V.J. Chalupa

On Post-Modern Politics

CHAPTER 27

THE UNITED STATES

The State

From an evolutionary standpoint, the structure of the United States at its inception was a masterpiece providing for progress and development. The arrangement of the federation guaranteed variability and selection resulting in flexibility and adaptability.

Most public affairs, mainly those affecting the people directly, were decided locally, by communities. Local self-government had a very wide scope of authority which went as far as trials and execution of sentences by the public ("lynching") and expulsion of undesirable individuals (sometimes tarred and feathered). All general affairs were handled by the states through elected organs, with the exception of specific enumerated matters reserved to the federal government.

The federal government was divided into three branches -- legislative, executive and judicial -- organized on the principle of checks and balances so that none of them can amass overwhelming power; the legislature and the head of the executive branch (the President) were subjected to regular elections by all citizens; the judicial branch was appointed by the President subject to approval of the legislature; was to be independent, its members were therefore appointed for life and normally not responsible to anyone.

The differentiation of spiritual life was therefore thoroughly ensured.

Centrifugal tendencies were limited by the majority principle and the main integration of the state was provided by religion, specifically Christianity of the Protestant variety. In legal theory, this importance of religion was represented by deriving the validity of laws from natural law which in turn was valid because it emanated from God, "nature's Creator," and consequently complementary or coincidental with God's revelation, therefore fixed, objective, recognizable and unalienable. People in general considered their country as a sort of a new promised land, their personal freedom and relative material security as God's gift and as their country's mission to promote in world affairs the government of the people, by the people and for the people, i.e., democracy.

As long as this consensus prevailed over differentiation, the United States experienced unique economic and political expansion. It started to break up between the fifties and the sixties under the influence of a newly emerging class of intellectuals who ridiculed it as primitive and constricting, but until the Soviet break-through in producing the Sputnik, the influence of intellectuals on politics was quite limited; the public called them "eggheads" and the rugged individual, self-made man and person of practical experience enjoyed greater prestige than a person dealing in and with abstractions and symbols. It was after the upheaval of the sixties triggered by the war resisters that the intellectuals and some of their ideas and ideals prevailed through extra-legal avenues -- civil disobedience, violence, defiance of sexual morality of the established civic religion. Coinciding with racial unrest and merging with the "sexual revolution" the war resistance found support and gave support to the embryonic elitist movement. The state and its democratic order survived the spontaneous rebellion, but a systematic dismantling of the traditional consensus began.

The principal agent of change became the judicial branch of the federal government. Peopled with a new generation of activist judges the federal judiciary and mainly the Supreme Court began to transform the United States. In trying to prevent a power grab by the legislature or the executive and to guard a system of checks and balances its constitution failed to provide sufficient checks on the misuse of the independence of the judiciary. When the restraining influence of the public consensus started to dissipate, the new generation of judges used their independence to dismantle the existing consensus and to impose on the state parts of the elitists' ideology. By freewheeling interpretations of the constitution the courts started to overrule democratically legislated local regulations, state laws and referendums and to extend their jurisdiction down to the micromanagement of school systems, individual schools, building codes, zoning and management of prisons. By claiming not to be able to discern obscenity from art, immorality from privacy of consenting adults, killing from assistance at suicide, and the beginning of life of a human embryo the courts struck down the walls guarding against disruptive abuse of sex and threw up a "wall of separation" between religion and the state.

As the method of imposing parts of its program against the will of the majority of the people, the movement worked out a pattern: shy away from legislatures and appeal to courts; after several favorable court decisions the public will (a) become accustomed to the new breach of the given civic religion, and (b) realize the futility of efforts to block the change (or effect another change) through the political system because no matter how many referendums are won and how many laws are passed -- if they represent an obstacle to the movement's program, they will be overturned by the federal judiciary (where state courts are elective, with a limited tenure of judges, they are visibly less radical and reckless than federal judges).

