back burner even if they need to be a main issue for the country now.  Bringing down the debt may be too painful for politicians to advocate for it as it might have noticeable consequences for all of us – higher taxes and fewer entitlements.  The trouble is we manage to postpone dealing with the problem which makes some think it doesn’t have to be dealt with – and currently few are willing to pay the price for the level of government services we’ve come to expect and few are willing to give them up.  Of course if we think again about Grant’s framing the national debt in terms of an average household, we can easily see that what is required is for the the average household to cut spending by $20,000 and start paying $10,000/year on the debt.  Most householders can understand how difficult and painful that would be and probably wouldn’t want to do it either, especially if it seemed possible to keep deficit spending going until some vague future reckoning.

In the 23 May issue of TIME a new analysis of American capitalism is offered by Rana Foroohar excerpted from her book, Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business.   Foroohar says there is a reason why American capitalism is sick:

Debt is the lifeblood of finance; with the rise of the securities-and-trading portion of the industry came a rise in debt of all kinds, public and private. That’s bad news, since a wide range of academic research shows that rising debt and credit levels stoke financial instability. And yet, as finance has captured a greater and greater piece of the national pie, it has, perversely, all but ensured that debt is indispensable to maintaining any growth at all in an advanced economy like the U.S., where 70% of output is consumer spending. Debt-fueled finance has become a saccharine substitute for the real thing, an addiction that just gets worse. (The amount of credit offered to American consumers has doubled in real dollars since the 1980s, as have the fees they pay to their banks.)

As the economist Raghuram Rajan, one of the most prescient seers of the 2008 financial crisis, argues, credit has become a palliative to address the deeper anxieties of downward mobility in the middle class. In his words, “let them eat credit” could well summarize the mantra of the go-go years before the economic meltdown. And things have only deteriorated since, with global debt levels $57 trillion higher than they were in 2007.

Easy money and debt maybe just too tempting for Americans to resist – the instant benefits have fed a monster whose insatiable appetite keeps demanding more.  And we become slaves of feeding the monster because it seems to perpetuate the system.  Maybe we really do believe the myth of the ouroboros  and believe the system is self-perpetuating.  We will be surprised to find it really is a myth and not sustainable at all.

 

 

 

The Power of Fear

I heard Dwayne Betts interviewed on NPR and found the interview interesting enough to purchase his book, A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison.

I was somewhat disappointed in the book, but found a quote in it that resonated with things I hear about Americans today.  News of terrorism, and wars and gun control often make Americans fearful – not only of enemies but of big government, immigrants, and just about everything or everyone else.

Fear becomes a sign of our times.

Presidential elections, and this is the year for it in America, also bring out lots of fears in people – and candidates constantly stoke those fears because apparently fear translates into votes. “If anyone else but me wins the presidency, be afraid!”  Of course, we might have reason to be afraid if these candidates win as well, but that is just more fear.

In any case, Betts writes about his experience of going to prison at age 16, for committing a carjacking.   He says of his experience of the courts, the police and the prisons:

“Fear was a commodity everyone traded in. In three months I’d learned that everyone from lawyers to the judges to the other kids around me thought their power rested in getting someone to fear you.”  (Kindle Location 144-146)

Sounds a bit like our presidential candidates as well – some of them want others to fear them, all of them want us to fear all the other candidates.

I don’t think fear is a great reason to vote for anyone.  Better that we rely on wisdom than fear.  Perhaps if we used wisdom more in our choice of candidates we could get the candidates to change their tactics and to tell us more about their policies rather than trying to create all manners of ghoulish caricatures and character assassinations of their opponents.

Both Betts in his book and our political candidates remind me of a Chinese proverb, which could be written by any Orthodox desert father:

“When you see a good man,

think of emulating him;

when you see a bad man,

examine  your own heart.”

Five Man Electrical Band sang for us:

“Signs, Signs, Everywhere there’s signs.
. . .
Do this! Don’t do that! Can’t you read the signs?”

Investing the Executive Power of the United States of America

After a presidential campaign that has been run for the last 2 years and which has spent over $2 Billion, we finally arrive at election day – with an eye on the 2016 presidential election!  I wonder if a $2 Billion infusion of campaign money had any effect on the economy?  That’s how much it costs to get one presidential candidate a job in the market today.

Whoever wins the election, let us pray that God will guide the nation.

