Of Democracy U.S. and Periclean

GaryCGibson - 12:57pm Apr 25, 2005 EDT (#23 of 25)"By faith we understand that the worlds have been framed by the word of God, so that what is seen hath not been made out of things which appear."-Hebrews 11:3

The late historian Will Durant wrote an interesting book named “Heroes of History’ at about age 94 that was published in 2001. The many sketches of individuals and their affect on various time periods is good reading. ‘The Road to Pericles’ and ‘The Golden Age of Athens’ brought out some points that one might consider useful to the management of national (U.S.) political alterity today. Yet before I mention that a bit more, a brief summary of aspects of interactive dynamics between the Republican and Democratic Parties at the national leadership level since 1992.

Democratic leaders first seem to have an attitude toward the Presidency such as that they need not be outspoken during the campaign for the office articulating clear and plain platforms and planks that would better the nation in real time. Instead the Democratic contenders seem to act as if they need merely be engineers of a locomotive that they can operate as they choose if elected. Their campaign rhetoric tends to be more bureaucratic and vague or even generic. It is amazing how far the lack of national democratic leadership goes even between elections. They could not talk meaningfully about economic, border control, alternative energy and transport systems and such if they wanted to it seems. Then some such as Senator Kennedy and Biden run toward falsehood and error in their analysis of selected political ontologies. Senator Biden is an egoist, while Senator Kennedy is atop a pile of old money that tries to comprehend what might be in the nation’s interests rather inaccurately. The famous feminine troika of Boxer, Feinstein and Clinton are not outspoken and plain either; they too would like to be in the engine compartment rather than then caboose however.

The Republican Party understands that democratic trend toward over-reliance on the federal government as the primary political object as a Democratic Party policy characteristic. They use it to their advantage. The Democrats may labor while in office for years to reduce national debt and perhaps make executive change that benefit their special interests, and of course put much effort into innovating social legislation into new federalist forms unsuccessfully.

What the Democrats build up in budget surpluses the Republicans can spend in a year or two and pile on more federal debt to break the back of what they consider as trends toward socialism and economic stagnation. They can also undo environmental legislation easily that requires years of expensive remediation later. Republicans can legislatively overturn the Democratic socialist measures that were invested in the federal government, and claim a return to privatization while dumping debt on taxpayers while the wealth is transferred to special military industrial trans-national corporations.

Democrats make a fundamental political error of failing to be outspoken in public policy planning with concrete and actualizable plans, instead emphasizing in bureaucratic vagueness retrospective attacks on hypothetical international policy courses, domination of what were classically considered ethically wrong planks that even were described as immoral. They want to be the engineers of the locomotive, even as Republicans seek to stop funding for AMTRAK.

Democrats should return to sound economic policy and planning that emphasizes private sector support. Instead of seeking to foist a vast left-wing socialist medical bureaucracy on the U.S.A. Democrats could seek to support low-cost public health screening and survey imaging and chemical analysis technology that would let people screen their own health for a few dollars. There is also a way to set up a worker’s comp like referral program that would let physicians treat patients for free in exchange for federal liability/malpractice insurance coverage. Once physicians got a hold of this program, congress would be unlikely to be able to overturn it. Each patient treated would be screened and given a rating that physicians could use as a standard value-unit for malpractice insurance coverage value.

Democrats should return to sound economic policy and planning that emphasizes private sector support. Instead of seeking to foist a vast left-wing socialist medical bureaucracy on the U.S.A. Democrats could seek to support low-cost public health screening and survey imaging and chemical analysis technology that would let people screen their own health for a few dollars. There is also a way to set up a worker’s comp like referral program that would let physicians treat patients for free in exchange for federal liability/malpractice insurance coverage. Once physicians got a hold of this program, congress would be unlikely to be able to overturn it. Each patient treated would be screened and given a rating value for the quantity of coverage such as worker’s comp rates injuries and compensation levels. Private sector medical coverage would continue and Medicare’s burden would be reduced coefficiently. Medicare would continue to exist and be modified I would suppose with the regular legislative tinkering.

In Athens a citizen named Solon was given responsibility for finding ways to bridge the gap between rich and poor that threatened to bring the nation into civil war. Solon and Pericles each believed that public indifference or aloofness from the political process was one of the main dangers to democracy. That problem is presently effect the overly foreign and trans-nationally lobbied U.S. Congress and Presidency. The interests of trans-national corporations have risen to dominate U.S. economic development.