Another great accomplishment of the movement is the introduction of sex education in public and most private schools. Mostly misnamed as family education or health education and presented under the disguise of objective, clinical approach, this education introduces to children and adolescents the notion that sex is for pleasure and fun, that it is not a grave matter, but a pastime to which they are entitled. Pupils and students learn all types of sexual abnormalities while being admonished to maintain a "non-judgmental" attitude to all of them, and learn that the only limitation to sex is that it be be used "responsibly" which is identical with avoiding venereal diseases and -- mainly -- pregnancy; nevertheless, should they fail they are given the opportunity to fall back on counselling in school clinics without the knowledge of parents and on abortion. The results of this indoctrination are captured under Appendix 6. The main agents of this innovation were NEA and other teachers unions with the federal Department of Education. This department is a strange institution: it has no jurisdiction over schools; its function is to allocate federal funds to support educational programs which schools would not, on their own, introduce and which parents and local school boards might not approve, at least not in the form mandated by the Department, such as courses on teen suicide, parental (sexual) abuse, value clarification and other similar programs like Here is Looking at You, 2000. (A thorough and brief study of recent trends in public education appeared in U.S. News and World Report, June 16, 1997, in the article "Don't listen to Miranda" by John Leo.)

Another way of controlling the population without its consent is the proliferation of federal departments and their resulting bureaucracies by decisions of federal legislature without consent of the states, although such bureaucracies impinge on and chip away the autonomy of lower bodies and are not among the powers ceded to the federal jurisdiction. Such departments are always created at the request of the executive branch and approved under the pretext of serving social needs. The Department of Education affects the autonomy of local school board. The Department of Housing and Development encroaches on the jurisdiction of local self-government. The Department of Agriculture has, through its local offices, a firmer grip on agriculture than the Soviet government ever had: on the basis of aerial photographs, it determines which fields are allowed to produce and which not, what kind of crops will be grown and which ones are restricted. The Environmental Protection Agency exempts from development and utilization large areas for the protection of endangered species without regard on the impact on human families whose livelihood is endangered by its actions. And it takes action by Congress or difficult judicial action to correct excesses and errors of the regulators and bureacracies every time when they exceed the limits of rationality and their jurisdiction. The Endowment for Arts resists successfully the exclusion of producers of obscenities from the list of its beneficiaries. While the justification for new agencies is always rooted in real needs, the authority given them is necessarily broad, and is then articulated by members of the elitist movement who give it their own interpretation supported by the mass media in conflict with the citizenry, communities, states and Congress.

Nation

The object of care of politics should be the nation as the bearer of spiritual development. The pledge of allegiance describes the nation of the United States as "one nation under God, indivisible."

Unlike European nations which arose by violent amalgamation of tribes, the nation of the United States (the "Americans") was formed originally from families or religious groups of Anglo-Saxon origin to which later were peacefully added families of all European nations and languages in the process described traditionally as the "melting pot." The various ethnic groups retained elements of their culture and -- in their neighborhoods and settlements -- also their languages which did not prevent them to become and consider themselves Americans. From the melting process were excluded two large groups: one willingly, the other unwillingly. By their own will native Indians excluded themselves as "sovereign nations," actually tribes segregated in their reservations and preserving their own cultures from the "white man's" influences. The other group was African Negroes brought to the United States by force, segregated first as slaves, later as "equals" until the last decades when full integration was won by them, opened to them and partly forced upon them (against endeavors to become a separate Moslem nation and establish their own language) by the courts and legislation. Originally, also persons of Asian origin, especially those of the "yellow" race, were kept apart, but this barrier gradually disappeared without any formal intervention.

The source of cohesion of the people (not peoples) of the United States was their allegiance to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and their common Christian faith and ethos combined with the willingness to use English as their common language.

