Waking Ourselves Up with Stephan Richter’s Timely Essay, Just Who Fears Democracy? On the Need to Update the American Republic

© 2012 Peter Free

 

20 March 2012

 

 

Institutionalized denial is a good way to shoot oneself in the head, without meaning to

 

Stephan Richter (editor-in-chief of The Globalist) recently wrote an essay that should have gotten more attention than it did.

 

In it he says (rightfully) that northern Europe has done a better job of achieving the American Dream than the United States has.  And he hints that we need to democratize our obsolete republican form of government.

 

 

Citation — to Richter’s essay

 

Stephan Richter, Just Who Fears Democracy? On the Need to Update the American Republic, The Globalist (14 March 2012)

 

 

Why is Richter’s essay important?

 

I mention Stephan Richter’s observations because the United States continues to thoughtlessly bumble along on an obviously downward track.

 

We Americans seem to revel in shouting blanket aphorisms about vacuously-defined liberty and free markets that have nothing to do with Reality.

 

Witness, for example, the Republic melee during its laughably horrible presidential nomination campaign.  And consider President Obama’s characteristically gutless and pandering reply to the childishly diverting mess that the Republicans have so idiotically created.

 

There seem to be no grownups in our house.  We have lost sight of where the average American once thought he and she wanted to go with our nation’s experiment regarding the pursuit of happiness.

 

 

The necessity of sharing risks in a just society

 

Richter’s most important social observation concerns shared risks:

 

The Europeans have understood — and realized — the promise of the American Declaration of Independence far better than the Americans themselves.

 

Instead of a rather vapid worshipping of the notion of "freedom," as Americans continue to do, Europeans have insisted that their governments become truly dedicated to task of organizing their societies so that they promote the ideas of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in a remarkably effective manner.

 

All this flies in the face of what Americans are taught to believe, of course. They are trained reflexively to castigate today's Europeans for being insufficiently focused on the precious notions of freedom and the rights of the individual.

 

As if that vague, immaterial notion could provide happiness. In the modern world, it is pure fiction that the individual — outside of the top 5% or 10% of society — can get that accomplished. Smart risk-sharing is pivotal.

 

© 2012 Stephan Richter, Just Who Fears Democracy? On the Need to Update the American Republic, The Globalist (14 March 2012) (paragraphs split)

 

 

Richter’s blasphemous (but necessary) proposal

 

Richter and I are of like mind regarding the Twenty-First Century obsolescence of our Eighteenth Century anti-democratic form of government.

 

The Founders, all significant property owners, initiated a republican system that was intentionally slanted against the voices of the masses.  The Founders’ hidden rationale was to protect their assets.  Their public one was to oppose the tyranny of the majority.

 

In those days, one could defend the Founders’ actions based on a fair-minded review of how measurably far they democratically progressed (for white people) from the Divine Right of Kings.

 

But today, at least when evaluated according to America’s still relevant Pursuit of Happiness standard, that progress is no longer enough.

 

The Founders’ archaic thinking about human rights was most obviously manifested in their dehumanization of slaves.  The slave analogy is still relevant in 2012:

 

The sad but inescapable reality is that, in terms of how it manages political power, the United States has transformed itself into a clever modern version of Prussia's old political order, where wealth and land ownership conveyed political power from generation to generation.

 

But don't expect to hear a serious debate about the purposes of American democracy any time soon in the capital city of Washington, D.C. That is a place where the top 5% of households have an annual income of $473,000 — a stunning 60% higher than in other large U.S. cities.

 

© 2012 Stephan Richter, Just Who Fears Democracy? On the Need to Update the American Republic, The Globalist (14 March 2012)

 

Plutocracy rules.

 

Having seized all three branches of our indirect democracy with their election-directing wealth, these Fat Cats are not going to let go.

 

 

The moral? — It is time to start talking about how to influence (or constitutionally change) our institutions to better reflect the goals of the majority of Americans

 

This means talking more realistically about where we are and where we want to go.

 

Educating ourselves about northern Europe’s accomplishments regarding the American Dream would be a good way to start.  That would require overcoming our ignorance-based bigotry regarding Europe.

 

Effective change has to start with us and our evidence-ignoring thinking.