Democrat vs. Republican. Red state vs. blue. Liberal vs. conservative. These are the dichotomies of the modern political landscape in the US. They’re what dominate the airwaves and, to a large extent, the blogosphere. They’re what people think of in terms of what “politics” means.
And, it’s just a bunch of theater, mattering not a whit in the grand scheme of things. After all, how many people can name the political policies of the Whigs, or remember who backed gold and who backed silver in the monetary standards fights at the turn of the 20th century? Those policies and issues were as real to them as gay marriage and universal health care are to folk today.
More importantly, the focus on left vs. right, et. al. is meant to distract folk from the real fight: authoritarianism vs. a democratic republic.
A republic is a country governed by the rule of law. A democracy is a republic where the citizens are the ultimate authority, albeit usually via elected officials as an intermediary.
Authoritarianism, on the other hand, is the belief that the state exists to perpetuate the state, and that citizens are at best wards of the state, bowing to the central authority. People tend to think of totalitarianism, dictatorships, and the like when they think of authoritarianism…but any democracy can turn into an authoritarian state. All it takes is for those elected officials to decide, explicitly or implicitly, that the country exists to serve them and their cronies, not the other way around. Those officials, via political party mechanisms and “contributions” from Big Business, can work to ensure their perpetual power.
This is not a partisan issue. While lots of people like to pile on the Republicans for recent moves away from the rule of law (Gitmo, wiretaps, etc.), plenty of Democrats have taken such “liberties” in the past. After all, Tammany Hall and the Chicago political machine of the mid-20th century were Democratic establishments, not Republican. Many Democrats, if they were in charge today, would behave in much the same fashion — after all, it’s payback time, right?
Moreover, the true libertarian wing of the Republican Party is probably the only faction that has an explicit philosophy that works to counter authoritarianism, mostly by trying to whittle government down to the smallest bit possible. Alas, the tubes run amok with faux libertarians, who view tax cuts as both means and end, probably because understanding the real basis of libertarianism requires more thinking than they feel like doing.
The issues that dominate the US Presidential campaign, from Iraq to the economy, are not trivial. However, they are, at best, pieces on a game board — authoritarianism vs. a democratic republic will determine what the board looks like. Is the US truly a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people”, or is it a government of the people by the permanent “bi-partisan” political class for the their benefit and the benefit of their Big Business cronies?
I am not saying that Democrats and Republicans are universally evil, or that representative democracy is impractical, or anything like that. However, it is incumbent upon all people to ponder which candidates for office will tend towards authoritarianism and which will tend towards democracy. Which will take steps to involve citizens in the process of governing and which will take pains to hide governing from the people? Whether the candidate is a Democrat, Republican, or Martian should be of secondary importance.
I, for one, look forward to the Personal Democracy Forum 2008, to see how many people are focused on truly strengthening our democratic republic, how many are merely trying to get their flavor of authoritarianism to have the upper hand, and how many are oblivious to the whole matter.
