We and the ancient Athenians manage power very differently. They. like us, had to deal with factions, groups of men who join together in pursuit of political power, which, should they get it, will use it to work against the common good.
James Madison knew that factions could not be kept from forming, and he knew that they would work constantly to get power. He admitted that his “scheme of representation” would not keep factions from getting power, but it would, he said, make it possible to minimize their adverse effects when they did. George Washington was President of the Constitutional Convention and he surely understood the Constitution as well as anyone. He certainly understood the uses of military power, and he had years of experience dealing with a feeble, factious national government—the very thing the new Constitution was supposed to eliminate. But even though Washington understood the uses of government power, he did not know how to manage it. Apparently he thought that the new Constitution, through Madison’s “scheme of representation,” would be able to manage it—but he was wrong. Not long after the new Constitution was sent to the states for their consideration, he optimistically wrote this:
The power under the Constitution will always be with the people. It is entrusted for certain defined purposes and for a certain limited period to representatives of their own choosing; and whenever it is exercised contrary to their interests, or not according to their wishes, their Servants can, and undoubtedly will be, recalled.[i]
By expanding and parsing Washington’s points, we can see that the republic the Framers produced is very different from the government that he described:
- The Power under the Constitution will always be with the people—theoretically, the people are in power, but practically they are not. The constitutional system does not provide a way for the people to tell their party or their government what to do. The people cannot say, “Stop that, and stop it now,” or “Do this, and do it this way.” Well, they can utter those words, and they do, especially during national elections. The people make their wishes known to their party leaders, but their leaders are at liberty to ignore them—and they do. It is essential that our government be redesigned to make our representatives subordinate to, employees of, the people. Not just on occasion, but every moment of every day.
- The people choose their own representatives—theoretically, this point is also true. We do elect representatives, but the choices are limited, and the election system is often not trustworthy.[ii] The two-party system limits the choices available to the people. The parties have managed to write our election laws so that it is very difficult for third parties to participate (never mind fourth parties, or fifth parties, or tenth parties, or…). Third-party candidates are regarded as spoilers, not as bona fide candidates for office. So election cycle after election cycle the people are presented with the same tired old candidates, or their clones. We need a better way of choosing our representatives so that the vigor and legitimacy of the government are frequently reestablished.
- The people delegate power to their chosen representatives—once an official takes possession of this delegated power, he forgets the people and operates as a free agent. He becomes a force unto himself, answerable to no one—except those who pay for his campaigns, and to whom he shows his appreciation. The people with money become our de facto representatives, but we don’t get to choose them. Parties support this system. They want to be reelected more than anything else.
- Power is to be used for certain defined purposes—this never was true. Under the constitutional system, our representatives have certain powers that are limited, thank goodness, but they are free to decide how, when, and for what purpose they will exercise that power. The highest priority of any party’s legislative agenda is to maximize its chances of reelection. This fact explains why the people are usually unhappy with the actions of the national government, but they are powerless to do anything about it. In the world of modern party politics, the desires of the people are less important than the incumbent party’s hold on power. The party in power is reluctant to do anything that will anger its campaign contributors. The party out of office is willing to promise anything to unseat the incumbents, but when it wins, everything changes—money talks.
- Power is to be used for a certain limited period—this one turned out not to be true. Our representatives quickly learned how to get reelected. They found out how to manipulate the voters to their advantage. Then when television came along reelection became easier. The power to manipulate through mass communication was greater than before. Computers made it easier to gerrymander congressional district lines so that many incumbents are safe from all opposition. These factors stretched the term of office to decades for many representatives. And the Framers designed a system in which the shortest term was two years. Even that is a long time for a “cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled” man to do his worst. It is too long.
- Power is to be used in the interests of, and according to, the wishes of, the people—who decides what the people’s wishes and interests are? Apparently not the people. Instead the officials in Washington, D. C. decide. Under the constitutional system there is no defined process to transform a public wish into a public policy. The two-party system determines what is to become public policy, and they rarely consult the public in making their determinations. The people’s wishes and interests make up the will of the people. The people want certain things done and those things are, by definition, in their interests. They may be wrong, they may act hastily, or they may not act when they should, but that is their right. They did not delegate that right to the national government. The national government is supposed to follow the people’s wishes and interests. It is to obey the will of the people.
- Representatives are subject to recall by the people—the Framers did give us a couple of ways to recall our representatives. One is by voting them out of office, and the other is through impeachment. They haven’t worked very well. Members of Congress can usually stay in office as long as they want. Supreme Court Justices are in for life. The President is now restricted to two terms, but he has so much unchecked power that he can do immense damage, even in one term, before he can be stopped. Impeachment proceedings were brought against Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. In one case the process was justified and in the other it was not. You decide which was which. Will your answer reveal your variety? But if impeachment proceedings were justified for either Clinton or Nixon, then they were certainly justified in the case of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Yet these two men were permitted to serve out their full terms. So it is very clear that impeachment is not a workable way of recalling our representatives. However, as I write this, the impeachment of Donald Trump is already being discussed
Even though Washington’s words seem to describe a wonderful method for translating the wishes of the people into government policies, history reveals that in our nation the people are usually left out of the workings of their government officials. The Framers deliberately left the great majority of the people powerless.
In the following I have adapted Washington’s format and applied it to Athenian democracy:
Under Athenian democracy all power—transformative and administrative—was always with the people. Administrative power was entrusted for certain defined purposes and for a certain limited period to representatives of their own choosing. Except in specific, limited cases transformative power remained in the hands of the people and they exercised it themselves. Whenever anyone used either kind of power in a way that was contrary to the common good, they would be required to give it up.
