A Framing Memo for Occupy Wall Street

I was asked weeks ago by some in the Occupy Wall Street movement to make suggestions for how to frame the movement. I have hesitated so far, because I think the movement should be framing itself. It’s a general principle: Unless you frame yourself, others will frame you — the media, your enemies, your competitors, your well-meaning friends. I have so far hesitated to offer suggestions. But the movement appears to maturing and entering a critical time when small framing errors could have large negative consequences. So I thought it might be helpful to accept the invitation and start a discussion of how the movement might think about framing itself.

About framing: It’s normal. Everybody engages in it all the time. Frames are just structures of thought that we use every day. All words in all languages are defined in terms of frame-circuits in the brain. But, ultimately, framing is about ideas, about how we see the world, which determines how we act.

In politics, frames are part of competing moral systems that are used in political discourse and in charting political action. In short, framing is a moral enterprise: it says what the character of a movement is. All politics is moral. Political figures and movements always make policy recommendations claiming they are the right things to do. No political figure ever says, do what I say because it’s wrong! Or because it doesn’t matter! Some moral principles or other lie behind every political policy agenda.

Two Moral Framing Systems in Politics

Conservatives have figured out their moral basis and you see it on Wall Street: It includes: The primacy of self-interest. Individual responsibility, but not social responsibility. Hierarchical authority based on wealth or other forms of power. A moral hierarchy of who is “deserving,” defined by success. And the highest principle is the primacy of this moral system itself, which goes beyond Wall Street and the economy to other arenas: family life, social life, religion, foreign policy, and especially government. Conservative “democracy” is seen as a system of governance and elections that fits this model.

Though OWS concerns go well beyond financial issues, your target is right: the application of these principles in Wall Street is central, since that is where the money comes from for elections, for media, and for right-wing policy-making institutions of all sorts on all issues.

The alternative view of democracy is progressive: Democracy starts with citizens caring about one another and acting responsibly on that sense of care, taking responsibility both for oneself and for one’s family, community, country, people in general, and the planet. The role of government is to protect and empower all citizens equally via The Public: public infrastructure, laws and enforcement, health, education, scientific research, protection, public lands, transportation, resources, art and culture, trade policies, safety nets, and on and on. Nobody makes it one their own. If you got wealthy, you depended on The Public, and you have a responsibility to contribute significantly to The Public so that others can benefit in the future. Moreover, the wealthy depend on those who work, and who deserve a fair return for their contribution to our national life. Corporations exist to make life better for most people. Their reason for existing is as public as it is private.

A disproportionate distribution of wealth robs most citizens of access to the resources controlled by the wealthy. Immense wealth is a thief. It takes resources from the rest of the population — the best places to live, the best food, the best educations, the best health facilities, access to the best in nature and culture, the best professionals, and on and on. Resources are limited, and great wealth greatly limits access to resources for most people.

It appears to me that OWS has a progressive moral vision and view of democracy, and that what it is protesting is the disastrous effects that have come from operating with a conservative moral, economic, and political worldview. I see OWS as primarily a moral movement, seeking economic and political changes to carry out that moral movement — whatever those particular changes might be.

A Moral Focus for Occupy Wall Street

I think it is a good thing that the occupation movement is not making specific policy demands. If it did, the movement would become about those demands. If the demands were not met, the movement would be seen as having failed.

It seems to me that the OWS movement is moral in nature, that occupiers want the country to change its moral focus. It is easy to find useful policies; hundreds have been suggested. It is harder to find a moral focus and stick to it. If the movement is to frame itself, it should be on the basis of its moral focus, not a particular agenda or list of policy demands. If the moral focus of America changes, new people will be elected and the policies will follow. Without a change of moral focus, the conservative worldview that has brought us to the present disastrous and dangerous moment will continue to prevail.

We Love America. We’re Here to Fix It

I see OWS as a patriotic movement, based on a deep and abiding love of country — a patriotism that it is not just about the self-interests of individuals, but about what the country is and is to be. Do Americans care about other citizens, or mainly just about themselves? That’s what love of America is about. I therefore think it is important to be positive, to be clear about loving America, seeing it in need of fixing, and not just being willing to fix it, but being willing to take to the streets to fix it. A populist movement starts with the people seeing that they are all in the same boat and being ready to come together to fix the leaks.

