Mob Rule in America Recently a Facebook friend used the term “mob rule” democracy in a friendly FB banter. I was set back momentarily when he used the term for it had been 30 years since I had seen that term applied to political environments. Although President Jefferson used it to defend the powerful group ruling the young United States, as did the French, it has not popularly been used in American discussions of politics since democracy is the primary social and political description of our form of politics. In fact, when used years later, after the Jeffersonian period, small political journals used it pejoratively and not seriously. Years later in debates with Soviet and Marxist scholars, I was confronted with this term again while they defended Marxist authoritarian rule. One Soviet student quoted George Sabine who said “The political world over, absolute governments which do not even do lip-service to the fiction of consent are more common than free governments,” and used this quote in defense of authoritarian Marxist rule in Nicaragua while claiming that “mob rule” in El Salvador and Peru would lead to societal ruin. Interestingly none of these Marxist writers and scholars quoted John Milton who posited “The power of kings and magistrates is nothing else, but what is only derivative, transferred and committed to them in trust from the people, to the common good of them all, in whom the power yet remains fundamentally, and cannot be taken from them, without a violation of their natural birthright.” These guys and gals might have forgiven Milton, a literary star, for his defense of liberty, but they could never stomach John Locke’s essay in which government “can have no right except as this is derived from the individual right of each man to protect himself and his property. The legislative and executive power used by government to protect property is nothing except the natural power of each man resigned into the hands of the community.” Plutocracies and Oligarchies are often guided by Marxist thinkers, something similar to the Cuban government of the past 50 years. For me to think of a government whose authority is derived from the people and expressed through a democratic process as being “mob rule,” as these scholars declared, was simply a myopic view that ignored history and reality. These exchanges between Marxist thinkers and myself were carried on during the latter years of the Cold War and were focused primarily on future forms of governments for El Salvador and Guatemala. As the decade came to an end, so did the Soviet money stream and democracy emerged as the preferred form of political governance for these countries. As applied to Central America, I had just never considered their emerging democracies as being “mob rule.” My Facebook friend’s use of “mob rule” sorta washed over me like an apocalypse of new thoughts. Since President Obama’s rise to the presidency, a continuous cacophony of disorderly disrespect for the office and the president has risen with disturbing frequency. Some pundits and state governors opined about the option of secession as a means to counterweigh the influence of this black Democrat president. Then after his successful second term campaign, the Republican House attempted many ways and means to deter his influence and success, even to the point of using tactics that limited democratic process of election. In an open political system, hard political actions are consistent with passionate party politics. Rough and tough political action is normal, in fact hard discussions are necessary for a democracy to succeed, the people’s voice has to be heard and then left up to the politicians to synthesize all the voices and govern. For democracy to succeed, some discussions need to be hard and intense so the very best of the American collective mind can rise to the top. Unfortunately, like children who have not learned how to play, the extreme right-wing sector of the Conservative wing of Congress, primarily the Tea Party, has held the mainstream Republican majority hostage to extremism where invectives and inane name-calling has produced little governance, much less the historical art of compromise and leadership. In the past four years our Congress has been one of the least productive in our history. The Republican House did not let hundreds of bills get to the floor fearing passage. And probably the Senate did the same. The results of these past four years and the lack of common courage and leadership has been the rise of vitriolic, venomous, and hateful language that has set sharp divisions between common citizens. Some claim that President Obama has caused division; others have claimed that Senator Cruz’s unwise and risky attempts to shut down the government brought divisions; some have claimed that the recent attempt by Republican governors to restrict voting rights and reduce the number of minorities who cast ballots as being divisive; and still others have claimed that recent civil disobedience and marches that focused on the deaths of unarmed black youths caused division. There may be elements of truths in all the accusations, but regardless of the intensity of recent actions, the sense of being on a ship without a rudder is devastating and destructive to our national social fabric. The unwillingness to compromise and work for incremental change in governance is causing tectonic shifts at all levels of society. With the Republican success of the mid-term elections, President Obama has sloughed off his passive leadership and taken on an aggressive stance that is challenging the Republican leadership. His Executive Order that paves the way to citizenship for working Hispanics with children who are American citizens has reaped a mountain of false claims of amnesty rather than a realistic action keeping families intact and together. Then this week’s actions that will lead to the lifting of the Cuban embargo has swiftly raised the ire of some vocal Republicans. Interestingly however, it appears that the large majority of Republican and Democratic citizens support the President’s actions. The vocal clamors emanating from the “Do Nothings” of Congress were raised again as President Obama’s forward actions outmaneuvered his critics. But the sounds arising from the rightist pundits, conspiracy oriented erags, and Tea Party activists are more than sour grapes, they again raise the ugly head of treasonous behavior all under the guise of strict constitutionalism. These reactions and rhetoric to Mr. Obama’s post election initiatives, the pre-election disregard for basic rights as provided by the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, and Republican angst over the attributes of the 17th Amendment all seem to point toward a disregard for democracy and a rising desire for an oligarchic authoritarian government. The extreme right of the Republican Party, like the 18th century French nobility, see the minority electorate as “mob rule” rather than democratic power of the people. The last four years of Republican resistance to the people’s choice of a president, the Conservative’s policies of transferring wealth from the poorer classes to the wealthy while denying food and healthcare for the poor and sick, the obvious disdain for minority voting rights, and the noticeable pro-business and anti-labor attitudes during times of job scarcity reveal an authoritarian and elitist construct of a theocratic and exclusive oligarchy that considers democracy “mob rule.” The bottom line is the Republican Tea Party is frightened by the African American and Hispanic electorate. They hold the key to the next general election with a super majority of their voters who will not vote Republican. Most of these voters are citizens who have little or no property, hold jobs with minimal salaries that deny adequate funds for education and healthcare for their children, have a high percentage of offspring, but will vote as a block against the party of “old white men.” The GOP and the Tea Party see the American electorate as a “mob” that wants to rule through the power of the democratic process.
Posted on: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 01:31:40 +0000
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