From The Constitution of the United States:

Article. II.  Section. 1.

The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows:

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.

The Constitution provides for an election of a President of the United States of America every four years.  Neither political campaigns nor political parties are mandated or guaranteed by the Constitution.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Those are the same reasons for which we hold an election.

Democrats Vs Republicans and E Pluribus Unum?

This is the 3^rd and final blog in this series reflecting on former Congressman Mickey Edwards’ book, The Parties Vs. The People: How to Turn Republicans and Democrats into Americans.   The previous blog is Turning Democrats and Republicans into Americans.

“A successful democracy is largely dependent on shared values and a commitment to civil discourse. A nation that is allergic to nuance and complexity can offer little guidance to its elected officials; a nation that cannot tolerate ambiguity or weigh evidence cannot easily be brought together in a common understanding of the community’s problems, much less in a reasoned conversation about proposals to address those problems. (This is why the decline in educational standards and the disappearance of classroom instruction in civics and critical thinking are so devastating to our attempts at self-government.)”   (Mickey Edwards,Kindle Loc. 2307-11)

Trying to make everything black and white, perhaps for some makes life easier. All or nothing thinking  is also a thinking found commonly in teens and in people suffering from addictions.   The world however is far more complex and nuanced than black or white thinking allows.   Mickey Edwards advocates for changing our way of looking at things in political America – everything is not Democrat or Republican and there certainly is not just one issue that governs our lives or which politicians must grapple with to govern the nation.

Additionally, those who think “the other party” endangers our country might be happier in a one party nation – Libya under Khaddafi, Iraq under Saddam, Communist North Korea or Russia or China are a few examples.   A one party system may make life considerably easier for those with all-or-nothing, black-or-white thinking.  But in a true democracy, many different ideas exist, and the people have to form a governing system that deals with the variation and the minorities.  That is the democracy envisioned by America’s Founding Fathers who created three independent branches of government (not 2 political parties) to balance power.  And anyone who reads history realizes the Founding Fathers disagreed on many fundamental issues and debated furiously about them.

Edwards in his book offers the example of Ben Franklin who realized the implication of democracy in a society which allowed various opinions to co-exist. Franklin had resisted signing the Constitution because he objected to parts of it, but in the end he embraced a compromise realizing that is the nature of democracy.

“Franklin readily admitted that there were parts of the Constitution ‘which I do not at present approve’ but, he added, ‘I am not sure I shall never approve them. For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others.’ Franklin closed his remarks with an appeal to his fellow delegates to join him in approving the Constitution that guides us today. “On the whole, sir,” he wrote, “I cannot help expressing a wish that every member of the Convention who may still have objections to it would, with me, on this occasion, doubt a little of his own infallibility, and to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to the instrument.”  (Kindle Loc. 2349-55)

Ben Franklin understood that individual’s all-or-nothing, black-or-white thinking could not hold the United States of America together.  Too much power given to two opposing parties will not keep the States United.  As Edwards, as well as many other historians, have pointed out, the founding fathers generally abhorred political parties.  “We the people” are responsible for limiting the power of government in these United States.  We also have to come together to limit the power of the political parties which do not have a balance of power as their main goal, nor the interest of “we the people” at heart, but who strive to preserve and increase their own power in politics.

“The beautiful thing about our governmental system is that, in the end, the power rests with us. We don’t just determine whom we elect; we can also dictate how we elect them. In many states, legislators can submit issues to a vote of the people themselves. In addition, twenty-four states allow citizens to bypass the legislature altogether and put important questions—like changing the congressional redistricting process and eliminating closed party primaries—on the ballot.”  (Kindle Loc. 2577-80)

Turning Democrats and Republicans into Americans

This is the 2^nd blog in this series reflecting on former Congressman Mickey Edwards’ book, The Parties Vs. The People: How to Turn Republicans and Democrats into Americans.   The first blog is Turning Republicans and Democrats into Americans.

Edwards advocates some very specific changes which he thinks would make for a better democracy and a better America.  Some changes he advocates seem simple –  for example, stop the practice of having separate lecterns in the House of Representatives for Democrats and Republicans and make them use one lectern to reinforce that all congressman serve the same country, not separate political parties.   He also advocates changes in how redistricting is done after every census.  Instead of redistricting being controlled by the political party in power in each state, have nonpartisan commissions do the redistricting.   This is what this year’s Ohio Issue 2 advocates for example, and while the issue has not gotten a lot of attention due to the presidential race, Edwards would say that we should vote for issue 2.

