"ETERNAL VIGILANCE!" (Thomas Jefferson re the vulnerability of Democracy)
How Ironic it is. Whereas a wave of democracy is rippling all over the Arabian East - there is an equally significant anti- democratic wave rippling over much of our own East and West expressed in the form of autocracy. Autocracy is defined as: " a political theory favoring unlimited authority by a single individual." The two iconic representatives of this new wave of autocracy are Governor Christie of New Jersey and Governor Walker of Wisconsin.Both of these governors champion themselves as leaders of the new fiscally responsible movement.
Few citizens would argue the fact that America is in the midst of a protracted economic crisis taking the form of us collectively drowning in debt. Clearly the brakes have to be put on tight to rein in continuing over spending. In agreement are union members from Wisconsin among others have agreed to reduced cuts in salary, increased contributions to their medical policies, and reforming pension contributions. This is in the spirit of shared participation in the necessary suffering dictated by our current economic mess. So far - so good.
Now comes big trouble.
Governor Walker has been the self appointed point man for unilaterally interpreting his election as Governor to be a mandate to dismantle 50 years of collective bargaining - a gross over reach of executive power.
Further it daily appears that there has been a well organized plan to wage open warfare against the public service unions to severely cripple if not entirely kill off their political influence.
Careful listening to Governor Walker and others comment on the push back by the many thousands of protestors is the very best rational for keeping collective bargaining in tact. He and others exhibit a gleeful attitude in their militant refusal to compromise as if compromising was a blow to personal integrity.
The primary motivation for unions is and will always be the realistic limitations that all human beings share in their inevitable biases and individual and collective differences. Our constitution makes it crystal clear that no one person or group has an absolute lock on the absolute truth of any matter no matter how fervent one feels they do.
This attitude of respect for differences has resulted in the constitutional structure of checks and balances.
Eradicating collective bargaining effectively obliterates one of the most effective checks that directly lead to inevitable political imbalances when power resides in the exclusive perogative of one man (or woman), or one party, or one group etc. to decide what is "best" for all whether or not those who are governed agree with or oppose the particular policy degree of the moment.
Mandate! baloney. There was no mandate to unilterally abolish by one man's degree collective bargaining.
Further - if this autocratic act is allowed to stand then the very slippery slope of what so ever one wants gets to be increasingly more possible and probable.
And there is even more serious concerns associated with this transparent well planned "conspiracy." Whether intended or not there has been initiated a class war pitting haves and have nots, public versus private workers, the middle class agaist the poor and so on.
The tea partyers are right to have identified a seething rage in the United States. A rage based on frustration with ineffective law makers many of whom are proponents not of the public good but of their own short sighted greedy, narrow minded partisan, gains punctuated with pandering, out right lying, gross distortion of the facts, hypocrisy of the crasest and most transparent degree.
The frustration is largely do to economic woefullness. Frustration inevitably leads to rage which seeks simple explanations. So for the past few years we have witnessed a parade of explanations which have each been in the limelight for a brief time and then pass on to the next "scape goat."
First was the overspending by the Republicans during the Bush administration, then came the greedy Wall streeters and the banks, corporations, the rich, and currently it is the public workers. The truth is that the unjustified war in Iraq has cost us an estimated 4 trillion dollars which is larelgy responsible for the economic melt down in which we find ourselves drowning.
So let's say that there are many which agree with my analysis. What is to be done about it? Stop the divide and conquer tactics. Come to the table and have a national conversation about truly finding a fair, reasonable, and proportional sharing of fiscal pain.
I am aware of not one once of suffering and sacrifice being born by the richest among us who have received a remarkably generous tax benefit. What about the immediate reimposition of an icreased capital gains tax now that the stock market is back to its record breaking days?
Get over this nonsense that increased considering reasonable taxes are nothing less than committing the worse imaginable sins.
There are obviously no easy answers - but an attitude of unilateral forced decrees put into effect by sophistic autocrats will inevitably lead to the conditions in our beloved democratic United States - note United States- which made the Wymeer Republic ripe for facism.
Don't think for one moment that true liberty cannot be snuffed out in short order. It is being attempted as we speak. Beware the prophetic words of Thomas Jefferson commenting on the vulnerabilities of democracy: ETERNAL VIGILANCE!
Comments