Of Elections and Sports

It is early Fall.  That means that we are nearing the end of the regular season of baseball, and the New York Yankees are on course to make the playoffs and another run for the World Series title, number 28.  Their chances look good this year, if they can keep their players from injury and the bullpen resumes pitching up to its abilities.

Others are following football.  Already the Washington Redskins have gone from having a lock on getting into the Super Bowl, after winning their first game, to being nearly mathematically eliminated from the playoffs by losing their next two.  As they say in baseball, though with less justification in pro-football, it’s a long season.  And speaking of the Redskins, it has been said that you can tell that someone has been in Washington too long when he begins cheering for the Redskins.  Let that rest on your own taste and experience.

Basketball fans know that in just a few weeks, practice begins for college hoops.  The college basketball season will terminate several months later in the greatest sporting event that the United States has to offer, March Madness!  I don’t know when or whether the professional basketball season ever ends.  I suppose it does.

Somewhere someone is playing soccer, where some team is leading another by the insurmountable score of 1-0.  But I think that we may be in the only few weeks of the year when there are no hockey games—even as the NHL is haunted again by more labor-management strife.

At his school my son is running on a cross country team, the Trinity Tempest.  The motto of the team is not but should be, “Tempest Fugit.”  Instead, it seems to be something like, “Pass the weak, hurdle the dead.”  Nice so far as it goes.  Classical Latin would be better, it seems to me, but I am not a runner and have no say.

Yes, there is much sporting excitement and many sports in the Fall.  Elections, however, are not one of them.  Electing the leaders of our government, who will wield control over life and death, freedom and slavery, prosperity and poverty, is not a sport.  Self-government is one of the most serious activities of life for those who cherish their liberty.  Those who do not will eventually vote away their freedom, as we have seen in places like Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia in recent years, and before that in places like Germany of the 1930s.

Of course, you would never know that from the public discourse on television, radio, in newspapers and other media outlets.  Presidential, gubernatorial, and congressional races are treated as if they all were games, with little at stake other than whether your favorite team wins.  Issues are trivialized, if mentioned at all.  The trivializers have even assigned team colors, one side “Red” and another “Blue.”  The most important issue in the media after a debate is “who won?” rather than, “what did we learn about what a candidate believes and what he would do if elected?”  Points are awarded by press experts for style, poise, rhetoric, and gotcha lines.  Panels of talking heads award scores as if they were judges at a figure skating competition.

It is all more than beside the point.  It corrupts the process.  Rather than true debates, in which candidates have enough time to declare and explain their views and policies on important issues, media celebrities offer trick questions, to which the future President of the United States is given two, three, or sometimes even five minutes to respond as he or she fishes for a soundbite to make it into the 60-second news recap (most of which will again be focused on, “who won?”).  Based on this silly exercise, viewers are encouraged to text in (for a small fee) their vote—not for who would be the best office holder—but for who was the winner of the night’s contest.

We should expect and demand better.  Through modern revelation we have been given a set of standards.  You do not have to be a believer in revelation to recognize the wisdom of the counsel:

Wherefore, honest men and wise men should be sought for diligently, and good men and wise men ye should observe to uphold; otherwise, whatsoever is less than these cometh of evil.  (Doctrine and Covenants 98:10)

Our task as voters interested in preserving our rights and freedoms is too seek out diligently the honest, the good, and the wise.  Anything less is evil.  In an election, in a campaign, in a debate, I want to discover who is the honest, the good, and the wise, and I am little interest in style points. 

That takes careful and diligent effort, for among the honest, the good, and the wise, are the liars, the false, and the foolish intent on deceiving.  These latter like to hide in the noise of the sporting contest and often seek to divert attention to the things that little matter, the stray word, the high school prank.  We need to keep our focus on a diligent search for the honest, the good, and the wise.  With persistent effort, we can find them.

 

In self-government, we are the players.  The issue is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, decidedly not a game.  But if we follow these standards and apply them diligently, then in the end We the People will be the winners.

Of Democracies and Demagogues

The demagogue has ever been the bane of democracies.  By definition, democracies rest upon the choices of the people.  When wisdom guides, democracies prosper.  As history shows, wisdom does not always prevail, and it never does when demagogues do.  Since the demagogue seeks his own power by taking power from others, once the people give him their voice they will be hard-pressed to get their power back; the democracy deteriorates into dictatorship, invoked in the name but never the reality of the rights of the people.

Why would a free people yield their power to the tyranny of the demagogue?  It is not reasonable to place your own hands and feet in fetters.  In every successful democracy there is a balance between reason and emotion.  Rather than advise wisdom, demagogues appeal to the basest popular emotions to overcome reason.  American Founder, James Madison, drawing lessons from the best known democracy of history, the democracy of Athens, warned Americans of the danger:

      In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever characters composed, passion never fails to wrest the scepter from reason.  Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.