These bonds making a nation from so many diverse elements ("e pluribus unum") began to crumble under the impact of two factors: the distortion of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights by the courts alienated many against whose convictions the new content of all norms, and the growing impact of the new civic religion were forced upon by the elites. A theory of multiculturalism took the place of the emphasis on "patriotism" and the designation of the population as "a people" started to be changed into "peoples" by new theories of history and the new ideology. The ideology of individualism and especially the new sexual mores try to replace so far with only partial success the integrating influence of the original Constitution and religion. as the new element of cohesion. Even the last bond between all segments of the population is under attack. From various sides, English, its grammar and orthography is being criticized as a kind of oppression and there is a movement to replace it in schools with expression untrammelled by any rules. There is no more a general agreement on very basic practical values governing life, children, marriage, welfare, religion; America is in the midst of a culture war. This means a crisis, a dangerous crisis. Such a war never is limited to the sphere of culture; ultimately it boils over into power struggle and power struggle into violent contest.

The country is now held together by the wisdom of the authors of its constitutional system and the skill of the elites in using instruments of power. In spite of this, disintegration is apparent in the high level of violence and the widespread use of protective devices. Most apartment houses and condominiums bar access to strangers, often with the help of armed guards. Most homes have alarm systems or at least chains and bolts. The tide of crime is such that in many places, the police do not ever investigate minor crimes such as burglaries, thefts or muggings; it is too busy dealing with murders, killings and drug trafficking.

In addition to privately motivated violence there is group violence. The pro-life movement having exhausted all possibilities of the legal process, picketing and sloganeering, and having its political achievements reversed by the courts, elected the method of peaceful civil disobedience successfully used by the civil rights movement: blocking access to and/or occupying abortion facilities; this attempt, initially bringing results even against police force, was finally squashed by emergency laws and local regulations protecting abortionists in their neighborhood and their facilities and by litigations requesting millions of dollars damages from pro-life organizations and even their individual contributors. The frustration then occasionally explodes in violence, such as bombing of abortion clinics and/or murders of their employees followed by punishments stricter than for same crimes committed by ordinary criminals.

The feeling of frustration and helplessness is at the root of the growth of civilian extremist groups who arm themselves against the expected break-down of society and consider the government as an enemy. They do not shy from terrorist acts, such as armed resistance to federal intervention or bombings of federal buildings; others perform group suicide.

More successful are violent outbreaks of racial unrest connected with looting and vandalism; they are prevented from spreading by political and social concessions, their originators are not sought and their perpetrators rarely or lightly punished: court decisions are visibly influenced by threats and fear of new upheavals. This appeasement manages to smother violence, at the same time it strengthens the feeling that some groups are more equal than others and that the government is not responsive to the will of the electorate. The result is contempt for politics and politicians and apathy towards public affairs and elections.

Because of the cultural crisis, the cohesiveness of the population is weakened; without a common culture, value system and consensus, the concept of being an American is attenuated to its legal aspect, i.e., citizenship, and the elites' ideology of individualism and egocenteredness is not able to transform the citizenry from contending interest groups into a nation -- which requires a generally accepted common goal.

Economy

In a society which lacks a common culture, violence can be contained provided that all its parts have a minimum of economic security and no larger group suffers misery combined with hopelessness or despair. American economy has been able to provide such security so far, but certain danger signals indicate this situation might not be sustainable forever.

While spanning the globe American economy is losing its domestic basis. For decades, it was unable to balance a single federal budget; the burden of an ever growing bureaucracy is increasing, the deficit in foreign trade is permanent; illegal immigration of millions of persons continues; production is moving abroad;  foreign interests are buying American assets. By abolishing trade barriers, the United States is creating larger markets (NAFTA, GATT); this in turn opens its own market to cheaper labor and the largest American corporations lose their national character and establish close ties or merge with similar foreign corporations. The United States is able to impose its own standards (especially environmental standards) on other states, but loses in exchange the full control of its own economy.

The overall result of this development is the existence of a permanent welfare class whose members have little or no chance to escape the status of poverty. Poverty levels in the United States are of course equal or superior to economic well-being in most areas of the world; but this does not change the frustration of its citizens who are excluded from active participation in the economy. Redistribution of incomes does buy social peace, but remains a permanent problem financially and morally.

