My previous diary was denounced as hilarious and naive and even stupid. I need to clarify a few things. First I was not trying to present an analysis of the War Powers Act: I was reacting only to the reports that the 60 day time period has passed, and nothing is being done except that the Republicans want to nullify it. Nor was i unaware that the President is and has been the dictator of foreign policy for the last 220 years or so, from the beginning. That he is and has been, however, does not make it right. The passivity of Congress, in particular the House in this regard, is to me a major problem, but again the House has accepted this status for over 200 years.
My basic contention is that the problem with the US government is that it is not sufficiently democratic. I spend a lot of time in my book discussing what I mean by this. The term democracy is used too much as an emotional term, without specific content. A democratic government is a government we like, and we all know what we mean by democratic, don't we?
To me this is insufficient for a useful discussion of the term, and governments claiming to be democratic. In my book I arrive at basically three parts to the meaning of the term. A government is democratic first if it is made up of a group of elected representatives of the people, and the elections are fair and frequent. The second part is that the representative group makes decisions by simple majority rule. The third part is that the representative group has effective control over the executive bureaucracy. As I understand it, the British, and more generally, parliamentary governments, have these three characteristics. The US government fails on two counts: it does not make decisions by simple majority rule, and Congress does not have effective control of the executive.
I recognize that the above is rather tendentious with regard to the US government, but I do not see how it can be avoided. Government by consensus, as we have now, does not work, as is proven almost every day, and it allows rule by minorities.
The imperial president is only one manifestation of the failure of the founders to construct a democratic government. They were afraid of democracy, and their fear was unjustified, a reflection of the times in which they lived, not an eternal truth. I have termed their fears "demosphobia" to suggest that it was and is an irrational fear.
We need more democracy in this country.