By expanding and parsing the foregoing points, we can see how Athenian democracy was superior to our Madisonian Republic:
- Under Athenian democracy all power, transformative and administrative, was always with the people—yes, it is true, the people were in power. Through their Assembly the Athenians could tell their government what to do. The people, and no one else, could command their government to “Stop that, and stop it now,” or “Do this, and do it this way.” Whenever the people uttered those words, they were obeyed. There were no middlemen. The people were the government. They acted in their collective capacity to decide what they wanted their government to do, and then they ordered their representatives to do it.
- The people choose their own representatives—in the Assembly, the Athenians represented themselves. They could attend the Assembly or not as they alone decided. In effect, each citizen who went to the Assembly was choosing himself to act as his representative. This method of self-representation is the ultimate goal for any democracy, but it is impractical for us due to the size of our population. But there were many other representatives and they were chosen in a way that will work for us and is superior to our current system. For example: juries, members of the Council of 500, magistrates who managed the day-to-day functions of government, and special panels of lawmakers who were called nomothetai, were all chosen by random selection. It is true that elections were sometimes used, but only for very specific, tightly-controlled positions that required professional skills, such as the position of general. The Athenians used random selection because they knew that elections are corrupt. They would be shocked to see that we use elections to delegate the power of the people—I am still shocked, always disgusted, and sometimes sickened by it myself. By directly representing themselves, or by using random selection, the Athenians had no need, and no place, for political parties or professional politicians.
- The people delegated power to their chosen representatives—administrative power was regularly delegated. Transformative power was rarely delegated—it remained in the hands of the people and they applied it in their Assembly. Because there were no elections there was no need for campaign contributions, so bribery was difficult to do. The randomly selected representative knew that his civic reputation was at stake. He knew that other citizens were watching and would remember.
- Power was to be used for certain defined purposes—this was true. An administrator had a specific job to do, and he had only enough power to do it. If any citizen thought that the administrator was misbehaving then charges could be brought before the Assembly.
- Power was to be used for a certain limited period—this was true. The limited period might be one year or even less, or it might be the time required to complete a specific task, such as a diplomatic mission to another country. Most government offices could be held only once. In this way, the incumbent knew that he had only one chance to make his civic reputation.
- Power was to be used in the interests of, and according to, the wishes of the people—through their Assembly the Athenians defined the common good. And they had the power to enact legislation which was designed to make the common good a reality. Athenian democracy obeyed the will of the people. The people were the government.
- Representatives were subject to recall by the people—the Athenians could remove representatives more easily than we can. Citizens could bring charges in the Assembly and a trial could result if evidence warranted it. But the more important feature of Athenian democracy is that the need to remove representatives was less than under our system. They had shorter terms, they could not serve more than one term in most cases, and there were no elections that required campaign contributions. Under our system representatives can be removed only by other representatives—in effect our government is nothing more than a “good ol’ boys club” for the wealthy elites who naturally protect each other.[iii]
To the Framers power was just power—there were no subtypes. Their “scheme of representation” delegated all of the people’s power to a tiny group of wealthy elites who would meet in person to decide the fate of the people. But the Athenians knew that there are two kinds of power: transformative and administrative. In the wrong hands transformative power can change people’s lives for the worse. It can be used to start wars and send ordinary citizens into harm’s way. It can be used to tax the poor while giving the rich a pass. It can be used to force austerity measures on the people rather than stimulating the economy. It can be used to reduce the number of citizens who receive Meals on Wheels. It can be used to reduce the number of meals given to poor children. It can be used to provide inadequate services to our fighting citizens who have been wounded in battle. It can be used to give vast sums to Wall Street banks to cover their greed-inspired schemes. It can be used by law officers to act as judge, jury, and executioner. It can be used by law enforcement officials, including the FBI and police departments, to overlook the unjustified violent acts of their officers rather than allow independent citizen review boards to determine the propriety of such actions. The misuse of transformative power has become the norm today. The wealthy elites expect to receive special treatment from our government and they get it. The Athenians knew that the best way to control transformative power was to divide it equally among all citizens. But James Madison and the other Framers did not trust the lower classes so they made sure that government power remained concentrated in the hands of the plutocrats. We can see how poorly that approach has worked by just looking at our national and state governments right now. They do almost nothing for the common good.
Our current Supreme Court uses transformative power every time it makes a decision. But the Justices on the court do not represent the people. They represent their personal ideology. They hold transformative power for life, and their decisions are not subject to review. Our current legislative system uses transformative power every time it decides to pass or reject a proposed law. Our Representatives and Senators decide which proposed acts will be considered and then decide what the regulations will say if the bill passes. This arrangement gives these representatives tremendous transformative power which they can use to cause harm to the people while they line their pockets, or dictate how the people must conduct their lives.
But the Athenians kept transformative power in the hands of the people. The original “people’s house” was the Athenian Assembly. There votes were taken to decide questions that required the use of transformative power. The people were the ultimate “deciders.” They held and exercised transformative power. It was rarely delegated and if it should ever have been necessary it was for only a short time to perform a specific task.
When the Athenians delegated power, they limited it in duration and scope. From time to time, we Americans debate the question of term limits. We wonder if it would be a good idea. We wonder if one term or two terms would be enough. We are cautious; we don’t want to make a change that would rock our republic. Well, we have been rather silly, perhaps even stupid. Of course term limits are good. We should follow the Athenian model. To me, their rule of thumb for delegating power was “small, narrow, and fleeting.”