(James Madison, Federalist no. 55, as quoted in John Samples, “James Madison’s Vision of Liberty,” Cato Policy Report, Vol.XXIII No.2, March/April 2001, p.12)

Madison recognized that in groups fiery emotion can make for a more persuasive pitch than cooler reason can.  He recommended the Constitution as a defense against demagogues, a structure of fundamental limitations on government and against those who would seek to govern by preying upon the passions of the people.  The formula has worked and the Constitution has held—against many trials, including a Civil War—for more than 200 years. 

The typical demagogue is a forceful speaker who seeks power by stirring up the people, whom he sees as masses to be manipulated and managed rather than as a body politic of reasonable individuals.  It does not particularly matter which emotions are invoked against reason; the most successful demagogues draw upon a variety.  Perhaps the emotion most powerful to the ends of the demagogue is fear, but he will also use hatred, avarice, envy, sorrow, vanity, vengeance, vainglory, among others.  He will even try to invoke love, though love is hard to make compatible with the demagogue’s message of contention, but it can be used to garner sympathy and to get people to let down their guard against an appeal to baser emotions.

Are Americans and the American constitutional democracy perpetually proof against the demagoguery that has destroyed democracies before?  The Founders did not think so.  A popular watch phrase among them was, “eternal vigilance is the price we pay for liberty”.  They were referring more to internal dangers than dangers from foreign enemies.

How do we keep watch on the threshold of the 21^st Century?  Here are ten tests to help unmask the demagogue:

• He gives powerful, emotional speeches, as public speaking is one of his most powerful tools.  “Facts” will usually play a minor role in the speech, and when used will often either be half-truths or outright lies, sometimes very big lies with passionate appeal.
• As discussed, emotion rather than reason predominates in his arguments, with fear the most prevalent emotion.
• He conjures up apocalyptic dangers and manipulates crises (and creates them when none are readily available).  The sky seems to be always about to fall.
• Riding on the wave of crisis, he will offer sweeping “action plans” that would cede to him major powers and authorities and push aside sources of opposition.  “Forward” is the frequent cry shouted to drown out objections, “the debate is over.”  (In a real democracy, can the debate ever be “over”?)
• He dishonors the Constitution and violates it without regret; the Constitution and demagoguery are incompatible.  Neither can survive while the other prospers, to paraphrase J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter formula for her fictional demagogue.
• He accuses others of employing his own despicable tactics.  In order to create fog and camouflage, and blunt criticism of his own actions, the demagogue will often claim opponents are lying, fomenting contention, engaging in petty partisanship, and so on, all the while employing those tactics himself.  Note that the accusations will usually employ an appeal to sentiment.
• He points to enemies of the people, enemies that his plans will vanquish.  These enemies are usually chosen to evoke emotion, such as “big business” to foster fear, “the rich” to stir envy, race or ethnic divisions to feed hate.
• He calls for unity while proposing plans that divide the nation, opponents of his plans being cast as those who would seek to divide a nation that would be unified by agreeing with him.  Issues are chosen that find and feed emotional fissures in public opinion.  Most effective, the demagogue will propose to take something of value from a group in a minority and “share” it with the group whose favor he seeks, such as targeted taxes or confiscations to provide some popular benefit.
• Following on that point, he develops classes of supporters dependent upon what he promises to give them from the government, benefits that will need his continued care to be sustained.  That is what lies at the core of the difficulty in fixing problems with welfare, Medicare, and Social Security, and why the demagogues have a field day when anyone offers reasonable proposals to deal with these very real issues.
• He hates a free and independent press that raises objections of fact and evidence to challenge the emotional appeal, but he loves an obliging press that magnifies his message and drowns out dissident appeals to reason.

It is not hard to recognize demagogues among us today appealing for ascendancy.  Democracy in our day demands that we retain our freedom and that we do not yield.  More than our freedom is in the balance, but our freedom is in the balance.

Of Medicine Shows and Good Health

The nineteenth century offered a fertile field for the traveling salesman. As Americans spread across the continent, retailers stretched to keep up with them, and in many cases that was most efficiently done by peddling. Services and goods of all kinds were offered on the streets and in town squares by men just off the last train.

Most notorious of all of these salesmen was the one peddling the miracle cures, the snake oil salesman, the man with the medicine show. While for the most part the traveling salesman actually had a product with genuine utility (whether it was brushes, tools, or buttons), the wares of the medicine merchant rarely worked as advertised and often harmed the very people conned into buying. Frequently, the miracle potion was laced with opium, cocaine, or some other drug that gave a temporary euphoria while providing no cure. Dangerously, the magic elixir could lead to addiction.

Since these medicine showmen were unknown to their customers they had the tough task of gaining the interest and trust of their audience. They did their best to look good and sound good and entertain the crowd. Most of all, they needed to convince people that they had a problem, a big problem, a problem for which, luckily for the people of the town, the salesmen just happened to have the solution. The facts did not matter; assertions and promises were taken for facts. The trick was to get people worked up and then clinch the sale before the customers had time to give a second thought to what they were doing or a chance to look into the details. Bring phony testimonials onto the stage, but do not let potential customers talk with real people who had been “helped” before in this or some other town.

