The Twilight of American Democracy

I have an eight year old granddaughter and if the present trend continues in American politics, she will not grow up to live in a democracy. Her generation will find themselves living in a Republican monarchy (or as the Right Wing likes to call it: a Unitary Executive government).

(Unitary Executive is simply a euphemism for monocracy or autocracy: rule by one person.)

Democracy (as we now define it) has been slowly evolving in the U.S. since 1776. When our nation was first founded, only a few white men were allowed to vote. Slavery was legal and women and minorities had few civil or legal rights and children worked long hours in terrible conditions for little pay. It took a Civil War, a woman´s suffrage struggle and a civil rights movement to gradually extend voting and civil rights to all American citizens. Democracy takes generations to evolve, but it can become extinct overnight. Our democracy is on the endangered species list.

During the past 232 years in our nation, there have always been a persistent group of wealthy powerful individuals (such as Alexander Hamilton) who have opposed democracy and universal equal rights. Hamilton proposed that the U.S. government be a monarchy with lifetime tenure for the leaders. He also wanted all state governors to be appointed by the federal government. Hamilton wanted George Washington to be the king and the U.S. government to be modeled on the British Parliament, with the Parliament responsible only to the king and not to the people. The common people were considered too uninformed to be allowed to make important decisions about government policies or legislation. There are still many wealthy powerful Americans today that still have this authoritarian opinion. They are primarily in the radical Right Wing of the Republican party.

Our Electoral College is essentially based on that authoritarian principle (lack of trust in the people). The American people have never elected the President of the U.S. The President has always been elected by the electors who are chosen by the state legislatures - not the people. This is the reason that sometimes the elected President does not receive the majority of popular votes (in the 2000 presidential election Al Gore had 543,895 more popular votes than George W. Bush).

The last few decades have seen a rapid increase in the number of millionaires in all three branches of the U.S. government. Too many politicians are now entering government for the sole purpose of getting rich. This blatant materialistic desire to achieve wealth and power prevails in Washington D.C. instead of the sincere patriotic desire to serve the public.

During the past seven years of the George W. Bush administration, when the Republicans controlled Congress, Congress was in session only two days a week. The other five days a week, almost every member of Congress was busy attending fundraising events. (Since the Democrats regained control of Congress in 2006, Congress is now usually in session five days a week.) Self enrichment has become the primary motive for being an American politician - not patriotism. The average member of Congress must raise about $2000 per day in order to finance their own reelection.

The present corruption of our political system has made this undemocratic situation commonplace. There are about 65 lobbyists for each member of Congress. These lobbyists arrange fundraisers for the members of Congress in exchange for favorable legislation for the lobbyist´s clients (special interests and corporations). This is nothing but bribery. This corruption of the legislative branch of our government has created a dysfunctional system in which all members of Congress have no choice but to serve the special interests and totally ignore the public interests. Without the money from the special interests, it has become impossible for members of Congress to be reelected.

The legislative branch of our government is now dysfunctional and is in general opposed to the public welfare. The general public has the legal right to lobby members of Congress, but working people can´t compete with the millions of dollars that the special interests have available to contribute to politicians. There is no one to represent the people.

Since the Nixon administration, the Republican party agenda has been totally focused on creating a strong executive branch (autocracy) which has absolute power over both Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court. Nixon, Reagan and Bush II have all been Unitary Executives. All three of these presidents believed that they were above the law and that they had no legal responsibility to enforce or to obey any laws passed by the U.S. Congress.

Nixon would have been impeached for his illegal actions if he had not resigned. Reagan should have been impeached for breaking the law in the Iran-Contra scandal (it was illegal for Reagan to sell military weapons to Iran and illegal to secretly fund the Nicaraguan Contras - 1986). Bush II should have been impeached for breaking hundreds of laws passed by Congress during the past seven years. In each signing statement that Bush makes (there have been over 800), he claims that he has the Unitary Executive privilege to chose which laws that he obeys. This is absolutely contradictory to the President´s sworn oath to uphold the laws and defend the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. president is never above the law.

Nixon, Reagan and Bush II are exactly the kind of Unitary Executives that the Republican Right Wing wants to rule the U.S. government. (There is a distinct difference between ´governing´ and ´ruling´. A ruler simply issues decrees, commands, regulations or directives as a king or dictator does.)

The legislative branch of the U.S. government is now dysfunctional and the executive branch is now a Unitary Executive (autocracy). But this is not the only national tragedy that has occurred during the past three decades. During the past four Republican administrations, these Right Wing presidents have appointed four judicial Fundamentalists to the U.S. Supreme Court (and this doesn´t include the hundreds of Fundamentalist judges appointed to lower courts.)

Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas are openly judicial Fundamentalists. John Roberts and Samuel Alito are so-called closet Fundamentalists. They have secretly hidden their Right Wing views in order to get appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. (There is compelling evidence that they perjured themselves when they did this during their confirmation hearings.)

The U.S. Supreme Court is now on the dangerous brink of having a majority of judicial Fundamentalists for the first time in recent history. These four Fundamentalist jurists have already demonstrated that their decisions are based on politics and ideology and not on a strict enforcement of the law. This kind of political bias should never exist in any U.S. court especially the highest court in our nation. Such a politicized U.S. Supreme Court (or any lower court) is nothing but a servant of the Unitary Executive branch and does not serve to ensure justice or the welfare of the American people. History has shown that an independent balanced Supreme Court with different opinions always produces the highest form of justice.

The next time that a U.S. president is a Republican, a fifth judicial Fundamentalist will undoubtedly be appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. This will give the Republican Right Wing complete control over the nation´s highest court. These Fundamentalist judges or justices are activist judges who are ´making´ the laws, not merely ´interpreting´ the laws. Only the U.S. Congress has the Constitutional authority to ´make laws´. The judicial branch is supposed to interpret the laws and the executive branch is supposed to enforce the laws.

Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito all support the radical undemocratic theory of the Unitary Executive (autocracy). This extremist theory is totally opposed to the traditional democratic principle of three equal branches of government. The founders of our nation deliberately created this separation of political power to prevent an authoritarian monocracy, autocracy or dictatorship. If one more Fundamentalist justice is appointed to the Supreme Court (as John McCain has promised to do) it will change the democratic nature of the U.S. government for decades to come. Five Fundamentalist Supreme Court justices who support a Unitary Executive and the Right Wing agenda will be an unstoppable majority. They will achieve by decree what they cannot achieve by democratic legislation in Congress. This threatening condition will give a (Republican) Unitary Executive complete control over the executive and judicial branches. Together with the present dysfunctional U.S. Congress, this will end democracy in the United States.

If the silent majority of Americans remain silent (less than 48% of eligible voters actually vote)*, our nation´s 232 year experiment in democracy will have ended.

(By comparison: in Germany 84.6 percent vote, in Sweden 83.6 percent, in France 84 percent, and in Italy 92.5 percent vote. In the United States 50 to 60 million eligible voters don´t bother to register.)