The Council of 500 was the chief administrative branch of Athenian democracy. Its members served for a maximum of two, non-consecutive, one-year terms. The chief duty of the Council of 500 was to manage the legislative agenda of the Assembly. The members of the Council were divided into ten groups, each representing one of the ten tribes, each of which managed the Council for one of the ten divisions of the governmental calendar. The chief of each of these ten tribal groups was chosen from the fifty members of that group. In effect, he was the head of the government, and he got to serve for only twenty-four hours! Imagine that. The citizen who had the keys to the treasury and other important civic necessities served for a day and a night. Most citizens, if they lived a full life, could expect to be the top government official for one day and one night only.
The jury pool for the Citizens’ Courts was chosen for a one-year term. It contained 6,000 members. Jurors, who were more like judges, were chosen by random selection on the day of the trial, and the trial lasted for one day. So these jurors (anywhere from 501 to 1,501 of them) had limited transformative power that lasted only one day, and was narrowly focused.
The Magistrates were responsible for administering the laws. They made things run from day to day. They were paid, and chosen by lot. They could serve for one, one-year term. There were about 600 of them. They answered to the Assembly. Their power was limited to that necessary to carry out the functions of their offices.
Membership in the Assembly was open to all male citizens, of a certain lineage, and a certain age. They served for life, or until they committed some sin that would cause them to lose their rights as citizens. While the power of the entire Assembly was great and transformative, the power of an individual citizen was small, but it did vary. Citizens who had good ideas, exemplary skills in some important profession, great powers of persuasion, and a willingness to present themselves to the Assembly for examination could be more important than the rest. Pericles was the greatest of these extraordinary individuals. But because there was no President in Athens of the sort we have in modern America, Pericles had no power to order anyone to do anything. He could present his ideas to the Assembly and they would decide whether to implement them or reject them. He did serve as a general, an elective office. It was for a term of one year, but generals could be reelected repeatedly. If the people, who were the employers of the generals, approved of a general’s work, they could hire him for another year—subject to immediate termination should the people wish it.
Because most offices were limited to one or two terms of one year or even less, many Athenians served their nation. They joined their hands, hearts, and brains, and did many mighty things.
The Athenians throughout the years modified the functions of their democracy. They wanted to make it better. For example, they realized that it was unwise to move too swiftly. They therefore decreed that the Assembly should not propose, discuss, and pass an act all at once. The act should be proposed and then discussed and enacted at a later session. They wanted to slow things down a little, let passions subside if necessary, and give citizens a chance to think about the proposal. In some cases citizens who had a great interest in a proposed act might not be present to voice their opinions. They might be away fighting to defend the nation.
Another mechanism for slowing things down—a way to give hot heads time to think about things—was the Council of 500. It sent proposed legislative acts to the Assembly. Now the Assembly itself may have sent an act to the Council for it to process and then send back later, but instead of wasting time, this process bought time. The Athenians were simply being wise, and the process worked.
Our current system is vulnerable to taking hasty or unwarranted action. We were stampeded into invading Iraq during the administration of George W. Bush. The pro-war faction led by war-profiteer Dick Cheney and supported by a cast of hand-picked sycophants panicked the public into believing that we were about to undergo nuclear attack. This pro-war faction was in pursuit of its own selfish interests and as a result has done great harm to the nation. Things might well have been different if we had followed the Athenian model and left decisions for going to war in the hands of the people. Our government gives too much power to too few people for far too long.
The Athenians who handled public property, or who held positions that could be manipulated to increase their private wealth, were routinely subjected to scrutiny. At the end of his term in office a citizen’s personal accounts would be reviewed by auditors. If he was judged to be remiss, he could be fined and could forfeit some of his citizenship rights. Any citizen could charge any officeholder with malfeasance. The accuser would be required to post a bond, and to furnish evidence supporting his accusation. A trial would ensue which could result in penalties of varying severity.
One of the most interesting examples of accountability arose on questions of constitutionality. Any citizen could assert that a particular law or act was unconstitutional. If he proved to be correct, then the law was eliminated. If we had such a policy in America, I am sure that many millions of Americans would have rushed forward to challenge the constitutionality of the Supreme Court ruling that corporations are persons. The Supreme Court is another extreme example of giving too much power to too few people for far too long.
The ancient Athenians used random selection to choose jurors. They even had a machine designed for that purpose. It ensured that the process of selecting jurors would be honest, open, and random. We use random selection to select a pool of jurors for each new jury trial. This process has been used for centuries because it works. It is superior to our present method of choosing our representatives. Let’s compare our randomly selected jurors and our self-selected, elected representatives to see if there are any important differences.
- Honesty—jurors tend to be as honest as the general population. Congressional representatives tend to be less honest because they are subject to many temptations that are rigorously kept away from jurors. Tyranni know about the availability of these temptations and they seek them. A “cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled man” would not be attracted to jury duty because there is no money in it, and the power given to jurors is small, narrow, and fleeting. But such men are attracted to Congress, the Executive Branch, and the Supreme Court, where money can easily be made, and where power is great, broad, and enduring.
- Job Seekers—we should be suspicious of any person who appears, unasked, at the courthouse and volunteers for jury service (especially if he volunteers to serve on a specific case) because such an action indicates that the volunteer has a motive. But we expect our congressional representatives to volunteer, and that act means they all have a motive, every single one of them. It has been a great disservice to our nation for our popular media and our education system to teach that anyone who voluntarily runs for office is automatically a good person. In fact history teaches that anyone who voluntarily runs for office is to be suspected of having selfish motives that are adverse to the common good.
