Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 4, 1993 TAG: 9309020316
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SCOTT LINDSTROM
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Have you ever noticed how few accolades self-government receives in the midst of a General Assembly session or during the last two weeks of presidential campaigns? Apparently the process, like an unattractive pen pal, is best appreciated from a distance. During this season we can savor the ennobling theory without the enervating reality.
Independence Day comes in July because the month is spared any democratic exercises. If some mischance forced the rescheduling of an election in the seventh month, the cynical voter manipulation of most campaigns would create such a discord with the holiday platitudes that the resulting din would drown out all but the most horrific fireworks explosion.
The problem with our method of democracy is not that we have too much in the form of elections or too much of honest discord and discussion. The problem is that we have too little.
The Founding Fathers, those plutocrats further deified every July 4, sought limited democracy. The greater the limitations placed on voting, the greater was their expansive vision of a self-serving dream.
Suffrage extended only to one race, one sex and one class. As new voters joined the white, male and propertied electorate, each addition was decried as the end of the common weal.
To assure an uncommon civic vitality and to make a future Independence Day the cause for more than powdered-wig pageants, we should make democracy a national commitment and give it a wholehearted trial.
Voting in the family, in the classroom, on the team, at the factory, and casting ballots for more candidates, more referenda and more voter initiatives will make participatory democracy as integral a part of our lives as choosing TV programs, but considerably more crucial.
The Founding Fathers sought to limit access to the franchise because they wanted those who had the greatest stake in any decision (the aristocrats themselves) to have the greatest leverage in an election. The same ancient principles might guide us as we seek the advent of the New Democracy.
Public education is the major undertaking for most levels of government, but those who have the greatest stake in education don't even have a vote. This ensures that most governments' primary enterprise seldom garners even secondary support. Those who will benefit can't vote, and those who seek to avoid education's cost do vote. The solution? Give the kids the vote.
Well, that might be a bit extreme. Still, the factors determining whether Joni computes into the year 2001 are disproportionately child-free. A better solution? Give the parent of each child the child's right to vote.
With universal recognition of interest may come universal respect and self-respect. The junior-high student whose vote will be cast for her will have a valid reason for knowing who best serves her interests. Her parent's vital concern for the child's future will assume a recognized value with the additional vote.
The ``greatest stake'' test for democratic purpose might be expanded to national defense. What if the decision to enter battle fell only to those who might die in war and to their mothers who gave them birth? And should they not have the major say, more so than the weapons merchants who will profit from the conflict regardless of any mother's grief?
Don't try to restrain my democratic zeal with your cautionary words. Try as you might, you'll be unable to top Alaska's Gov. Walter Hickel: ``If nature is not controlled, it might run wild!''
True, real democracy is inefficient. Autocratic control is simpler and more effectively accomplishes the goals of those already vested with advantage and power. But are we willing to exchange security and control for entropy and disinterest? Have any but those with illegitimate interests ever been injured when an expanded democracy ran wild?
July is a quiet time, campaigns fumbling, flowers drooping, lawns browning. Seems like a good time for a little excess, a great time to shed control and begin running wild. What could be a more appropriate commemoration of our first democratic revolution than the beginning of our second?
\ Scott Lindstrom, a teacher, lives in Bedford County.
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB