Oligarchs for Democracy!

Part Eight in a Series on Democracy

Alexander Solzhenitsyn noted that “the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart.”

Similarly, no part of the political circle can be labeled as inherently good or evil.

But …… long-term imbalances in the distributions of positions do allow those with evil intent to get traction in a society. When too much power is concentrated in one location – and is unchecked by citizen-empowering initiatives – a Stalin or Saddam can gain control.

In the shallow discourse of recent decades, accusations of evil were framed as “left versus right”. Since 2008, however, assessments have become more realistic. The growing power of “the elites” is now discerned as a threat.

Today’s elites congregate at the top of the political circle, pretending to fit the flawed framework of “right,” “center,” and “left”. These labels do apply. But only in a limited way. On the right reside oligarchic bankers, military interests, and corporate CEOs. On the left, academic and statist bureaucrats join the social media monopolies. At the upper pole sit deep state agencies, central banks, and globalist actors, like George Soros and Klaus Schwab.

Both major political parties have facilitated today’s imbalance. Republicans often took the lead throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, with members like Mitt Romney and Pat Toomey continuing the tradition. But it is today’s Democratic Party, despite its past defense of working people’s interests, that now hurtles toward an unprecedented and unbalanced concentration of political power.

The two-party machinations were slow and methodical. And yes, some members were, and are, evil. One method of choice was to gaslight Americans into an uncritical and shallow deification of democracy.

There are no coincidences in politics. And it’s no coincidence the march toward an unbalanced centralization of power was matched by a movement toward “pure democracy.”

Charles Marohn recently addressed this trend when he observed that …… as our country has become “more democratic” it has also become “less representative”. In other words, the emasculation of local/regional government has increased the power-distance relationship between citizens and those who hold meaningful power.

The 1913 shift to direct election of U.S. senators established the precedent for greater power-distance. By removing decision-making from state legislatures (and consequently, from locally-elected legislators) the seventeenth amendment concentrated power in Washington. This proportional relationship between centralized power and “pure democracy” isn’t random. It’s an axiom of politics.

Those who seek to concentrate power further are aware of this axiom. But it’s unrecognized by propagandized citizens who giddily cede their constitutionally-protected powers to distant “authorities.”

The popular HR-1 bill currently making its way through congress is the latest example of this process. If it passes, it won’t be the last. Powerful centralizing forces will then be emboldened to challenge the electoral college’s legitimacy.

This dangerous trend toward imbalance will inevitably facilitate evil acts. The antidote is for Americans to grasp the difference between “a democracy” and “a republic” …… medicine to be explored in future posts.