- Community Residents—jurors live in the community where they serve, but congressional representatives either move away from the community that elected them or they spend their working hours in Washington, D.C. There the people they see are not from their hometowns but are chiefly lobbyists seeking political favors.
- Conflicts of Interest—jurors are not allowed to have any conflicts of interest. If they know the judge, or the lawyers, or the defendants, or any other juror, or if they have a personal interest in the case they are excused from duty. But our representatives are expected to know the people who have a stake in legislation. They drink with them, they eat with them, they fornicate with them, they go duck hunting with them, they invest with them, they take golf excursions with them—you get the idea.
- Wrongdoing—jurors are supposed to report any misconduct they see while they are serving, and our congressional representatives are too. But jurors have to answer to the criminal justice system while our representatives answer only to the congressional ethics system, which almost never acts—and when it does it never chooses a jury from the general population.
- Ideology—jurors are expected to leave their political, religious, economic, and other ideologies outside the courtroom, and they are asked about these possible conflicts while they are under oath. But our congressional representatives are never examined under oath and they are free to rely on their chosen ideologies to guide them—jurors are expected to stick to the facts, our representatives can ignore them.
The Jury System, because of the functions it uses for selecting jurors, for strictly managing the transformative power that jurors are given, and for keeping jurors away from temptation, produces the kind of representatives we need in the House and Senate. But that is not what we get. So the part of our system that duplicates that of ancient Athens is a success. But the parts that are different have not worked well enough and in some cases they are failures. This is true of both houses of Congress, especially the Senate.
There is another very important reason for using random selection to choose jurors—we believe it strengthens the integrity of the trial process. In our society we have an unspoken confidence in the jury system. We believe that a second jury chosen by random selection, presented with the same evidence, following the same rules for the defense and the prosecution, and supervised by a judge who follows the same judicial procedures, would reach the same verdict as the first jury. I am not sure if our belief is justified, but we nevertheless hold it. This confidence would evaporate if we chose jurors from uninvited volunteers, or elected them from competing candidates put forward by political parties.
By using random selection to choose our representatives we will rid America of a great, seemingly permanent plague. Since the beginning, our nation has lived under the tyranny of the minority, a very narrow minority: white, heterosexual, Christian, male, native, abled, well-to-do tyranni over age 50. By leaving out everyone else we have upset the natural balance between tyranni and democrati. Our tyranno-rulers have disproportionately held power, and they have grossly misused and abused that power. They have generally used our power to deny equality, rights, educations, and opportunities to all who were not like them, and they have used our power to enrich themselves as they have converted more and more of our nation’s bounty to their personal advantage. It can be crushingly depressing to dwell on how much better our lives could have been had these men behaved honorably and used our power in pursuit of the common good. But it was not to be. They have had their chance and their record is atrocious. If they were in my ethics class, I would have to give them all an “F,” and then send them to ethics boot camp—or home to their mothers.
This is not to say that other Americans have not served our nation with integrity, honor, valor, and sacrifice. Some of our citizens who sought power did work for the common good. Other citizens, for whatever reason, may not have sought power, or they may have been denied power because they were not white, or they were not tyranni, or they were not male, or they were not heterosexual, or they were not Christian, or they were not well-to-do, or they were not native, or they were disabled, or they were under age 50. These Americans carried out other tasks. They were the warriors who fought our wars, who built our infrastructure, who produced our food, who became professionals of the highest order, who raised and educated our children, who made personal sacrifices to give our children better lives. Their energy and dedication helped build America in spite of the machinations of those in power. These voiceless Americans have not had their chance to wield power in spite of the fact that they are by far the majority in our so-called “democracy.” When we turn to random selection as the method for choosing our representatives, these long-suffering, excluded Americans will finally take power, and they will build a better America, a much better America—it would be hard to do worse than those who have manipulated the levers of power for more than two centuries.
This change means that Americans who have been silenced for so long because they were excluded from power, because they failed the “litmus test,” because they had one or more of the characteristics that have been falsely viewed for so long as disqualifying marks of inadequacy, or weakness, or unworthiness, can finally speak—can roar—like they never have been allowed to do. Each of them can speak her mind and cast her vote. She can hold office just the same as any other American can, including those who now hold power and who unjustifiably view themselves as next to God in their righteousness, intelligence, and worthiness. Our nation will see a vast increase in the intellectual power applied to our problems. The number of good ideas will increase dramatically. The energy dedicated to building a better America will be immense. These excluded Americans will suddenly take on offices in proportion to their presence in the population. Those tyranni who today work to twist the law in order to keep blacks and others from voting, and who work to deny women the right to control their bodies, will be frustrated, as they surely deserve to be, and the Civil War finally will be over. This change means that the tyranno-rich will find that money no longer matters. They will find that bribery, no matter how sophisticated it may be, will be impotent.
Political parties will be emasculated if they are not exterminated. Because the two parties will no longer be able to elect candidates to national or state offices, and therefore will have no influence to peddle, their funding will dry up and they will most likely disappear—Tyranno-America will be greatly weakened, and Democrato-America will be greatly strengthened. The two parties might convert to some form of think tank. Real, honest think tanks can get funding because they have people who think, who have real ideas, but our political parties would have to recruit thinkers to replace their ideologues—if they can. I think it is more likely that the two parties, if they have enough money left in their treasuries, will pursue other ventures. For example, we may see the remaining Republicans open a museum in Denison, Texas[iv] that will specialize in the imaginary splendors of “trickle-down economics,” or perhaps they will open a travel agency for organizing golf junkets to various red state resorts, and the surviving Democrats may open an amusement park in Lamar, Missouri,[v] or game arcades at blue state fairgrounds.
