Adolf Hitler once said, “What good fortune for governments that the people do not think.” The implication is true for every tyranny throughout history. There’s a belief in the superiority of the state, a complete disdain for the people, and an assurance that self-government is a fantasy because people are incapable of using their own minds to engage their own will to act in their own best interest.
The great American experiment was something entirely different. It was a belief in humanity and an optimism that people, when given the chance to be great, will become it. Looking back at the history of this nation, I am left to wonder who in this argument is right. I know that sounds pessimistic and I’d like to consider myself an eternal believer in the good of my fellow human beings, but the patterns of history seem to reveal that people want to be ruled. Why else would we take the possibility of self-government, the first chance ever for it, and choose to manufacture a system of ruling elites?
I want you to take a minute and think of the person you most admire. It might be your gynecologist for his/her unfailing devotion to the care of the most vulnerable. It might be a farmer who you have seen work tirelessly for the good of family and community. It might be a mom who drives in your school carpool who volunteers every day to make local education better for your kids and hers. It could be your barber, grocer, or pastor. Now imagine what the world would be like if that person, the one who you love and admire, the one who understands your values and struggles, was your representative in Washington D.C.
This is what America was supposed to be. Local people, with real jobs, should be going off to represent their communities for a few short years. Then, when their turn is over, they are supposed to come home, return to their professions and friends while someone else takes on the burden of being your voice. Instead, we have created a group of career politicians who are so detached from what it means to be an American that they entrench themselves in corrupt business and twisted political deals in order to buy themselves a little more power, a few more years “representing” people who, in their minds, “do not think.”
Yesterday Mitt Romney, a senator representing Utah, voted against his party. In response, political pundit Laura Ingraham threatened to move to Utah and run against him. Both of these people are mucus-filled symptoms of the disease that is destroying our country. Romney was raised in Michigan and barely visited Utah before moving there because he knew it was his best chance to become a Senator. Whatever you think of his politics, he is not the representative the people of Utah deserve. He’s a politician who has never experienced the life that Utahans are fighting to preserve.
And Ms. Ingraham’s objection to him is clearly unrelated to the larger problem of our new kind of political oligarchy, because, rather than arguing that the people of Utah deserve a senator who is one of them, she suggests that she would be best equipped to represent a life she has never lived. The very idea allies itself with the philosophy that people are not capable of ruling themselves. According to these two, ordinary people need a group of entrenched political leeches for whom freedom doesn’t matter nearly as much as acquiescence to the swamp of lies, favors, and power-hungry rulers who devote their lives to showing that a representative is really a new king who doesn’t have any idea what you want. But that is okay, because he’s smarter than you anyway.
Personally, I’d much rather vote for my plumber.
Thursday, February 6, 2020
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