Themistocles Rolls in his Grave

Though it seems as if it would be a shock to the average American, I must report that miracle engine additives cannot save your car from the brink of engine failure; there is no snake-oil panacea that can cure everything that ails you; no fad diet or gimmicky workout routine can bring you eternal life; and democracy cannot solve every problem we face.

Democracy, for all that is has given us (I’ll surely think of something sooner or later), is often held as an ideal of sorts to which all nations and governing bodies should aspire. A government is judged as good or evil along the axis measuring the degree to which it solicits public comment, and political leaders are considered legitimate or illegitimate only insofar as they have (or have not) the public’s approval- often measured as a nonsensical percentage “rating,” as if a leader’s performance can be analyzed with a metric most commonly found in internet film review boards (it would seem no sitting President of the United States has, in recent memory, been ‘fresh’).

The overwhelming trend throughout modern history has been to move in the direction of ever greater public sovereignty. Beginning with the Progressives in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (the referendum, the recall election, the ballot initiative) and continuing right through the millennial era (Rock the Vote! Vote or Die! It would seem Millennials are incapable of focusing even on a slogan without the extra stimulation of an exclamation mark), the general response to solve the problems that arise in representative government is to cure it with… greater representation in government. The masses of society are seen as a bountiful, boundless well of wisdom and guidance. What stymies diplomats is referred to the viewers of the 6 o’clock News. Matters of grave national significance are held up for comment and review to a rabble that slept and fudged their way through high-school economics and to whom political philosophy is as alien as theoretical particle physics (though, as the discovery of the Higgs Boson showed, even this level of ignorance doesn’t prohibit misinformed and half-baked verbal buffoonery).

The plain and simple fact is that representative forms of government, of which Democracy is often lauded as the best possible, are designed to maximize the governed populace’s participation in the political process. It is not designed to maximize the efficacy of government. Often, very nearly the opposite end is achieved. If the rubric used to grade a government has only one category, and that category is suffrage, then democracy might very well score highly. If, on the other hand, there are grades given for efficiency, ability to solve crises, sound fiscal and monetary policy, or inherent stability, then democracy would score very poorly indeed.

The framers of the American Constitution were as dyed-in-the-wool Enlightenment Libertarians as have ever existed, but even the found it prudent to check and make marginal the public’s influence on the government that they founded. Can we call their insight wrong when it has directly led to the relative stability of our national government? Certainly it has endured longer than many other republics. And why? Because it is less democratic, and therefore, less susceptible to the whims and fads of the general public, who otherwise would pervert and derail it. A survey of our national history could highlight popular missteps that only narrowly missed tragedy and unpopular policies that turned out to greatly benefit the entire nation without leaving much out at all.

It is my contention to you that they, the framers, did not go far enough in removing the average American citizen from the annals of political power. I am no advocate of statism or fascism, but neither am I thrilled about the prospects to be found in absolute public sovereignty. In the era of mass communication and social media, the American public has found a new and stronger voice. They; that is to say, we; confuse the right to speak freely with the right to demand to be heard while doing so, and we place increasingly ferocious demands on our government to bend to our collective popular whim. It has led to disastrous consequences.

Government shutdown scares, budget cliff nightmares, the constant and numbing din of highly polarized politics… if politicians did not have to kowtow to their most vocal constituents on a weekly basis and were left alone to do the business of government, it would disappear within a week. Even a random lottery assigning people to government office would find more success than our popularly elected Congress and their inability to do anything meaningful or long-term. Such a body would probably also have more foresight than a Congress constantly anticipating reelection; one eye fixated on the latest opinion polls and the other batting whoreishly at the donors to fund their next gaudy campaign.

I am not sure what the best answer is, but assuredly I can tell you this- the best answer to our current political problems is not to be found amongst the rubes or their kine in the byer. Nor will it be found by soliciting the opinions of a representative group of Americans and then watering them down even further by converting them to infographic form on the Nonstop News Network.

The solutions to our problems in the body politic will be found in the same manner as are the solutions to all of our problems in all fields- by exceptional men and women who work diligently, passionately, and (most onerously of all) against the nearly overwhelming obstacles put in their way by the rest of us.