The lobbying industry will undergo great changes. High-powered lobbyists with big war chests will no longer be able to bribe our representatives by hosting fundraisers. Because there will be no election campaigns there will be no need for campaign funds. The number of lobbyists will be greatly reduced. Entities of all sorts will still need people to help them promote their ideas and goals, but there will be no way to influence legislation by means of money and jobs. The new lobbyists will be free to perform their most valuable services: to inform the people about important issues affecting their clients, and to provide good ideas for good government. Corrupt lobbyists are created by our corrupt political system. Corrupt lobbying reminds me of illegal drugs. Nobody would be dealing drugs, or doing corrupt lobbying, unless there was a demand for it. Yes, there are corrupt lobbyists, but I am convinced that the system of payoffs was created by Congress and the two political parties. In fact, when our current elected representatives meet with lobbyists, I’ll wager it is difficult to tell who is lobbying whom.
If Congress, the President, Supreme Court Justices, and the two parties did not offer to sell their offices to the highest bidders, lobbyists would be able to mail it in. They would produce position papers, rather like think tanks, but on behalf of specific companies or industries. Corruption would have to go elsewhere, because its fuel is money. No influence to peddle, no corrupt lobbyists. I have no way of knowing but I’ll wager that most lobbyists, like most people, are honest, and they probably will be the most pleased of all citizens when we, the people, put a stop to corrupt lobbying.
Not only will the corrupt power of lobbyists and political parties vanish, but the political power of tyranno-Christianity will vanish as well. Under the present two-party system the managers of tyranno-Christianity can focus their energies on inflaming their congregants to reach maximum anger on Election Day. They can trot out the usual hate messages by railing against whatever aspect of sex or women’s control of their own bodies has the most political advantage at the time, or attack “activist judges” who favor science and are trying to keep God out of the schools, or decry “liberals” and their headlong rush into perdition while taking the rest of civilization with them. This intense period of emotional exhortation, filled with exploitable, unsubstantiated hypotheses, and culminating on Election Day, now concentrates their political power. But with the disappearance of elections the tyranno-managers’ work will be constant and spread over years, and they will have to keep up a steady drumbeat of hatred in order to keep the flock in full cry. But that won’t last long.
The flock will tire of constant demagoguery, and they will come to ignore or resent their managers. In a little while the managers of tyranno-Christianity will themselves tire of the lack of response and their own interest will wane as their political power diminishes. Without votes to sell, the reward will not be worth the effort and they will search for new ways to exploit others. All will be quiet on the tyranno-Christian front. In fact, it is just barely possible that, like political parties and corrupt lobbyists, tyranno-Christianity will vanish and democrato-Christianity, with its tendency to follow the teachings of Jesus, will flourish—a result devoutly, and fervently, to be wished.
The media, who make a living from promoting and aggravating the inflammatory aspects of election campaigns and partisan battles, will find that their revenue from such spectacles will vanish. Their rancorous, “gotcha” political talk shows featuring officeholders, office seekers, political strategists, ideologues, and smug interlocutors will disappear. The people will no longer have to juggle their daily lives to cope with the events of the campaigns, no longer will they have to consider giving political contributions to this or that candidate, and they will no longer have to worry about taking a day off from work to vote. Employers will be happy because Election Day will become just another workday.
With tyranno-parties, tyranno-lobbyists, tyranno-Christianity, and corrupt elections becoming bad memories, the relationship between tyranni and democrati will cool down. Discussions will center on issues and facts, not on vile personal attacks and unsubstantiated hypotheses. Each proposed legislative act will be subjected to factual analysis. Emotional appeals can still be made, but they must have a factual basis. It is one thing to accuse a group of citizens of being immoral, or accuse health insurance companies and HMO’s of being driven by profits at the expense of patients, or to say that the titans of Wall Street are selfish and steal from the people, or claim that poor people “deserve” their fate, or that most mothers on food stamps drive Cadillacs, or that most young people are irredeemably irresponsible, but it is quite another thing to prove these claims. In the absence of partisan bickering, the people will require that claims stand up to factual analysis. If those lying snakes who—(fill in your favorite hated practice)—can’t be shown to truly be lying snakes who practice what you say they practice, then your hypothesis will be stamped, “Unsubstantiated,” or perhaps even “False.” It won’t take long for the people to get the hang of an open, public system built on reasoned, honest, factual deliberation, and America will be better for it.
2. Government of, by, and for the People
The Athenians depended on their navy, and at one time they had a large fleet of triremes, giant wooden ships with three levels of rowers. Most of the rowers came from the lower classes of free citizens. They were not slaves as Hollywood has depicted them. With a few exceptions, they were all free men, most of them were poor citizens with full political rights, and the rest were foreigners who chose to live in Athens and who had civil rights but not political rights—they could not go to the Assembly for example. Without these men, Athens could not defend itself. So, it was clear to all that it would not be wise to declare war without including these poor citizens in the decision. And the wealthy citizens paid for the maintenance of the warships. So, it was obvious that the wealthy, as well as the poor, had to be involved in decisions about war. It was clear that such broad-based decision-making must be used in all situations. It was in everyone’s interest for everyone to be equally involved. Thus Athens developed a government that did not use representatives in making transformative decisions. Everyone was involved. They truly had skin in the game.