Because of the culture war, there is no overarching concept of a purpose which the economy would serve. The dynamics of economy are provided by the market, and it is commonly assumed that the market ("the invisible hand") provides the best and most efficient distribution of resources; by one's choices, everyone influences the outcome, "has a vote" on the economy's direction. This is true, except that there is no equality between various "voters:" each one has as many votes as dollars. Therefore, the market serves primarily the purposes of those with the most votes, i.e., most money, and as it proceeds by the elimination of the middle class towards the hourglass society, its serves more and more in the first place the purposes of a smaller and smaller group of people. The rest must be sustained and entertained to be kept docile; this is not a situation conducive to spiritual development and in the long run, can be maintained, if at all, only by demographic manipulation (reduction of population) and reverse solidarism (elimination of the unproductive members -- the old, subnormal, ill).

Foreign Policy and International Relations

Because of its position as the only superpower, the United States' relations with other countries are subject to its international policy design, and not the other way around. It follows several correct principles:

-- Its hegemony can be retained only through the establishment of a genuine international legal order, i.e., an enforceable order. However, the enforcement of such an order is beyond the means, strength and will of Americans, therefore

--  to enforce an international legal order, the United States creates case-to-case coalitions in which other states add their power to that of the United States under its leadership. One of the most advantageous ways of doing so is

-- through the United Nations in which, therefore, the United States, with its most reliable allies, must maintain a dominant position.

-- Such policy requires creating closer ties with nations having or accepting the same general purposes as the United States. These are democratic industrialized nations.

-- It aims to quench by economic and/or military means the rise of any dissenting power or group of powers especially in the strategic areas, i.e., the Near East and the Far East; it is less urgent to maintain peace in Africa which appears unmanageable and impervious to the means available to the United States, its allies and to the world community.

The weaknesses of this policy are:

-- The policy of depopulation works against the United States and its allies; they are starting from a numerically much lower base and this policy affects this smaller basis proportionally more than it does the rest of the world. It therefore undercuts their own power base. faster than it does that of their potential adversaries.

-- The resources of the United States together with their allies are still not sufficient to police the entire world. Even military technical superiority does not suffice, as the results in Somalia, Bosnia and the Middle East indicate.The revolt against western dominance in Iraq has been suppressed, but apparently not extinguished. If any nation is willing to take severe and sustained punishment, it can resist indefinitely any pressure short of annihilation.

-- The United States does not have the power to prevent China from becoming another superpower. The attempts to gain its cooperation (actually integration in the West-dominated new world order) through concessions will fail; the Chinese are too clever to fall into such a trap; on the contrary, they will extract all possible advantages provided they strengthen their position.

-- The United States and its allies (and clients) are a minority in the United Nations. Sooner or later, the majority will assert itself and make economic demands the industrialized nations will be unable to fulfill. Then the umbrella of the United Nations so useful for American policy will be lost and their machinery turned against it with a vengeance.

On balance, the strategy of the Western power is doomed to fail; it must be doomed because its aims are contrary to the laws of life and evolution; it attempts to restrain the forces of life and nature rather than support them and invigorate them through human ingenuity and strength.

Political System

The United States is a pluralistic democracy; its citizens form organizations freely to pursue their various objectives. In view of the concentration of power in the hands of the government, all such organizations interact with the government in various degrees of intensity. The organizations whose primary purpose is to transform the will of the citizens into the will of the state, are political parties. They fulfill this role by providing input and feedback by their members as well as their leaders, with the final decision belonging to the membership.

American political parties perform this role very well on the local level, satisfactorily on the state level and very poorly, if at all, on the federal level. For decades, prior to all federal elections, all political parties included in their programs to balance the budget, to reduce the federal bureaucracy, to simplify the tax system, to reform welfare and health care, to improve public schools; the fact that the same promises are made over and over and the same objectives repeated, proves that none of them has been kept or attained. The last and most obvious failure was the attempt at the so-called republican revolution: in spite of majority in both houses, the impetus was spent in one election period -- and things remained basically as before.

