Subsidiarity, Localism, and True Democracy

Copyright © 2022 Paul Fairchild.

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ISBN: 978-1-6632-4249-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-4248-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022918527

iUniverse rev. date:  10/04/2022

To Zelma Markwell, a wonderful teacher, guide, and inspiration.

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1 The Myth of American Democracy

Chapter 2 The True Meaning of Democracy

Chapter 3 The Consequences of the Lack of True Democracy

Chapter 4 A Challenge to the Status Quo

Chapter 5 Localism: The Current Challenge

Chapter 6 The Imperfection of True Democracy

Chapter 7 The Need for Democracy on All Levels of Government

Chapter 8 Rewarding Practitioners of True Democracy

Chapter 9 A World at Peace

Conclusion

INTRODUCTION

This book explores the relationships between localism, subsidiarity, and true democracy and their contributions to peace. It draws on the history of the United States and the interpretation of that history including public information intended to influence its citizens to support policies and practices aimed not at the common good but at the good of the wealthy and powerful. Awareness of their activities and its consequences is becoming better known. This book aims to advance that awareness and enhance it with knowledge of its ethical dimension by bringing into the discussion a topic unknown to most Americans, that of subsidiarity. A moral principle, it requires that higher levels of power and authority refrain from establishing policy for their included lower levels unless the lower levels are unable to do so.

Given the current struggle between those who would increase democratic participation in the country and those who would reduce it to influence the outcome of voting in their favor, it is timely and needed to strengthen our understanding of how to make government serve the common good.

Introducing subsidiarity into the book’s other topics will help readers balance the application of pragmatism and ethics in considering the subjects of the book, an ability we all need if we are to respect what the people of the US are capable of and desire in their social and political lives. Presenting it here and elsewhere will increase the number of people aware of it, concerned about its application, and working to make it a part of the future of democracy in the country.

I am motivated to apply my education in law and philosophy to be part of the movement underway to improve our and succeeding generations’ lives. May the movement grow and continue to the point that it becomes an example taken up in other countries needing the same improvements as ours.

CHAPTER 1

The Myth of American Democracy

The history of the United States tells of an area of North America settled by European immigrants and their descendants, mainly from England, who created colonies operated primarily for the economic benefit of their country of origin.

As subjects of the British Empire and living in a locus of conflict, the colonists’ growing desire for independence and self-government led to a revolution and the founding of a nation. This is the story we hear from childhood and throughout our lives about the origins of this country. The story stresses the part played by democracy in the thoughts of its founders and in the US Constitution they created.

The first three articles of that document confirm that truth. It describes a republic whose governing officials gained office by the vote of the people. They regularly faced competition with other candidates, elections being held every two years for members of the House of Representatives, every four years for a president and vice president, and every two years for a third of the members of the Senate, giving each a six-year term. That placed in the hands of citizens the power to determine who would lead and govern them from the national headquarters. As we are taught, it describes a democratic republic.

Yet there is a growing awareness that forces other than the will of the people play a more important role in determining our laws and policies. It is tempting to think we could simply identify the usurping forces and move the power from them back to the people, but that overlooks a more important problem we face. This book will show that the solution involves much more than a power shift and will require a major change in our understanding not only of the locus of political power in the country but also of flaws in its constitutional design.

We begin with correcting the story of America and the language used to tell that story. Political language hides the problem. Its use supports the assumption that the founders created a fully democratic state. As a result, the idea that America is such a democracy is almost universally accepted by its citizens. That acceptance needs to be challenged. I believe that Chalmers Johnson, the author of Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic¹ does challenge it and that there are other writers who do so but whose positions are overlooked.

The US is not a true democracy. How can we say that when we have elections regularly and a government whose leaders come from the elections? The move to elected leaders and away from monarchy occurred with the adoption of the Constitution. It set out the structure of a national government and its relation to the states. It provides rules for filling the offices of the presidency, the Senate, and the House of Representatives, and its amendments empower citizens to do so by voting. And yet those who claim that the word democracy fails to describe the US federal government have reason to do so.

As most American adults know, democracy comes from an ancient Greek word that describes the form of government of a city-state. It means rule by the people. It describes the form of government adopted in Athens, making the city-state an example to be followed just as its writings, arts, and architecture became models for other places and times. But a closer look at Athenian democracy merits attention if we are to understand why the application of the word there and in the United States has qualifications.

We should note that the Athenian form of democracy applied to a city-state. The American form of democracy applied from its beginning to the nation and covered the thirteen original states. Because of its smaller size, Athenians enjoyed direct democracy, the ability for each voter to have a voice and vote in political decision-making affecting them. The new US adopted a representative form of democracy, a form by which citizens elected others to represent them and who would, presumably, make decisions for them consistent with the good of the people and their wishes on particular political choices.

But not all citizens of Athens had political power. Only free males born there could vote. Women had no political power. Nor did slaves, who created much of the wealth the Athenians depended on. And even Aristotle, one of the most famous Greek philosophers, did not share political power in Athens despite his growing knowledge of politics since he had been born in Stagira in northern Greece. Even though he was Alexander the Great’s teacher in Macedonia, that position did not lead to his being accepted as a voting citizen of Athens.

The historically first adopter of the idea of democracy did not create its full reality in what it established. Nor did it continue to rule without interruption by autocracy. We should recognize that so radical a change from earlier forms of government would take time, experience, and experimental changes to develop into a stable reality. And Athens’s democracy was not stable. It ended with the Peloponnesian War, which left Athens crippled, and it did not rise elsewhere for a long time. Yet the idea and ideal of democracy lived on at least in the literature that survived the ages. And during the Enlightenment, it became a topic of further development. The authors who wrote about politics during that historically important period inspired others to take the form seriously and adopt it.

One of the most admired aspects of the American Revolution consists in its leaders taking the word of the Enlightenment writers and attempting to establish democracy as the form of government of the US. Having the example of ancient Greece and the desire to break away from England and its king, the founders of the new nation set out a plan with improvements over the previous attempt to create a stable form of government. And so far, the plan has worked. For over two hundred years, Americans have continued to elect their national, state, and local leadership with of course the exceptions of some appointive offices, the highest being the US Supreme Court. That it has continued for so long stands for many as proof of its merit.

Some other nations including those that chose a parliamentary form of democracy have done well. Theirs, like the Athenians’ and ours, are experiments. We should not expect that something as complicated as a national government could be designed and formed to be perfect on the first try. It involves too many functions and purposes for that expectation to be realistic. That is not to say that we are unable to improve it. The goal of this book is to identify improvements that deal with the real problems of the current expression of democracy in America.

More Americans are learning that at its founding, the US shared some of the flaws of the Greek democracy. Political power in the new republic was not shared by all its adult residents. Native Americans, slaves, women, and some indentured servants were denied the right to vote.

Amendments to the Constitution corrected those flaws over time. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in 1865, and the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870 gave former slaves the right to vote while prohibiting its denial based on race or color. The Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 gave women the right to vote. Extending the right to vote to all adult citizens furthered the degree to which the US could properly be called a democracy. But the legal right to vote, unless practiced and allowed, must end up in its neglect and remain a major flaw of any democracy.

We have moved away from rule by the people to a degree, and in a way, that has harmed us and threatens the existence of the nation and to show that its stability, while long by some standards, has been lost. Think of what that would