Solon rectified the Athenian tax code with a flat tax for four different economic classes: The first class paid 12 percent, the second class 10 percent, the third class 5 percent and the fourth class nothing. That was a good policy. If implemented in the U.S.A. today without deductions it might improve things, if the U.S. Government ever paid off the national debt and ran a surplus it might give rebates. At least the fourth class citizens would be spared from filing an annual tax form, and would instead need only to file a statement that they did not have gross earnings in excess of the fourth class/third class boundary amount. IRS workers would have fewer papers to process.

Propertied citizens in the reformed Athenian Government that Cleisthenes continued to form in 501 BC, were required to serve for a year after reaching age 30 on the 501 Council. The 501 Council was the highest political authority. If citizens were compelled to make political decisions they would not be aloof about them. In the U.S.A. Today I would suggest that each year one million citizens might be selected at random to vote on perhaps 100 Congressional legislative measures after their passage and before the President receives them to sign as a referendum to determine what the public really thinks, if only they new, about the work of the Congress. The Congress could voluntarily establish the policy and if the referendum vetoes the bill Congress could work on another one or another version. Each bill would be subject to just one referendum. Citizens would participate more closely in their democracy that is becoming overly outsourced to rich foreign and trans-national corporations.***If Democrats in the White House invested more structure in the private sector and in making public infrastructure changes that cannot be immediately unraveled or closed down by incoming Republicans their policies would have a more salutary and cost effective effect I should think.

Taking an alternative energy and transport paradigm for example. In the first term a Democratic administration could place power lines in the interstates of 7 southwest states intended to allow electric power to directly be drawn by electric vehicles. A vast infrastructure of independent power supply and sales to the interstate grid would probably develop with air generators, solar voltaics and fuel cells becoming sold from home producers to the grid. Air generators in the Rocky Mountains could provide wind generated electricity to wind-poor states burning toxic gas. Electric autos might be able to reduce the 40 to 50,000 annual fatalities caused by fossil fueled vehicles because of their sensitivity to chip controlling coordination in traffic.

Democrats will not be able to make sound public policy implementations that will last longer than a snowball in Hades without renewing the national infrastricture and controlling illegal immighration into the U.S.A. Trans-nationalists seem to have learned how to manipulate and subdue the Democratic/Federal spending cycles rather well. Personally I am not an optimist at present on the prospects for a return to Democratic effectivness at the national level. They are bought off to easily in too many ways traiding there inheritance for a mess of pottage ethically speaking.

The homosexual initiatives in Massachusets probably sapped Senator Kerry's election chances because of that State's ethical reputation amidst many heterosexual voters. Democrats musn't let themselves be shut out further from the highest office because of a mistaken notion of what liberalism is.At Leuctra in 371 BC a Theban army and dedicated 300 homos defeated a Spartan Army to end Sparta's dominance of Greece. Evidently homos can fight effectively as special units. The Democrats should address that issue realistically today instead of letting it continue as a stumbling block.

The don't ask don't tell policy works; when that policy isn't effective and homos demand open enlistment perhaps it could work if they are in segregated military units as are men and women today. Soldiers don't want to have to worry about being targets of unusual sexual interests as well as the enemy.***Men and women marry to share genes in progeny as well as to protect the rights of individuals joined together. They always have a biological bond with their children. Inn homocouples only one parent can share genes.

Of course the parameters of marriage and many mass institutions aren't perfect, but are generalities. Yet as homo's seek to camoflage their nature by appropriating heterosexual institutions, they damage and harm those institutions. Women are not men and vice versa; a nerw scientific American article has a report on some of the physiological differences. Two of the same sex do not have the same sexual and social relations as two of different sexes...really.

Homos can arrange private and standardized contracts to create a communal property situation or a partnership that divides possessions in a fair split upon end of contract. It does not require an assault upon marriage for civil legal arrangements to create contracts. Insurers can also offer homocouple policies without federal coercion.

Even the other main ethical issue vexing Democratic electiblity-abortion...may need to be outsourced in some way, perhaps with a Christian recognition that individuals are more accountable for their own relationship to Jesus Christ than for what pagan fellow citizens do to terminate pregnancies. The unborn certainly should have legal rights to exist, but in the meantime the judiciary cannot substitue for a paucity of legislative creativity, and abortion shouldn't be the issue that prevents a reformation of national energy, transport and financial infrastructure.

Fossil fuel sales to China will increase because it fuels transnational business growth and profits in China while levering drilling in ANWR, gutting of environmental laws and increases profits from a shortened national feul supply. Alt. Energy infrastructure reform is needed.

Posted on Monday 25 of April, 2005 [17:18:44 UTC]