Our government, on the other hand, and thanks to the Framers, relies on representatives to make transformative decisions, and there are many of these. Taxes, economic decisions, education decisions, energy decisions, war decisions, environmental decisions, etc. all have transformative effects, which can be tyranno-effects, and they are made without input from the people. For example, most Supreme Court decisions can be transformative, and they have no input from the people. The people, according to the Framers’ plan, are shut out. Their lives can be transformed without their consent or input.
It is not enough to say that a vote every two or four years for a slate of candidates is the same thing as voting on going to war, or voting on raising the minimum wage, or voting on whether to have a trans-continental pipeline from Canada to Texas, which crosses valuable, productive farmland, and crosses irreplaceable aquifers and freshwater supplies. Those who say that holding biennial elections proves that the government pays heed to the wishes of the electorate should be reminded that they had elections in the U.S.S.R. and yet the monstrous Josef Stalin always won; and the German elections of 1932-33[vi] led to the acquisition of dictatorial powers by Adolf Hitler—and more recently the radical group Hamas won several seats in parliamentary elections in Palestine in 2006, and the Muslim Brotherhood won 70% of the seats in the Egyptian parliament in 2012. Elections do not make a democracy. They are not essential to the operation of a democracy. They are dangerous to democracy. In fact, John Adams, in a 1796 letter to Thomas Jefferson, said: “…corruption in elections has heretofore destroyed all Elective Governments.”
We do not know our representatives, and we cannot know them. We have no idea how they will vote on a particular issue that may arise years after Election Day—in fact, they don’t know themselves, and they won’t know until they are faced with the decision, and even then they probably will vote the way they are told to vote by the people who give them money. It is only right and wise for such decisions to be made by all the people.
So the Athenians understood the difference between administrative and transformative power. They knew that administrative power could be delegated, and that transformative power could not; which leads us to the point that the Framers did not understand. They feared the poor because they believed that the poor were envious of the rich and would take their wealth if they had the power to do so. Such an act, if it should occur, would be doubly transformative. The poor would get money, and the rich would lose money. But the Framers’ error lay in their misunderstanding of economic classes. They thought that the poor people would be envious of the rich and would take their property.
The democracy of ancient Athens gave each rich citizen and each poor citizen the same political power, the same political voice, and the poor never stole from the rich by abusing their majority. The Framers were wrong about economic classes. Being poor, or rich, does not make one more likely to take advantage of others, but being a tyrannus does—rich or poor, it does not matter, tyranni are as tyranni do.
Poor people are not monsters. Some may be, but not most. Rich people are not monsters. Some may be, but not most. So, by the monster measure, the rich and the poor are the same. But there are important differences. Poor people want to transform their lives for the better. Rich people do not want to transform their lives. They want to maintain the status quo, or become even richer if they can. But they are conditioned, because of their wealth, to want to freeze things in place. They are against change, or uncertainty, or risking their own money. They want a sure thing. Who can blame them?
The poor feel the same way. They also want a certain future, but they are in a different place. They have to take risks; they have to make changes if they want to become rich. They know that a violent eruption that would send them into rich neighborhoods, where they would take the jewels and gold of the rich, (and then burn what they could not take away in their arms or their ox-carts), would not be a good thing. Putting aside the harm that they would do to their fellow humans, even the poor know that such a process is not sustainable. But I know that for some rich people, from personal communication with a few of them, such nightmares are often on their minds. But they, like Madison, misunderstand. The poor don’t care how much money the rich make—in fact the poor are glad to know that if they do the right things, if they prepare themselves, if they work hard, and if they are only a little lucky, they can become rich, too. But the poor do care how the rich make their money, and they do care if the rich are paying their fair share of taxes. Beyond that, the poor wish them well. As Robert Browning told us, “a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”[vii]
So, poor people, especially children, look for another way to transform their lives. They don’t claim that they should be given the gold and jewels of the rich. That is not what is meant by “all men are created equal.” They, the poor, just want a fair chance, an equal shot at success. That is what is meant by “all men are created equal.” The poor want equality of opportunity. They want a fair chance to go as far as their efforts and talents can take them. Raping and pillaging just won’t do. They want a system that is fair, that minimizes risk, and that gives them a fair chance to build a better life, as they each define it, for themselves and their loved ones. If they come to believe that such a system is impossible ever to achieve then they will do their best to make their way in the world, and they will do so fairly.
But if they come to believe that such a system could exist, but does not exist because of the machinations of the tyranno-rich, then they might take action. This is the nightmare that the tyranno-rich should fear. Unfairness breeds resentment, and disrespect, piled on top of resentment, breeds anger, and anger breeds action. It is only natural. Right now, it is self-evident that a fair system, which would serve the interests of the rich as well as the poor, could exist, but because of the machinations of the tyranno-rich, it does not exist.
Someone, rich or poor, has to take the next step. Rich democrati and poor democrati will tend to stand aside and watch what happens. They won’t take the next step. But poor tyranni and rich tyranni are aggressive and at odds with each other. Maybe one of them will take the next step. At the present moment, the tyranno-rich have so much power that they probably can defeat any actions taken by the tyranno-poor. The only way for change to take place, the only way for us to restore a sense of fairness and equality to our society, is for the democrato-rich, the democrato-poor, and the tyranno-poor to consciously, deliberately join their hands, hearts, and brains, and reinvigorate the American Way.
