Wake up and smell the Tyranny

How Mass-Media and Globalization are destroying the Republic.

The founding fathers of our great republic had many choices available to them, one of which was the practice of direct democracy. This choice was set aside as being too prone to the politics of faction and the tyranny of the majority. Many today wonder why our nation is a representative federalist republic as opposed to that simplest of endeavors, direct democracy such as that practiced in the town halls of New England.

On the subject of direct democracy, James Madison writing under the pseudonym “Publius” had this to say in Federalist Paper #10.

A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.

The disdain of our founding fathers for direct democracy is well documented and their answer to the perceived problems was that of a republic. The republic was intended to be a check on mob rule by this reasoning, perhaps a very apt description of politics today:

The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States. A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction in a part of the Confederacy; but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it must secure the national councils against any danger from that source. A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district, than an entire State.

The political partisanship and problems we are experiencing today are a direct result of modern instantaneous mass communications, urbanization, globalization, national culture, virtually instantaneous travel, and the Internet. What in essence that which was a confederation of independent states maintaining widely diverse interests but united on common principle has become a homogeneous and amorphous cultural blob. No longer are the actions of our federal government controlled by the balance of competing interests distributed among the states and regions but today are solely constrained by partisanship between the opposing parties.

We have lost the balance provided by the framework of a republican form of government. Modern technology has eliminated the opposing factions essential to the proper functioning of our republic. At one time in our government there was a system of checks and balances imposed by diverse interests, the “farm vote” was set in opposition to the “industrial” vote. City versus Town, Town versus Country, the northeast was in opposition to the southeast, the east to the west, and the north to the south. Extremes of behavior were limited by the necessity of compromise in order to achieve objectives.

Today, American culture as become fairly uniform, the interests of city dwellers in New York are fairly consistent with the interests of those in Chicago or Los Angeles. The interests of those in Manhattan, NY (Population 1,616,934: Median income $64,217: Median House $ 808, 200) are going to be more closely aligned with Miami, Dallas, Denver, and Seattle than Manhattan, KS (Population 51,707: Median income $34, 768: Median House $169, 522). While one might argue that this has always been the case, the Electoral College being a compromise balance of power between urban centers and the rural agricultural areas, in the past the numbers were more balanced between small cities and vast agricultural areas comprised of family farms. Today the heartland lies virtually vacant, the domain of vast international agribusiness instead of patchwork of family farms it once was.

As a result of homogeneous culture, we function today based upon the commonly aligned interests of the popular majority, more as a direct democracy than a republic. The balance between diverse regional interests has devolved into a two-way ideological split; the balance sought in a republican framework has been lost. The end result of this cultural homogenization is the tyranny of the majority. A currently slim margin of 3-8% separates parties based more on political faction than regional interest and in which the majority enacts legislation vehemently opposed in principle by the opposition.

We have arrived at the state of “Faction” so greatly feared by our founding fathers. Outlined in Federalist Paper 10 by James Madison, warned against by our first president in his farewell address, we have finally and firmly split across ideological lines. Ideology now trumps national interest as we devolve into bitter partisanship, name calling, and manifest hatred of the opposition. The question then is: Where do we go from here?

~Publius~