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This website is being renovated throughout 2008. Pages and the content of pages will continue to change until the end of the year and there may be some inconsistencies and missing links. Please do not quote from or link to specific pages (apart from the home page) without contacting the webmaster first. Who won? Democracy, more or less By © Martin Foreman Word Count: 793 words Publication date: November 12, 2006 A strong sense of relief swept over me last week as the Democrats won the House. The icing on the cake was Jim Webb’s delayed win in Virginia. The midterm elections might not have overthrown my penchant for tired metaphors, but it restored at least part of my faith in American democracy. Let’s be honest. The Democrats didn’t win the election, the Republican-in-Chief lost it. George W at least has a vision, no matter how awkwardly he articulates it. Make the world more American, make rich Americans richer and ignore the bleating of those whose lives and livelihoods are destroyed in the process. The Democrats have yet to articulate their vision. More accurately, a single Democrat has yet to rise to the top of the heap to impose her or his vision on the rest of the party. America did not vote for Nancy Pelosi; it voted against the Occupier of the Oval Office. Winners and losers aside, were the midterms truly a triumph for democracy? On the face of it, yes. The legislative branch of the world’s most powerful nation changed hands peacefully. Every adult was free to vote or abstain according to their conscience. Allegations of vote-rigging were minimal. The issues were fully and freely discussed. The new members of Congress truly represent the people… Hold on. Every adult was free to vote? Possibly, although I am not yet convinced that all those who were disenfranchised in Florida in 2000 have had their votes restored or that similar shenanigans do not persist elsewhere. And the issues were fully and freely discussed? Not in one of the sleaziest campaigns in memory, when political advertising in hundreds of contests was dominated by innuendo and allegation. The press and broadcast news attempted to throw light on the issues, but their reports and analyses were too often superficial and weak. With little hard information on which to base their judgement, many voters were swayed by emotion as much as reason. This is only to be expected in a country where half its citizens are proud to proclaim themselves fundamentalist Christians – the triumph of wilful ignorance over enlightened thinking. No further proof of an emotional response is needed than the banning of same sex marriage in all the states where such an initiative was on the ballot. This was democracy in action, but it was the same democracy that formally deprived African-Americans of their civil rights for eighty years and informally continued to do so for another century. (Some would say that denial continues today.) On the other hand, the same democracy also allowed voters in South Dakota to overturn a law criminalizing all acts of abortion, although here too, I suspect, many voted with their hearts rather than their heads. If voters are fallible, how about government? How often do America’s leaders make decision based on full and impartial analysis of the facts? Far less than we might like. Kennedy and Johnson took the country into Vietnam. Bush Senior steered clear of Iraq; Bush Junior lacked his father’s wisdom. Instead of an impartial approach to the Middle East, over the last thirty years both Republicans and Democrats have bowed to the Israeli lobby; the outcome has been a growing hatred and violence on both sides and the fuelling of a Muslim fundamentalism that feeds terrorism worldwide and may yet unleash nuclear warfare. As for the economy… Carter presided over a depression, but it was Reaganomics which doubled the national deficit. Clinton balanced the books, but George Junior plunged the nation back into debt. Both Bush and Reagan were persuaded by the argument that tax cuts for the rich benefit the country as a whole. The facts suggest otherwise, but reason played second fiddle to emotion. I have meandered from my question as to whether the issues in this election were fully and freely discussed. The answer is: only occasionally. On past experience, it will be many years, generations or even centuries before a rational analysis of all the facts determines how most votes are cast. And even if the public votes rationally, will they be represented by men and women like themselves? Not while money is an essential element in nationwide elections. Despite all attempts to level the playing field, it is still easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a pauper to run for Congress. Yet these failings aside, last Tuesday proved that democracy is alive in America. How healthy it is is not certain. If the next two years sees Congress and the President working together, extricating the country from Iraq, devising an economic policy that benefits all Americans and resolving social problems through collaboration rather than confrontation, then it will really be time to celebrate.
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If God existed, he would... admire the beauty of a universe that he did not create recognize that eternity is meaningless deny both heaven and hell disown all men and women who speak in his name denounce the harm caused by religious "morality" help the human race to thrive without him If God existed, he would be an atheist. |