Marty Kaplan: The Founders Fumbled

[SeattleGirl]

The Founders Fumbled

"The system worked" is what so many of us breathed with relief when Nixon fled Washington in disgrace. No matter that it was Nixon's own paranoia -- in the form of secret White House tape recordings -- that did him in, not just the majesty of a Senate investigation; no matter that it took the luck of Barry Goldwater's it's-time-for-you-to-go statesmanship, and the offended ego of a Deep Throat, not just the splendor of the Fourth Estate, to get him to quit.

What we told ourselves was that the country escaped its worst constitutional crisis ever because the Constitution contained within itself the mechanisms needed to overcome catastrophe.

Looking at what's happening in Washington today, I can't help thinking that it's time to revisit that awe. We treat the Constitution like fundamentalists treat the Bible; we treat the Founders like Deities; we hold an unshakable faith in the inherent perfection of our system, believing it no less exquisitely wrought than the finely balanced network of our veins and arteries, no less miraculous than the workings of our cells and organs. But cells can go screwy, and sometimes no immune system can save us from cancer. Genes can make mistakes, and sometimes no homeostatic mechanism, however ingenious its feedback loops, can restore our equilibrium. The Founders were awe-inspiring craftsmen, but they weren't magicians, they weren't prophets, and they weren't gods. Is it so unreasonable to wonder whether the charter they wrote more than two centuries ago isn't insurance enough against the madmen who now rule us?

Sure, it's encouraging to see Congress rouse itself from its six-year slumber and begin to push back. But will it really change anything?

Link to complete article on Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marty-kaplan/the-founders-fumbled_b_40080.html

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. it can work, but it takes strength of character, something that

unfortunately, our dems have been missing. They are too busy gathering money for their next race. Forget the GOP. They are our enemy. But, the Dems are incredibly disappointing. perhaps they have roused themselves from a slumber, but other than the 100 sprint, I have seen no sign of backbone, spine, reality or democratic process from those scared (oh, I MUST keep my office over anything else. Time to campaign for more money.)

[Peace Patriot]

2. Well, it's brilliant rant. I'll say that. Read it to the end. And it has the rousing

usefulness of demanding nothing less than American Revolution II, in answer to the Bush Junta. I like that. We need to think big. We need to think about dismantling corporate monopolies and seizing their assets for the public good, and cutting the military budget by 90%, down to a true defensive posture (no more wars of choice!), and all the things that have to be done to prevent this from ever happening again. And we need to hold our representatives feet to the fire about it, and demand transparent elections so that we have more true representatives to implement our will.

But I don't know that it does much good to simply eloquently lament what has happened to our democracy--which is what Kaplan does (brilliantly). Our task is to seize the day and use whatever tools we can find to get our country back--and the Constitution is one of the important ones. That's what it was designed for--not to create democracy but to be a useful tool for those who wish to.

Probably the most damaging thing the Bush Junta has done is to erode--nay, directly assault--the consensus of honorable behavior that glues the planks of the Constitution together. Rat-bastards like Gonzalez and Cheney don't believe in our system. They won't even pay lip service to it, which is sometimes all the glue we have to hold our consensus of people and laws together. The Bush Junta is a wrecking ball. But rather than lament the time it takes for good people to get back on their feet, and rediscover the Constitution and other citizen tools, we should be celebrating that evidence of rediscovery of our Constitutional roots, and this grass roots-driven and truly amazing anti-Iraq war movement. It started in city councils, and in small newspaper editorials around the country. It started on the internet. It started with a few discontented people going to Crawford. It started out in the boondocks. And it has paralleled the election reform movement and other democracy movements, all people-driven. It is we--We the People!--who are empowering the politicians and the generals and the whistle-blowers to speak out. It is our belief in our sovereignty and in the democratic system we inherited that has prompted things to start happening, in our interest, in faraway Washington. And it is a beautiful thing to see.

Yeah, it's creaky and rusty. DC would be the last place to get the word that American democracy is alive and well. SEVENTY-PERCENT of the American people have resisted the most powerful, 24/7 propaganda machine for war and fascism that any people have ever been subjected to--and they want this war ended, and this fascist regime thrown out, and they are mad.

And, miracles of miracles--in our collective brilliance, as the result of many people, known and unknown--we are finally having a profound effect. The "military-industrial complex" is scrambling like crazy to get out ahead of the onslaught, to preserve parts of their 45-year cash cow. I find it amusing to see all the anti-Iraq War resolutions in Congress, with the cash cow-ers having to get theirs in there, too, to try to slow things down. (You know them by the phrase "give our troops everything they need to...") However, when you think of what was happening in the same institution only a few months ago--Bush's "pod people" Congress suspending the right of habeas of corpus, for instance--you not only have to cheer what's happening now, you really need to acknowledge where it's truly coming from--US, the people, and their fear of us (or respect for us, as the case may be).

Kaplan slips only once, and falls back on that tired old fact--that 50% of the American people think (or thought) that Saddam had something to do with 9/11. When that--and the other one (50% believing that Saddam had WMDs) come up--I like to point out that, at the same time, FIFTY-SIX PERCENT of the American people opposed Bush's heinous war. Feb. '03, before the invasion. Do the math. That means that some portion of the people with that false information rattling around in their heads didn't believe that it was worth a war. They were trying to figure things out for themselves. They were THINKING. And the 56% grew to 70%!

An omission in this Kaplan article is the mind-boggling fact that, between 2002 and 2004, as the result of action by the Anthrax Congress--in particular by Tom Delay and Bob Ney (abetted by corporatist 'Democrats' like Christopher Dodd and Terry McAuliffe)--our election system was entirely transformed by the fast-tracking of electronic voting machines run on "trade secret," proprietary programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations, and with virtually no audit/recount controls. If you want to lament the failures of American democracy, that has to be No. 1. The American people have not somehow been made stupid by our educational system--they have been DISENFRANCHISED.

And once you fix that--and have transparent elections again--you are going to see democracy, and the Constitution, make a big comeback. A fired up population, and Democratic Party base, outvoted the machines in '06, and also provided intense monitoring of elections such as has never been seen before. So, with that, and Dean's "50 state" strategy, we got a Democratic Congress, but one that is still not very representative of the American people. Take that handicap off the peoples' back--a 5% to 10% Diebold/ES&S "thumb on the scales" for Bushites, warmongers and corporatists--and miracles of progressive policy are going to occur. We are seeing just the beginning of it--what just slightly better representation can do.

So, unlike Kaplan, I see American democracy being re-born out of the ashes of the Bush Junta. The Constitution is not dead. It is in the early process of being restored. The American people are not stupid. They are actually well along in a process of finding alternative ways to get information, new methods of grass roots organization, and rediscovery of our founding principles and what all that was about (American Revolution I). I was also encouraged to see people looking for alternative ways to vote to get around the rigged electronics (50% voting by Absentee Ballot voting in many places!). I am not in despair--at all. I feel very hopeful. I know that it's not over yet--and that grave perils threaten. But I have all along had great faith in the American people--and in democracy, as a real, organic thing that happens among people, and one that is not granted from the top but is demanded from the bottom. That's what's happening--that demand. And that's how democracy has ALWAYS happened.

[grasswire]

3. good, thoughtful post -- thanks (eom)