A while back I was chided by a Facebook friend for referring to the United States as an alleged democracy. He pointed out that we were a republic. I tried to explain to him that I was referring to the process not the structure (Americans - well at least some of them - are allowed to vote ... though oddly enough it is a privilege; that is, proscribed by law; not a right; that is enshrined in the constitution). He never responded so I don't know if I made myself clear or not.
During and after the recent election, and particularly after all the flailing that has been going on regarding deficits, budgets, state-of-the-union addresses and gaffed water breaks, it struck me that there really isn't all that much really democratic about America at all anymore. I'm used to having thoughts that my neighbors don't, but I was pleased to see not long thereafter a piece by Zeese & Flowers on truth-out.org that made me feel less alone. Sometimes it's nice just knowing you're not the only one.
The article provided a lot of support for my friend's argument, though I'm sure the point he was trying to make was very different. We are a republic (structure of our political organization) and the say we are apparently supposed to have in how that structure is implemented has long been meant to be carefully circumscribed; limited, if you will, not just limited government but also limited influence on that limited government as well. We, the people ... we human beings that are, in the end, are to be governed, are not the focal point of anything. In the end, it's not about people. It's about property.
I'll be the first to admit that I missed that point, but in that I'm not alone either. In fact, in the meantime, I'm getting the impression that we've been sold a bill of goods, which is not an inappropriate a metaphor as we might like to think. Oh sure, the last round of voter-disenfranchisment measures that were attempted, to varying degrees of success, in the last American election should have given us all pause to think. That we persist in our delusion that we have something to say, electorally, is something we need to think very hard about. More than ever, Emma Goldman's words ring true in my ears, "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal." In a sense, that is precisely what was being done. The trajectory of events since the last Great Financial Crisis should also give us pause to think: the more "property" (what you have) that you have provides you with many more rights and privileges than the rest of us. It just hadn't struck me so directly how deep-seated this idea really is.
Making things more important than people is ethically questionable and morally wrong. For the religiously inclined among you, it is the foundation of idolatry. If our highest value is property then we have no values at all, for the value of property is subject to the whims of the market. We all need to think about this more, I can assure you. It has taken me a while, to simply get past the catchiness of the phrase, but Proudhon was right: "Property is theft". The true significance of that, however, is not what the "owner" thinks s/he has gained, but what has been taken from the rest of us: our dignity as human beings.
Is that what we hold dear?
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