Despite my relentless criticism of the government, I do love my country. There is no other place on earth with as many opportunities, not to mention a ridiculous standard of living. As many politicians will remind you, this is because we have a democracy. While our wealth has been the product of many factors, the personal and economic freedoms stemming from democracy have provided the necessary environment. While some people claim he is a socialist, even Obama knows democratic free enterprise is the best thing around.
Yet democracy is just that: the best government around. Winston Churchill once said, “Democracy is the worst form of government besides all of the other ones that have been tried.”
Our founding fathers knew democracy had inherent flaws. The Federalist Papers were an ongoing debate on how to mend these flaws and yet retain as much freedom as possible. While our system has retained stability for centuries, it has been an onerous life. We are in a constant power struggle between two ruling parties who take multiple years to initiate laws or opposition.
Compared to private businesses, government requires a massive amount of time to take any action.
An example of how the government wastes our time and money was the subject of a recent editorial in The Maneater. Even when the state of Missouri voted to pass Proposition B (which would have been another manifestation of flaws), our legislative body immediately overturned the public mandate. Whether stopping the legislation was a good idea, those in favor were stripped of their voices. One of the very liberties promised to constituents was violated. On a more local level, The Maneater published an editorial condemning the city council’s alienation less than two weeks ago.
So if local democracy exhibits significant shortcomings, surely the federal government has even more? Well, that’s where you would be wrong. No, I’m just kidding. It sucks.
Not surprisingly, private infringement and weak representation has gotten worse every year. In my opinion, Obamacare is the pinnacle of this power creep. Some of us don’t want to pay for the failures of others to be healthy. If we as a nation would live healthier lives, we wouldn’t need to pay as much for pills or hospital services.
Democracy’s dogma is essentially the compromise of freedom. However, we have taken this to the extreme. In the process of legislating changing personal moralities throughout our history, we have redistricted liberties not necessary to our government’s homeostasis. Consequently, this has caused millions to have fewer rights and has caused bickering between factions.
I’ll give democracy its dues. The compromise is a good idea in theory, but the execution is strongly lacking. If we could streamline the way we make liberty tradeoffs and ensure the protection of harmless rights, we would become a happy and more prosperous nation. So who am I to say we should scrap democracy? Is there something better out there? Don’t worry baby birds; I’ll feed you (yes, a Tosh reference). However, I’ll leave it as a cliffhanger for next week’s column.