The medicine show seems back in style today, employing all of the advances of modern communications technology to play to an entire nation. Barack Obama, sounding good and looking good and giving a good performance, remains surprisingly unknown beyond his shallow stardom. With the help of a legion of shills, he is trying to overcome the thin trust he has with Americans and convince them that they are sick and getting much sicker. He tells the people that their healthcare system is broken, and his shills repeat the line in the media. He promises that the government—which has notoriously abused patients trapped in existing government-run healthcare programs like Medicare, military healthcare, and veterans health programs—can do better than the private system that most people choose and like. And he claims that the price is right, that this government healthcare will be better for less, that the new nationwide government programs will save money even by spending more.

In the crowd of every medicine show there is bound to be someone with the nerve to holler, “Quack!” The salesman will desperately try to divert the audience, urging listeners to pay no attention to the nay-sayers. If that does not work, then the salesman will try to get the crowd to drown out the contrary voices and start the medicine bottles moving. Congress has been incessantly urged by the White House to pass the new government program right away, first by August, and at least before the end of the year, because, well just because. The debate is over, we are told; it is now time to vote. The plan fans who do not want to debate anymore are eager to silence the critics who point to the obvious flaws, who ask how government’s failures with current healthcare programs qualify it to take on more, how spending trillions of dollars extra will reduce costs, how cutting half a trillion dollars from Medicare will not harm services. Do not slow down and think about what we are doing. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, the great and powerful Oz has spoken.

In the 1800s, the medicine shows did their harm, but most people were not deceived. When the quacks were not chased out of town, their audiences at last just turned away.

Of Signs and Deception

A well-known principle of propaganda is that if you are going to tell a lie, the bigger the lie the more believable it will be. Most people are so trusting that they do not want to believe in the enormity of a big lie. They do not want to believe that someone can intentionally say something appallingly false. Rather than disbelieve the liar, they will want to disbelieve the person who exposes the lie.

One of the biggest of lies is asserting something to be exactly the opposite of what it is. Such is the warmonger who claims to be the leading pacifist, the thief who claims to be the victim of theft—and accuses the real victim of being the criminal—or the bigoted radical who accuses opponents of intolerance.

In recent travels on the streets, roads, and highways I notice at this time of the year the beautiful Fall foliage—and the many political campaign signs. While for some there might be a distaste for seeing these, I feel to rejoice in the signs as evidence of a vigorous system of subjecting our political leaders to public vote.

Having said that, I do draw the line at the steady growth of the mega-yard and curb signs, the five-foot by eight-foot broadsides. So, already inclined to dislike such construction-size boards, I have been particularly disturbed to see what appears to be a planned series of Obama-Biden signs advocating policies that these two Washington insiders have long worked hard to oppose.

I have noticed three in this series. There may be others. The ones that I have seen show the names of the two candidates, followed by a motto reading something like, “Better Schools,” “Lower Taxes,” and “Energy Independence.”

If facts matter, and I believe that they still do (even if they are optional in the mass media), such messages on the signs of these two politicians should be jarring to the honest in heart. The political record of Obama and Biden are unequivocal on these three issues. They both have strongly and consistently opposed school reform, supporting doing more of the same old stuff that has been steadily undermining the quality of government-run schools since the 1960s.

Both have been leading advocates for raising taxes and opposing tax cuts. Even in the current campaign they advocate new tax hikes. They try to disguise their intentions with the assertion that their proposals supposedly would reduce taxes on 95% of Americans (including the 40% who pay little or no income taxes), while raising them on the rest. Either they failed with the simple math, or they hope that voters cannot or will not be able to apply simple math, but you cannot get enough taxes out of 5% to pay for genuine tax cuts for 95%. In fact, their proposals are just another camouflage for the old tried and failed policies of tax and spend. Not only does that always put more power into the hands of the politicos who take and then redistribute, but it is a highly dangerous thing to do in the teeth of an economic downturn. Taxes fall on income and investment, and whatever you tax you get less of. Now is not the time for less income and investment.

And as for energy independence, both Obama and Biden support programs that will yield little and have yielded very little new energy—at very high expense in government subsidies—while staunchly opposing expanded use of the energy resources that are abundant in the United States, particularly oil, coal, and nuclear energy. Independence seems to me to increase reliance on your own resources. Obama and Biden are consistent supporters of policies that keep U.S. energy resources under lock and key.

This should not be surprising from two candidates who campaign on change while advocating the oldest political formula in the history of government, that government knows best, that decisions about spending, whether for health, education, or job creation, are best made by power brokers in the halls of Washington power centers, rather than by families in their homes. Calling that change may be the biggest lie of all.