Are We Still A Democracy?

The elimination of social programs has been a basic tenet of the Right-wing's approach to government for decades; at least since the New Deal. The Left, finding this position morally reprehensible, has sought various models to explain the Right's thinking, in a way that doesn't demonize them. Currently, the model of choice is the one developed by linguist George Lakoff in "Moral Politics". He creates two metaphors for understanding how the Right and the Left view the world. The Strict Father Model for the right, and the Nurturant Family Model for the left. According to Lakoff, the Strict Father Model prizes, among other attributes, moral toughness and self reliance. From this perspective social programs give to those, who are not morally strong and self-reliant, things that they have not earned and, hence, don't deserve. And for them, this is morally wrong. In essence, then, what Lakoff is trying to do is to show that the members of the Right-wing are not the selfish, insensitive, opportunistic hypocrites (that they might appear to be at first glance), but are just folks with a different worldview and moral system.

Well, actually, they are the selfish, insensitive, opportunistic hypocrites they appear to be. Simply, the reason the Right-wing wants to get rid of social programs is that these programs raise the cost of labor. If one can make the equivalent of $5.00 an hour being on welfare and getting food stamps, business would have to offer $5.50 or $6.00 an hour to find workers. If there were no social safety net, there would be no reason wages couldn't eventually be lowered to be more competative with those of underdeveloped nations. If you whittle away all the rhetoric and come to the core goals of Right-wing ideology, the maintenence of a plentiful supply of cheap labor is at the center.

I recommend "Regulating The Poor; The Functions of Public Welfare", by Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward, for a history of the right's has attempted to achieve the goal of cheap labor, and especially the gains they made during the Reagan and Bush years.

Once the administration decided, retroactively, that the bringing of democracy to the people of Iraq was the real reason for its invasion and occupation of that country, the word “democracy” has found it way more and more frequently into Mr. Bush’s utterances. But even as he uses it to underscore every bellicose malapropos, one can’t help but wonder if he knows what the term means.

The answer, of course, is that the word “democracy”, (along with assorted other terms and phrases such as “values”, “morals”, “healthy forests”, “clear skies”, and “evil”), has been co-opted by the radical right and given a meaning far from its original. Robert Parry offers us a disturbing peek into what that meaning might be, and what is at stake for all Americans:

“When conservatives talk of George W. Bush’s “transformational” role in American politics, they are referring to a fundamental change they seek in the U.S. system of government in which the Republican Party will dominate for years to come and power will not really be up for grabs in general elections.


Under this vision of a “managed-democracy,” elections will still be held but a variety of techniques will ensure that no Democrat has a reasonable chance to win. Most important will be the use of sophisticated propaganda and smear tactics amplified through a vast conservative media infrastructure, aided and abetted by a compliant mainstream press.”

http://www.consortiumnews.com/Print/2005/021205.html

"If one accepts George W. Bush’s lecture to the Russians that democracy requires a free press unafraid to criticize national leaders, then what kind of political system exists in the United States where the news media seems so scared of Bush that it shies away from mentioning the president’s autocratic tendencies?"

(From:ConsortiumNews)

Propaganda is one of the tools used by the Bush administration* to manage the perceptions of the American people. An integral aspect of propaganda is the choice of words or labels. Take the following two terms used to describe the people actively working against the US presence in Iraq:

insurgency, n. an insurrection against an existing government, usually one’s won, by a group not recognized as having the status of a belligerent.

resistance, n. an underground organization composed of groups of private individuals working as an opposition force in a conquered country to overthrow the occupying power, usually by acts of sabotage, guerrilla warfare, etc.: the resistance during the German occupation in World War II.

The term resistance is the more correct because we are, in fact, an occupying power. But the Bush administration has ordered the media to use the term insurgency because it paints as legitimate the current government in Iraq. Hence, with each usage we are left with the frame: What's wrong with those people over there, why are they trying to destroy everything? Don't they know we are only there to help their government in helping them? And the American public becomes a bit more disconnected from reality.


*Republicans' two-decade-old "perception management" strategy [which] became official policy during Ronald Reagan's first term. On Jan. 14, 1983, President Reagan formally initiated the strategy by signing classified National Security Decision Directive 77. At the time, the White House worried that a repeat of Vietnam-type anti-war sentiment might constrain U.S. foreign policy in Central America and elsewhere. Also known as “public diplomacy,” the project had a more overt side that sought to build support for U.S. policy abroad, but it also had a less-visible domestic component that targeted the American people and the press. Robert Parry Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.

