democracy
You are viewing stuff tagged with democracy.
Democracy
You are viewing stuff tagged with democracy.
Lawrence Lessig at The New York Review of Books, Why the US Is a Failed Democratic State:
Because the Supreme Court has declared that partisan gerrymandering is beyond the ken of our Constitution, states have radically manipulated legislative districts.
I sent poor Mykala a 1,361 word screed, generously quoting Linda Greenhouse, about why the Supreme Court is broken for the foreseeable future. Before I paste in parts of that here, consider this:
New York Times public editor Daniel Okrent said that he has never received a single complaint of bias in Greenhouse’s coverage.
David Remnick at the New Yorker, of course:
Once the Capitol was cleared, the solemn assurances that “this is not who we are” began. The attempt at self-soothing after such a traumatic event is understandable, but it is delusional. Was Charlottesville not who we are? Did more than seventy million people not vote for the Inciter-in-Chief? Surely, these events are part of who we are, part of the American picture. To ignore those parts, those features of our national landscape, is to fail to confront them.
If you attempt to explain why you should vote to help others while exempting morality and selflessness (which can quickly veer into the tautological) from your argument, you’d be left with an argument from selfishness:
Why are you “owed” a police force, why are you owed a fire department, why are you owed clean water or electricity, why are you owed laws that protect your ideas through patents or copyrights, why are you owed anything you enjoy through a civil society that makes your life demonstrably better than a libertarian wet dream like Zimbabwe?
I’ll tell you why. Because as a civil society we’ve decided what’s a part of the commons, that which we can not individually afford but whose existence we recognize, serves us all. I have news for you: my life is better and more secure if you and your kids aren’t bankrupted by medical bills. My life is better if everyone has safe streets and food. My life is better when the next generation is well-educated to continue the prosperity of this great nation. No one is owed, but it is a gift we give to each other as citizens and the price we pay to enjoy the blessings of our forefathers. And it is the height of hubris to presume to take that gift of a civic society and act as if it never existed before you showed up.
Maira Kalman started a blog about “American democracy” in January at the New York Times. Intriguingly, it is an illustrated blog. Mykala and I both enjoyed her August entry: ‘I Lift My Lamp Beside the Golden Door’. A quote:
The more I have learned and grown as a world citizen and the more the seeds of a liberal arts education have germinated within my brain, the more I have realized the incredible gift of a democratic government that we have here in the United States. That’s not to say my ignorance of the election system isn’t shocking — in fact, today I read through the Wikipedia article about Super Tuesday to understand what, exactly, happens on this day:
This will be useful next election - Too bad I didn’t hear about this sooner - it looks like a good resource during election times.