Building A Democracy

YOU NEVER KNOW what kind of American history will be taught at your local high school. It could be evangelical Christian American history, written and taught from a purely Christian point of view, it could be conservative history, or, it could be liberal progressive history, which, upon closer scrutiny, turns out to be the most accurate version. It all depends on what state you live in, whether you live in a conservative "red" state or a progressive "blue" state, and, of course, a lot depends upon the politics and religion of your local community. Surely there are certain things, certain facts, upon which all the various and sundry versions can and do agree. Surely, one of these is that the founders of the political system of the United States did not intend to found a democracy, and indeed did not, but rather, a representative republic. They, people like Madison and even to a certan extent Jefferson, among many others, wanted and designed a system in which the people in general, the general population, would be represented by more intelligent, better educated people; namely, wealthy white Christian land owning men. The "better sort" and the "lesser sort" as Madison eloquently put it. The lesser sort, the unwashed masses, would have some limited choice in selecting their representatives, but only a limited amount of choice; these decisions, ultimately, concerning the possession of actual political power, would remain forever in the hands of the wealthy powerful few. And so it remains for us today, where we live not in a true democracy, with real power in the hands of the people in general, but rather, in an oligarchy, a plutocracy, in which real power is possessed by the folks Gore Vidal used to call "our corporate masters". We must bear in mind that until rather recently the very word "democracy" had as much of a negative cannotation as a positivie one. In the eigtheenth and nineteenth centuries the term was associated with mob rule, with political chaos, governance by a huge unruly mob of poorly educated people incapable of governing themselves, let alone a huge nation state. Today we use the word "democracy" with admmiration and veneration; such was not always the case. As we all know all too well, the problem with democracy is that, particularly in a large country, it is unwieldy, messy, cumbersome, ineffecient, and, as we see so clearly today, vulnerable to corruption, especially with money. My father, an attorney, once told me that in his opinion the best form of government is a benevolent dictatorship. Maybe he was right. Even today, there are many among us who prefer forms of government other than democracy, even though in the United States, almost all Americans claim to prefer and cherish democracy. Clearly, many if not most Trump supporters want so strongly to install Trump as president in order to enact their own conservative political agendas that they are perfectly willing to do so undemocratically, even violently, with a violent insurrection. Diversity, Equality and Inclusion are important values with today's progressive community, but not so much the conservative community. Cultural conformity is a consrvative value, but only has limited value; a thriving, healthy human global culture must be diverse, that it not be stagnant. And it must evolve. Human equality (I prefer the word "equality" to "equity") in a comprehensive sense is a modern concept, as is inclusion. But whether these values, including democracy itself, will continue to seek and gain acceptance throughout the world as well as the United States is an ongoing question, still unanswered. Our task is to help answer it.