Thank you for your letter. Your outline of some of the failures of our
current so-called 'democracies' is interesting. Since you asked, I live
in the United States and my country is not devoid of the problems you
describe. Indeed, none of us have exclusive entitlement to those ills.
Your letter and the enclosures put strong emphasis on Referendum and
Recall. They are excellent goals and I heartily applaud and encourage
those who seek to attain them.
The Swiss Constitution you sent sets forth many noble tenets that no-one
favoring democracy could deplore. However, it also has several
provisions that seem (to me) to be legislative issues rather than
constitutional ones. In any case, its biggest shortcoming, in my view,
is in ignoring the fact that you cannot legislate morality. If you do
not have principled people in government, proclamations (as in Article
5, paragraph 3) that "State organs and private persons must act in good
faith" are but words. I found no provisions that fostered the election
of the kind of people who can be expected to act in good faith.
In the Direct Democracy book you forwarded to me, the authors, Jos
Verhulst & Arjen Nijeboer, describe the sorry state of nominal democracy
in Germany, Great Britain, Belgium, and The Netherlands. I have little
doubt the list is much longer since no-one seems ready to address the
role our tendency to pursue our own interest plays in shaping our
political systems, or to accept the need to integrate a method of
harnessing that trait. A brief look at the inception of the system in
my own country will illustrate the point.
The United States has long claimed the title of The Cradle of Democracy.
Indeed, at it's founding, it was called The Noble Experiment because
of its break with the royalty-based systems of Europe. Not many have
any idea how that Noble Experiment was subverted, but it is quite easy
to understand.
Although those who wrote our Constitution tried to avoid the
partisanship that was rampant in the country at that time, politicians
in a position to do so institutionalized their advantage by forming
political parties and, in the several states (which retained all rights
not specifically granted to the Federal government), enacting laws that
gave parties the right to advance candidates for public office. That
simple, and, at the time, seemingly innocuous, set of circumstances laid
the foundation for the ills we endure today.
The important thing to recognize is that those who instituted our
present system did no more than any of us would do, if we were in their
position. What they did was not vile. It is no different than seeking
tenure or forming a union. They simply devised a way to solidify their
position. I doubt anyone anticipated at the time that the upshot of
their acts would lead inexorably to the system we lament.
With regard to your proposed "multi-pronged attack on the established
political systems", I'd like to comment on the 'real alternative' you
cite in your first item. It is my feeling that we have not yet devised
a real alternative. There is no shortage of proposals, but I haven't
seen one that gives any hint of how it is going to harness people's
tendency to pursue their own interest. This failure is a serious,
indeed, in my opinion, fatal, flaw.
The question is not, "What rules can we make to insure democratic
governments.", it is "How can we devise an electoral process that
enables us to find the best of our people and raise them to positions of
political leadership."
That is the crux of the matter. There is no shortage of good,
principled people in our society. What we lack is a means of
identifying them and electing them as our representatives.
I have developed several ideas along this line and have had the
privilege of detailed discussions with a few people, most notably my
younger brother who provided breadth and academic support for the
concepts, and Roy Daine in Sefton, Great Britain and Kristofer
Munsterhjelm in (I believe) Norway who provided significant enhancements
to the concepts we discussed. I could point you to some of the
discussions, but believe we will be better served by jointly developing
the concepts. That will encourage a broader range of participation and
challenges.
I've passed my 80th birthday and feel the pressure of time. Maybe a
few, very few, thoughtful people are the most we can ever expect to meet
in our lifetime. Perhaps I've already had my quota, but, given your
insight into the evils of our current political infrastructure, perhaps
you would be willing to consider the possibility that the real root of
the problem is the poor quality of the people our political
infrastructure allows us to elect?
Would you be willing to focus on conceiving an electoral method that
harnesses our tendency to serve our own interest, even if we must
acknowledge that we may not accomplish it in our lifetime? We've been
digging the hole we're in 200 years. We won't dig out of it quickly ...
or easily. Even so, I believe we can, with careful thought and hard
work, design an electoral framework that will produce representatives
marked by their intelligence and integrity rather than, as at present,
the reverse.