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Deeper Reckoning - It takes a village idiot When you say you are frustrated with democracy, people reply that it is an awful system of government...but better than anything else. In the Economist's "Reflections on the 20th Century" as well as virtually every other discussion on the subject, democracy is presumed to be important, if not absolutely necessary, to the progress of human society. Every international organization pushes the benefits of democracy. It is something, like education, that everyone can agree upon. It is thought to foster individual freedom. It is believed to promote material progress too. Democracy is good. And yet, where is the evidence? All of the countries that comprised the former Soviet Union called themselves democracies. They were not pure democracies, of course. Citizens could vote...but only for one candidate, usually someone no one really wanted. In America, by contrast, there are usually two candidates -- neither of whom anyone really wants. Twice as much of nothing. The Soviet Union, especially in Stalin's time, was notable for the participation and the supportiveness of its voters. Stalin typically won elections with 100% of the vote. He was also visibly and enthusiastically popular. In one celebrated instance, after one of Stalin's dull speeches, members of the assembly all rose and began to applaud. They stayed on their feet applauding warmly for several minutes. No one wanted to be the first to sit down. Minutes passed. The representatives of the people eyed each other nervously, still clapping. Finally, one had enough...and sat down. Then, the rest could do so too. But at the next assembly, the representative who sat down was no longer present -- he had been sent to Siberia. Thus did the Soviet democracy function. Readers will recall, too, that Adolph Hitler was elected. He benefited from the condition of the Weimar Republic, whose democratic institutions were supposed to replace the marshal inclinations of Kaiser Wilhelm's limited monarchy. After the Reichstag fire, in which Hitler's own supporters probably burned down the legislature, the government became more dictatorial...and Hitler began his program of destruction...one of whose main victims was Germany itself. Democracy did not stop him...in fact, it helped launch him and protected him on his way. At some point during the Eastern campaign it was obvious to practically everyone that Hitler's direction would mean the destruction of the army...if not the entire nation. The officers plotted. But few acted. Why? Because they had absorbed the thinking of western liberal democrats. In a Latin American nation, a group of officers would have seized power and the war would have been called off. But German officers had been trained to leave policy decisions in the hands of the politicians. They believed their function was to serve the state and not interfere in politics. In America, the march of the century has been a march towards greater and greater voting rights. At least that's what they call it when the politicians try to buy votes from people who had previously been disenfranchised for one reason or another. As the nation has become more democratic, it has become less successful too. The people who gathered under the oak tree in Philadelphia 223 years ago were not exactly representative of the entire population. They were white males with property. Women weren't allowed to vote until this century. They first helped elect Warren G. Harding. And from there it went downhill. Franklin Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton...they were all elected by women. There are more women in the country...and they tend to vote more often. Blacks got wider suffrage with the passage of civil rights legislation in the `60s. Then the voting age was lowered so that younger people were able to cast their ballots. Throughout the century, liberty, as measured by tax rates and regulations, declined as the number of eligible voters increased. Am I arguing that women, blacks and young people should not be allowed to vote? No, I am merely observing that the triumph of democracy is a hollow victory. People cannot vote themselves a prosperous, free society. India became the world's largest democracy during the Truman administration. If voting could accomplish something it could surely do something in India...it has more voters than anywhere on earth. Ghandi put the country on the leading edge of de- colonization efforts. The British...the French...Dutch... Portuguese colonialists were kicked out of one country after another. Most often, a democracy was set up to replace the colonial administration. The results were almost always disastrous. Upon getting independence, India and virtually every other former colony went into a decline. Living standards decreased. Infant mortality rose. Violence increased. Railroads stopped running. Roads went to ruin. Everything that really mattered to people got worse. "We are all the government," said Hillary Clinton in her book, "It Takes a Village." Hillary believes in democratic government, the kind of democracy that elected her husband to the presidency...and might do the same for her one day. She says that the government is little different from a village. But only an idiot could confuse the informal neighborly institutions of a village with the police power of the nation-state. Villages work because they are un- democratic. People do not vote. They work out unique and infinitely complex private arrangements. People get along and go along. They do not typically try to tell each other what to do. They do not systematically take each other's money. They compromise. They talk. They develop customs, habits and hidden rules of order. A village is a civil institution...organic, flexible, evolving. It the opposite of the modern nation-state. To borrow a turn of phrase from Richard Nixon, we are all capitalists and democrats now. But both concepts are overbought. What's ahead..."Village Capitalism." Until tomorrow... Bill Bonner * * * * * *
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