“The value of independent, nonpartisan redistricting commissions is that those competing values will be balanced on the basis of principle, not according to how they help one political party gain an electoral advantage. As Americans for Redistricting Reform notes on its website, independent redistricting commissions allow voters to choose their representatives, not the other way around.”   (Kindle1133-35)

When political parties do the redistricting, it is the party/politicians choosing their voters rather than voters choosing their representatives.

Another issue for Edwards is that the rise of the two political parties has caused us to have a more parliamentary system of government and it weakens the constitutionally defined three independent branches of government.

“As the nation has grown and issues have become increasingly complex, and as the rise of broadcast media has tended to focus national attention more narrowly on the presidency, Congress has increasingly failed to grasp that it is a separate and independent branch of government with a constitutional obligation to serve as a check on the executive. Instead, members of the president’s party have tended to see him as their “leader,” and members of the other party have seen him as the opposition, to be stymied whenever possible.”  (Kindle Loc. 1398-1402)

The congress is supposed to be a branch of government independent of the presidency and its purpose is to balance the government so the executive branch does not have too much power.  But the current political party system is pushing members of congress and the senate to stay completely loyal to their party and to the president if he is of their same party.  But in so doing the separation of powers is violated, and instead of the branches balancing each other, the legislative branch can be reduced to being a tool of the executive branch.  This is a clear way in which the political parties are against the interest of the people and of the constitution.

The growing power of the two major political parties has also interfered with the work of the congress itself according to Edwards:

“The United States House of Representatives does not operate according to Robert’s Rules of Order. It adopts its own rules, and one of them allows the Rules Committee, heavily dominated by the majority party, to determine which bills can be brought before the entire House for consideration and what amendments, if any, can be debated. No matter how many members of the minority party may support a proposal—fifty, eighty, one hundred, two hundred—the majority can simply refuse to let the bill be considered. If the majority brings a bill to the floor, the minority can be prevented from even attempting to amend it. Here’s how: If a bill is brought to the floor under an “open” rule, debate is free-flowing and there is no restriction on the ability of members to propose changes in the legislation under consideration. If the Rules Committee presents a “modified open” rule, only a limited number of amendments are permitted; those that are to be considered are specifically identified, and time for their consideration is strictly limited. Under a “closed” rule, House members are given the option of voting for or against the legislation, but without any opportunity to offer improvements or changes.”  (Kindle Loc. 1702-11)

Though the House sets its own rules, the two major political parties have found a set of rules that makes the majority party even more powerful.    This too according to Edwards is to the benefit of the parties but not the people.  And since each party sets the rule when it is in the majority it feeds and fosters the partisanship and polarization which then paralyzes the government.

Edwards says the polarization is further fed by the fact that the politicians have very little information which they share in common.  Rather the congressmen listen only to their party’s spin on things.  This results in what he calls the “’Myside bias’—choosing the “fact” that validates your side’s position.”

‘It’s that ‘myside bias’—the tendency to judge a statement according to how conveniently it fits with one’s settled position—is pervasive among all of America’s political groups.’  In other words, given a set of possible conclusions, politicians, like the rest of us, will choose not the one that comports with dispassionate analysis but the one that fits their own preconceptions.”  (Kindle Loc. 2334-37)

Democracy requires an ability to debate, listen to various viewpoints on an issue and then to decide which one idea is the best for the country.  Governance in democracy requires that people adjust to majority rule.  It requires politicians to be able to make compromises so that the government and a diverse society can function.  But if each political party adopts its own facts and refuses to accept majority rule, then the government and the nation become paralyzed and the union is threatened.   In the past this was dealt with by cessation from the union.  Today the split is not between states but between political parties that cross state lines.  Cessation is not viable though some want to divide the map between blue and red states, perhaps hoping those of the other party can be placed on reservations in each state.

Edwards solution is to vote for people who are willing to work with others to create the government that works.  His proposals aim at restoring a sense that we are Americans, and in the vast land of democratic ideals there is plenty of room for divergence and forming alliances that get legislation and budgets adopted, as well as budgets balanced and debts reduced.

Next:  Democrats Vs Republicans and E Pluribus Unum?