I have decided to introduce a new format for some blogs that I will publish today and in the future. It is rather an unusual idea for a blog site, although I have used it quite successfully in other forums. The new format will be in the form of an online debate. However, it will be a debate in the classic sense of a debate not in the form of the current style of U.S. political debates which, in my opinion, aren’t really debates at all. Those are designed for entertainment, and to promote advertising revenues for the organizers. The debate format I will use involves the statement of the issue to be debated – “This house believes that……”, followed by presentations for and against the motion. The blog is then open to my readers to vote for or against the motion, based on the quality of the presentations. Obviously, all of this has to be written – trying to do it verbally in a blog is just too complicated – so I will write the two presentations. In a verbal debate, there would be rebuttals to each presentation, but I will forgo that step, to start with at least, to keep the blog to a manageable size. It is an experiment, so we will see if it works and whether you, my audience, think it is a good idea. I will publish any comments you wish to make about the idea, and the debates themselves, going forward.
I am going to kick-off this format with the motion that “This house believes that democracy takes just too much effort to maintain”.
Presentation in support of the motion:
History tells us that the vast majority of citizens of any country don’t want the responsibility of participating in the processes that govern their lives. They are too busy trying to survive, protect their families, and have a good life as they define that concept. This is just as true in so-called civilized, advanced, countries as it is in countries where the citizens don’t actually have that choice anyway because of the regime they live under. This idea is easily supported by the abysmal voter turnout percentages when such turnouts are not required by law – the U.S. regularly records turnouts of way less than 50%, for example. In addition, the cost of staging elections, and the time involved in executing them, is enormous, and uses up significant proportions of a country’s budget; the last U.S. presidential election was estimated to have cost approximately US$5.5 billion. Just think how that much money could be used to benefit all citizens, and that’s just the money used up on presidential elections? Add to that, the money spent on all political elections annually, and the potential benefit to the country and its citizens would be enormous. Why waste that much money on “hot air” and promises that no politician ever keeps, anyway? And that’s just the money. Add to that the thousands of people-hours required to implement elections, hours that could be used productively in the community and the country, and it is easy to reach the conclusion that democracy takes just too much effort to maintain.
The first argument against holding elections is always posed as the question “what replaces it?” The answer that true believers in the traditional concept of democracy will give you is that, without citizen participation in elections, you will have an autocracy, or a flat dictatorship. That is certainly a possibility, but it is also certainly a possibility under a classic democratic election system, as the current direction of the U.S. shows.
There is a better way, or perhaps I should say, we could develop a better way. I suggest that the rules of the Roman Republic, before Julius Ceasar turned the system into a dictatorship (Emperorship) might be a good place to start. Annually-rotating bi-consuls would take away the possibility of individual personality cults and a senate of elders would give the system some long-term perspective, which is sadly missing from today’s reelection-driven decision-making – a newly-elected U.S. Congress person spends at least their first year, of a two-year term, trying to figure out the system and what they are supposed to do as someone in it. I’ve watched this happen first-hand. Their second year is spent campaigning for re-election They can’t possibly do anything useful in that timeframe.
I don’t have a complete answer, but I would submit that the current set-up of democracy is just too much trouble to maintain for the results it gives us. We can do better.
Presentation against the motion:
Democracy certainly takes a lot of work to maintain, but the alternatives severely increase the possibility of restricting individual freedoms, imposing designed class systems, whether defined by money or heredity, and the reduction of individual opportunity by groups or individuals over which the average citizens has no control. Winston Churchill famously said that “Democracy was the worst form of government ever invented…except for any other”. Democracy is not perfect, far from it, and it demands a level of citizen participation that probably the majority of citizens don’t want. Intellectually, it takes a higher level of electorate-education to maintain than all other systems, but the benefits far outweigh the costs both individually and collectively. The most important factor in maintaining and growing democracy is the education of the electorate, which is why all potential despots and dictators try to suppress it. With education comes an ability to look forward further than the end of your nose, and that ability is essential to understanding why democracy is so important for you and your family’s future in the coming generations. Again, yes it takes time, effort and money but the potential benefits, and the potential losses for not expending such resources, are enormous. Doing away with elections, as the first presentation suggests, opens us up to exploitation at a level that history shows us is all too real; the rise of Julius Caesar, Hitler and many other dictators, virtually all of whom arose out of some form of democracy that the citizens didn’t expend enough effort to maintain, shows the danger of not holding elections, regardless of their cost. I therefore urge you to vote against this motion, since, to support it, almost inevitably means a future of subservience and restrictions.
I would love to have your comments on this new format and would welcome suggestions for future debate motions.