Poor, Ambitious Tyranni Believe in Fairness
Well, those last few paragraphs were fun. I got to use “raping and pillaging,” “ox-carts,” “nightmare,” “fear” and “next step.” Sort of dramatic wasn’t it? But things are not quite so dire. If the poor take action alone, and they can because they have the votes, they won’t take the gold and jewels of the rich, but they will change the system for the better. But it would be best if we the people, the rich and the poor, could solve this problem together, and it will be easier than one might think. Most of the impolite language that comes from the two classes really comes from the tyranni in each. Democrati, rich or poor, don’t make threats, they make peace, and peace makes progress.
Tyranni pursue power and money. They are very aggressive and therefore they will gain power and money in proportions greater than they exist in the total population. Thus many of the rich are tyranni, but so are many of the poor. But again, the rich tyranni and the poor tyranni are in different places. The rich tyranni will be very fierce in protecting their wealth. In fact they are the most aggressive when trying to increase it even after they have reached the point of diminishing returns—then they seek government guarantees. But in their aggressiveness they will take advantage of others, rich and poor, and from that come unfairness and disrespect, which breed resentment and ultimately lead to anger. Rich tyranni tend to punish the poor for crimes they have not committed.
But poor, ambitious tyranni are fierce defenders of fairness and of mutual respect. But how can this be so? Because poor tyranni, who want money and power, realize that in order to reach those twin goals they must live in a fair system. They may want to manipulate that system to their advantage, but they want it to remain fair. They know that democrati, rich and poor, will be fair, and thus can be manipulated, and they know that democrati can be called upon to defend against rich tyranni who want to make the system unfair. Poor, ambitious tyranni are among the fiercest defenders of freedom and fairness. They know that a free and fair system gives them the best chance of success. But when they reach their goals they will be just like all the other rich tyranni—they will want to change the system so that it works heavily in their favor—evolution by natural selection is always on the job[viii]. And that is where we are today. There are many rich tyranni and they control our national and state governments, and they have tilted the playing field. They have changed the rules in their favor. Like so many tyranni before them, they have gone too far.
So, the poor do not want to take the gold and jewels of the rich, but they do want to reduce the power of the rich so that every citizen has the same amount of transformative power. The rich are welcome to keep their fairly-won riches, but they are not welcome to abuse others. Fair is fair. We should all have the same political power, and that means that the people (rich and poor) will retain all transformative power and they, like the Athenians, will assign administrative power by means of random selection. Remember, we have relied on an unfair system for more than two centuries and it has not worked very well. We should have done much better.
The Athenians understood that all of their citizens would act in their own interest and they knew that their self-interest included taking actions that preserved the nation, the culture, and the people. They were not afraid, in general, to give everyone a voice. Giving everyone a voice is government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
As a favored idea, rule by the people is not new to us Americans. Abraham Lincoln made it famous when, at Gettysburg, he closed his address by urging his audience to carry on the work of the “brave men, living and dead, who struggled here” so that “government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Many writers over the years have noticed the similarities between his remarks and the funeral oration delivered by Pericles of Athens in another memorial service long before. Some have wondered if Lincoln was conscious of these similarities, and if he was familiar with Pericles’ speech. Maybe, maybe not—history rhymes after all. But nearly a decade before Gettysburg, Lincoln, perhaps unwittingly, echoed the key idea of Athenian democracy, and so far as I know, he had no reason to think it was the very thing that the Athenians had perfected, and then the world had forgotten. He was in Peoria, Illinois, in 1854, and he was talking about slavery and self-government, but he was really talking about skin, the color of one’s skin, and two different games that were being played (emphasis added):
I have quoted so much at this time merely to show that according to our ancient faith the just powers of governments are derived from the consent of the governed. Now the relation of slave and master is pro tanto [as far as it goes] a total violation of this principle. The master not only governs the slave without his consent, but he governs him by a set of rules altogether different from those which he prescribes for himself. Allow all the governed an equal voice in the government, and that, and that only, is self-government.[ix]
I take his words to mean that in order to be free we each must have the power to act freely, we each must have the power to pursue happiness, we each must have a voice and it must be heard. The only way to protect freedom is to give each person the power to determine the rules by which he lives. But that power (transformative power) must be equal for all persons. Elitists don’t see it that way. They know best. They will tell others how to live their lives. Elitism of this kind is tyranno in nature, and in the extreme form it becomes chattel-slavery. We have not returned to such awful times, but we are headed toward debt-slavery.
Another thinker, of a very different sort, also talked about skin in the game. His attitude is reflective of many of the rich tyranni who control our government. I am speaking of Representative Steve King of Iowa. He was commenting in a House Judiciary Committee meeting in early October of 2011. He said that 47% of Americans do not pay taxes, and yet they vote, and when they do vote, they vote for more and more government benefits. King said:
As I apply this thing back and I think of American history, there was a time in American history when you had to be a male property owner in order to vote. The reason for that was, because they wanted the people who voted—that set the public policy, which decided on the taxes and the spending—to have some skin in the game.
Lincoln was talking about how slaves, because of the color of their skin, were in a different game than whites. Lincoln said that our democracy should give every citizen an equal voice. But King was proposing that some Americans, those who don’t earn enough to pay income taxes, should be required to play a different game. King was proposing that those poor Americans should give up their voice, weak as it is, and that they should lose their right to vote.
King’s reprehensible remarks, and others that he has made, show clearly that he is a tyrannus. They also show that he doesn’t understand what life is like.
Poor people, who own no property, but who are human beings nevertheless, who have lives and families, are totally invested in the game. Their “skin” in the game consists of devoting their total energy to playing a game that they did not design, that they had no say in designing, and which is stacked against them. The game favors the rich. In addition to investing all of their human toil, the poor are betting their future and the future of their children. They are betting everything they have, everything they can borrow, everything they will ever have, and everything that they can ever borrow. They are all in it, all the way. They constantly worry about their children’s needs. So they are deeply invested in the game—unlike Steve King, they have skin in the game.