According to theory, the governing in the United States should be effective and responsible. The country has a majority system which leads towards the majority of one party, and if pre-election promises are not kept and/or the majority party's policy fails, the responsibility is obvious and the failing party should be defeated in the next elections. Therefore, a majority electoral system is supposed to guarantee efficiency. The fact that it does not perform as it should, is due to several causes, external and internal.

The main external cause is the structure of the federal government, i.e., its checks and balances. They were introduced in order to prevent the federal government from turning into a tyranny by arranging it so that each of its three branches actually got into the way of the others whenever any would try to exceed its powers. This type of government by mutual obstruction worked well as long as the federal government's authority was strictly limited; it became a road towards deadlock, when its jurisdiction outgrew by far the jurisdiction of the states (which was not the assumption under which the constitution was written). Especially if the President and the majority of Congress belong to different political parties or when each body of Congress has a majority of a different political party, there is, with rare exceptions,  no way that any thorough change can be effected, no matter how urgent or beneficial. When the executive branch and the legislature are deadlocked, the judiciary assumes, or more precisely: usurps parts of their authority, since it is independent from voters and does not have to fear the authority of an indecisive Congress. And the judges decide according to their own ideology which, at present, is predominantly the ideology of the elitist movement.

The other external cause is the importance of pressure groups among which the strongest ones have excluded from influence weaker ones as well as individual voters. Politics shifted from a competition of programs to a struggle between "special interests" which use means other than only elections ("lobbying") to obtain financial (subsidies, tax breaks) and legal (relaxation or introduction of regulations) advantages.

The first internal cause of irrelevance of political parties is that, on the federal level, they are for most of the time an empty shell. Between elections, there is no interaction between the members of a party and the professional politicians who represent it; for all practical purposes, the party is the professional politicians, the membership is superfluous. The party program is also prepared without the participation of the membership; at best, they receive a questionnaire (whose questions were carefully prepared by experts in public relations to ensure a predetermined outcome) with the request for "a most generous" contribution. When elections near, the professional politicians organized into a national committee select and hire a public relations firm which operates on a commercial basis. These experts determine, by polling the public, what are the priorities and preferences of the party's constituency and those of independent voters whose votes are necessary for an electoral victory. On the basis of these two is composed a program, and a representative is elected who can, by the impact of his personality, with obvious sincerity convince voters that the given party will indeed this time implement it. At this point, groups of volunteers are recruited who man the telephone banks, distribute leaflets, go visiting from door to door; when the election is over, won or lost, they receive public thanks by the candidate -- and are forgotten until the next election. There are no organized communications between their candidate and themselves and even less between themselves as a group and the candidate. A large part of the public considers this process a comedy, and the most difficult part of the campaign is to wake up as many as possible from this lethargy.

Directly related to this type of political life is the kind of financing. Because between the campaigns the party is practically non-existent, no funds are needed for its functioning; but vast sums of it are needed for the elections. To awaken interest and allegiance for the candidates, a massive campaign is necessary, such a campaign must be conducted through the mass media and mass media are very expensive. Therefore, amassing a "war chest" for elections is one of the main tasks of every politician. How pressing a need it is is illustrated by the facts that a President rented for large donations historical rooms in the White House to rich individuals and accepted huge contributions from foreign governments with which his country was at that time in political conflict.

Professional politicians especially on the federal level are actually responsible only to large contributors, individuals or organizations who by the possibility of denying financial support can effect tangible pressure on an elected official. Professional politicians on the federal level are not responsible to any body which would regularly meet to discuss politics and which would include also, for instance, governors or legislators of large states; even less can such bodies include party leaders who are not professional politicians and who rose through the organizational hierarchy of the party -- because such organization does not exist. The isolation of the "Beltway" or of "Washingtonians" is generally recognized, pointed out and deplored as a serious shortcoming of the existing system.

These gaps and shortcomings of the American political structure and system enable the elites to implement parts of their ideology by circumventing democracy without the consent or even awareness of the people.