In his inaugural address yesterday, President Bush pledged to spread democracy throughout the world. In this context it is fair to ask: Is America still a democracy? The Italian philosopher Paolo Flores D'Arcais has an essay in the German paper "Die Zeit" which examines this question: Is America Still a Democracy?

"There are other minimum standards for a democracy, that the United States no longer fulfills. Not too long ago it seemed that the United States was the promised land for freedom of the press, and that the public would not tolerate a government that lied to them. But what about George W. Bush? He is allowed to disseminate untruth with impunity. He lied about the reasons for going to war in Iraq, a war that has killed nearly 1,400 American soldiers and tens of thousands of non-combatant Iraqi citizens. But Bush won a triumphant re-election. His lies no longer cause a moral outrage. Puritanical America is a distant memory. Jesuitism without Jesuits has prevailed.

The New York Times and other major newspapers have admitted that they allowed themselves to be used as mouthpieces for the administration. But is that really meaningful? In reality, the value of newspapers has diminished greatly as purveyors of the product "information". The vast majority of Americans get their information from television, where information is `embedded' in the interests of the administration. Furthermore the brutal competition in the media markets leads to censorship, manipulation and blatant lies at the television stations. It is becoming extremely rare that they respect what Hannah Arendt called " the modest truths contained in facts". Once that respect is gone, democracy is endangered.

Even more disturbing is the creeping normality of torture, the theoretical groundwork of which was prepared in the first Bush administration. The conservative journal Commentary printed a piece in July/August 2004 by the legal scholar Andrew McCarthy where the `Unthinkable' concession to torture was not only made thinkable, but was considered necessary. "There are difficult circumstances that call for measures that are illegal under US and international law."

Now that the critical journalism has been weakened by television, there is only one institution that stands as a counterweight to the administration: the Judiciary. But can it still play the role that the founding fathers intended?

Let's consider the `Bible' of democracy - The Federalist Papers . James Madison wrote:" The concentration of the power of the executive, legislative and judiciary in one hand is the clear sign of tyranny." And none other than Thomas Jefferson wrote in his autobiography:" Good government is realized through a distribution of power, not a concentration." And Alexis de Tocqueville writes in Democracy in America: "What I find most disturbing in America is not the prevailing freedom, but the weak protection against tyranny, for in many states the judges are elected by the voters. I'm not saying that Americans make frequent use of tyranny, but rather there is little security from tyranny."

Even though political scientists are reluctant to admit the truth: In liberal democracies the political right is often democratic against its will. And it often uses the democratic process to its own tactical advantage. But as soon as democracy begins to be taken seriously and the privileges are called into question, then populism rears its head and even God is recruited to the cause. In short, the more true democracy begins to take root, the faster the interests of the establishment are mobilized. It feels threatens, and therefore itself threatens the foundations of democracy: from the independent judiciary to the critical free press. It seeks to undermine the secular nature of the state as well as the integrity of the voting process.

On all points he finds serious inconsistencies with the reality in the United States. Thereby, he says, the US is endangered to divert from the constitution based democracy. What he further sees developing:

When the demons of populism are "called to arms" the weapon of choice is often a war. Every populist movement requires an enemy in order the exorcise the liberal logic of the system and transform internal opponents into `traitors'. War closes the antidemocratic circle of populism and glorifies its components: the community is heralded as `one big family' (or even company) with the father at the head. Populism instills the logic of obedience. Dissent - the basis for democratic coexistence - is criminalized and conformism is the great virtue.

This conformism is now spreading throughout rural America. It is dangerous because its moral values have totalitarian features and minority groups are becoming marginalized, if not demonized. The individual is pressured into obedience; he must not stand out from the `herd'. It is precisely his self-knowledge as an individual that is so suspect to the majority. And here it should be stated: those who degrade a nation into a huge `army' and believe they can prevail by relying on the slogan "God is on our side", they have subverted the ideals of the Founding Fathers and transformed the spirit of the constitution into its opposite.

So more often than not the states that we call democracies are actually democracies in decline. And it's not just a bad dream to think that nations - East and West - are almost imperceptibly moving in the direction of a new political model: capitalism without democracy. China and Russia - each in its own way - are quite openly heading down this path. The America of the fundamentalists and the oil magnate Bush (not to mention little Italy, with it Berlusconi regime) are following in a less overt way."