Rich people do not have skin in the game, they have removed their skin from the game by making enough money so that they are immune to the risks of the game, and they therefore have a great advantage over the poor. The tyranno-rich want to sit on their lead while they keep the poor in their place. Because the tyranno-rich have been able to use the power of the government to protect their position, they are winning. They aren’t worried about their children’s needs; they have more than enough money to take care of them. They are not in fear of losing their jobs, or their homes, or their health because someone like Steve King decides, along with others of his variety, to pass an onerous bill that punishes the poor. King has a well-paying (government) job (courtesy of the people, including the poor) and he probably feels very secure in his safe district. So he is not in the same game as poor people. He is just a rich tyrannus who wants to punish the poor for being poor. How dare they vote!
Apparently King’s next step is to pass a law that will allow only property owners to vote. Perhaps our next step should be to truly establish government of the people, by the people, and for the people. By doing that we will be able to do what George Washington said we have a right to do. The power, he said, is always with the people. He said that we have the power, and the right, to remove from any office any public officials who displease us. Right now, according to public opinion polls, there are many such representatives serving in the House and Senate. But we just did that very thing in 2010 and in 2014. We kicked out a lot of Democrats and replaced them with Republicans and Tea Party representatives. But we the people are still displeased. Heads, rich people win. Tails, poor people lose.
Our system of government, controlled as it is by factions, gives the great majority of our citizens the freedom to pursue happiness within the rules that are dictated by the plutocrats (such as Steve King), but it does not give them the power to decide what the rules should be. The people are excluded, deliberately, from their government (just as the slaves were when Lincoln spoke about them in 1854). All Americans must have an equal voice in our government in order to establish an overarching culture that will connect the diverse cultures of today—we must become bicultural. We each must support the common national culture just as we support our individual ancestral culture. The people have to give their consent to the general system of government and they must also give their consent to the specific laws that are used to govern.
Thus, the Athenians had something that the Framers failed to provide. The Athenians, through their government by the people, had a mechanism for defining the common good. They redefined it, they updated it, every time the Assembly met, which was about forty times a year. The people met, debated, voted, and agreed on actions that, taken together, defined the common good, and they were able to enact policies that worked toward making the common good a reality. The Framers claimed that their system could define the common good, but they gave us no mechanism for actually doing it. They claimed that “enlightened statesmen” would somehow, magically, be elected as our representatives. Whenever I think about this fact, I can only shake my head in disbelief. What could they have been thinking?
So, the Athenians’ government by the people enabled them to be guided by the common good. Their problem was a little simpler than ours today, because they had fewer internal cultures to contend with, but the citizens of ancient Athens had a voice and it was heard. When they met in the Assembly, the moderator would ask, “Who wishes to address the Assembly?” Any citizen present could rise, speak, and be heard. If his ideas were good enough, and if they were presented well enough, and if they garnered enough support, that citizen could command his national government to, “Stop that, and stop it now!” or “Do this, and do it this way!” Try that in America today. The Athenians gave their consent to the system of government and they gave their consent to the specific laws that were used to govern. In fact, they proposed, approved, and carried out those laws. They had the first, and the only, government of the people, by the people, and for the people. This is the most important idea of all the superior ideas from ancient Athens. We are not there yet, but we don’t have far to go. There is nothing to fear. The nation will be in good hands. High intelligence, good ideas, moral conduct, fairness, and hard work are found in all parts of our society.
[i] George Washington, writing about the Constitution in a letter to his nephew and heir, Bushrod Washington, November 9, 1787. An internet copy of the letter can be found at: http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/documents/constitution/1787/washington.html
[ii] Hillary Clinton won 2.9 million more votes than Donald Trump. In a democracy, the majority vote wins, but not so in a republic.
[iii] As I write this sentence I am 77 years old. I am an old man, and I have learned at least one thing about aging: after age 20 some people my age have 57 years of useful experience, but others of my age have one year of experience repeated 57 times. Big difference, all the difference in the world. In our current government there are many examples of those who parlay very limited experience, even no experience, into a career that outlasts their ability to contribute to the common good.
[iv] Birthplace of President Dwight David Eisenhower
[v] Birthplace of President Harry S. Truman
[vi] The political events in Germany in 1932-33 were chaotic. Hitler’s Nazi Party won a plurality of the seats in the Reichstag (parliament) in July of 1932, with the Communist Party in second place. In the November elections the Communists gained ground on the Nazis. Fearing a Communist takeover, President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler to the office of Chancellor on January 30, 1933. On March 5, 1933 more elections were held and the Nazis again held a plurality of the seats in the Reichstag. Hitler maneuvered smaller parties into helping him pass the Enabling Act on March 23, 1933. This act was in effect an amendment to the Weimar Constitution, and gave Hitler the power to enact laws without the Reichstag—Hitler was then the dictator of Germany and no more elections were held in that nation until 1949.
[vii] Robert Browning, Andrea del Sarto, 1855
[viii] The following words from a song found in Finian’s Rainbow show that this phenomenon has been around for a long time:
When the idle poor
Become the idle rich
You'll never know
Just who is who
Or who is which
Read more at http://www.songlyrics.com/finian-s-rainbow/when-the-idle-poor-become-the-idle-rich-lyrics/#ovGgE7yZ1cZi8P26.99
[ix] Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln, p 631, vol. 1