- MUST READS
- PRODUCTS
- RESOURCES
- MULTIMEDIA
- ENFACTLOPEDIA
- FSM AUTHORS
- ABOUT US
- CONTACT US
- FSM BLOG
- DONATE
- PRESS COVERAGE
SEARCH FSM
- IN THIS SECTION
November 4, 2008
On Populism and Elitism: Don’t Believe the Hype from Either Side
When you hear “Power to the People,” see if your wallet is still in your pocket. I think neither Joe Sixpack nor rent-a-mob campus radicals have the mental equipment to run a society. Both are shallow, self-serving, without experience or thought, and are easily led.
Today’s culture wars have been with us since our country’s beginnings. James Madison warned that “pure democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.” President John Adams, however, professed that our representative assemblies should be an exact portrait of the people at large. Happily for us, he changed his mind when he took office.
The French and Russian revolutions showed us that “Power to the People” let mobs vent their resentments after centuries of elite oppression – they not only got revenge, but also destroyed any protections that their ancient societies offered. Power to the People morphs into a dictatorship, which has no intention of giving power to the people.
America has been lucky in not having a peasant population or a landed gentry with ancient privileges (except for the antebellum South). However, in the 19th century, political parties such as the Know-Nothings and Mugwumps came and went – demanding governments that reflected them. They never got their way, but the hostility toward intellectuals remains an undercurrent in our society today.
Many intellectuals return the favor by believing that ordinary people are incapable of governing and that their life experience counts for nothing. The ordinary people I see in Rotary Clubs, Women’s Clubs, and other service organizations show plenty of good sense and their grass-roots governing is exemplary, often better than that of their local professional politicians.
I certainly do not want a know-nothing to do surgery on me – nor do I want an intellectual with only theoretical knowledge to do so either. There is no substitute for brains, experience, and a sterling character; these attributes are not limited to any one social class.
The current economic crisis brings up another issue: do we want to leave an issue this important to our elected politicians, no matter how bright or stupid they are? The best use of elected representatives is to weigh ideas, to hold hearings, and to get the best advice they can from professionals in a discipline.
Fareed Zakaria in his important book, The Future of Freedom, suggested that for needed but contentious issues requiring expertise (reforming Social Security; restructuring no longer affordable public official retirement packages; producing a national health care system; restructuring our energy infrastructure), we should create a bipartisan commission of the best experts we can find in those disciplines. Let them fight it out behind closed doors (no public pressure), arrive at a consensus, and then present it to our elected representatives to vote up or down (no pork or earmarks allowed). This gives us informed democracy, not mugwump democracy.
A friend of mine, Gene Lester, a retired IBM software manager, has come up with an ideal Economic Commission that could serve the incoming president and new congress and senate. This commission needs to have expertise in business management and practices, mechanics of trade, current financial/economic regulation, economic forces and interactions, world view of trade and regulation, banking management and practices, the mortgage industry, complete understanding of financial instruments, economic factors and tradeoffs, how the economy relates to society, the economics of health care, and the economics of Social Security.
To supply this expertise, he proposes as members of that board: Paul Volcker, Nouriel Roubini, Larry Summers, Robert Rubin, Martin Feldstein, Allan Meltzer, James Baker, Laura Tyson, Alice Rivlin, and Sheila Bair.
We will have a new broom in Washington. This would be a good time to use it. We really need to change from “more of the same.”
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman is an historian, lecturer, and author who also writes for the Santa Cruz Sentinel. You may contact her at Lfarhat102@aol.com or http://www.globalthink.net/.
Reader Comments: Submit Your Comment (0)
| Print This E-mail This |
|
