If Democrats win, democracy dies

Philip L. McIndoo of Princeton
    What date will future historians assign to the death of American democracy; assuming, of course, that such a discipline is permitted after democracy has died?
   Since death is a process, like the gallows stairs, the date of the first step could be as early as the Alien and Sedition Laws of 1798, or the late 1860s with the cataclysmic Reconstruction, or the 1930s when FDR launched the hyperbolic growth of bureaucracy. But I prefer the election of 2008 which the bureaucracy may win.
   Democracy was always a fragile flower, colorful, boisterous even, full of promise, but easily felled by greed and ambition — or by careless disregard. It has been planted many times but bloomed only for a few brief springs. We all know of ancient Athens and the Roman republic. Our founding fathers knew of them, too, and of the dangers to democracy.
   So they built as many safeguards as possible into our Constitution. The most powerful was the separation of powers with its concomitant checks and balances. But checks and balances work best if the legislative and executive offices are held by different parties. Add a permanent bureaucracy, a herd whose natural allegiance is to the party that will expand their turf and increase their budget, and checks won’t work. There’s no ‘check’ on that herd, no ‘balance’ to keeping them from stampeding all of us right off the cliff.
   When one party owns the White House, owns majorities in both houses, and has the bureaucracy behind it, such a party has the power to ‘reform’ democracy right out of existence. Which party? Find out which one the government workers’ unions are supporting.
   Jefferson warned us that “democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.” To which I would add, “or give to those whose work enriches themselves at your expense.”
   At the time of the founding of our “experiment” in democracy, a British statesman warned: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” If good men and women do not vote in this election, their disregard is worse than nothing.
   Democracy is headed for the cliff if one party takes over the government in this election.
Philip L. McIndoo
Princeton