Publicize the Public

Tell the truth about The Public, that nobody makes it purely on their own without The Public, that is, without public infrastructure, the justice system, health, education, scientific research, protections of all sorts, public lands, transportation, resources, art and culture, trade policies, safety nets, … That is a truth to be told day after day. It is an idea that must take hold in public discourse. It must go beyond what I and others have written about it and beyond what Elizabeth Warren has said in her famous video. The Public is not opposed to The Private. The Public is what makes The Private possible. And it is what makes freedom possible. Wall Street exists only through public support. It has a moral obligation to direct itself to public needs.

All OWS approaches to policy follow from such a moral focus. Here are a handful examples.

Democracy should be about the 99%

Money directs our politics. In a democracy, that must end. We need publicly supported elections, however that is to be arranged.

Strong Wages Make a Strong America

Middle-class wages have not gone up significantly in 30 years, and there is conservative pressure to lower them. But when most people get more money, they spend it and spur the economy, making the economy and the country stronger, as well as making their individual lives better. This truth needs to be central to public economic discourse.

Global Citizenship

America has been a moral beacon to the world. It can function as such only if it sets an example of what a nation should be.

Do we have to spend more on the military that all other nations combined? Do we really need hundreds of military bases abroad?

Nature

We are part of nature. Nature makes us, and all that we love, possible. Yet we are destroying Nature through global warming and other forms of ecological destruction, like fracking and deep-water drilling.

At a global scale, nature is systemic: its effects are neither local nor linear. Global warming is causing the ferocity of the monster storms, tornados, floods, blizzards, heat waves, and fires that have devastated huge areas of our country. The hotter the atmosphere, the more evaporated water and the more energy going into storms, tornados, and blizzards. Global warming cannot be shown to cause any particular storm, but when a storm system forms, global warming will ramp up the power of the storm and the amount of water it carries. In winter, evaporated water from the overly heated Pacific will go into the atmosphere, blow northeast over the arctic, and fall as record snows.

We depend on nature — on clean air, water, food, and a livable climate. And we find beauty and grandeur in nature, and a sense of awe that makes life worth living. A love of country requires a love of nature. And a fair and thriving economy requires the preservation of nature as we have known it.

Summary

OWS is a moral and patriotic movement. It sees Democracy as flowing from citizens caring about one another as well as themselves, and acting with both personal and social responsibility. Democratic governance is about The Public, and the liberty that The Public provides for a thriving Private Sphere. From such a democracy flows fairness, which is incompatible with a hugely disproportionate distribution of wealth. And from the sense of care implicit in such a democracy flows a commitment to the preservation of nature.

From what I have seen of most members of OWS, your individual concerns all flow from one moral focus.

Elections

The Tea Party solidified the power of the conservative worldview via elections. OWS will have no long-term effect unless it too brings its moral focus to the 2012 elections. Insist on supporting candidates that have your overall moral views, no matter what the local issues are.

A Warning

This movement could be destroyed by negativity, by calls for revenge, by chaos, or by having nothing positive to say. Be positive about all things and state the moral basis of all suggestions. Positive and moral in calling for debt relief. Positive and moral in upholding laws, as they apply to finances. Positive and moral in calling for fairness in acquiring needed revenue. Positive and moral in calling for clean elections. To be effective, your movement must be seen by all of the 99% as positive and moral. To get positive press, you must stress the positive and the moral.

Remember: The Tea Party sees itself as stressing only individual responsibility. The Occupation Movement is stressing both individual and social responsibility.

I believe, and I think you believe, that most Americans care about their fellow citizens as well as themselves. Let’s find out! Shout your moral and patriotic views out loud, regularly. Put them on your signs. Repeat them to the media. Tweet them. And tell everyone you know to do the same. You have to use your own language with your own framing and you have to repeat it over and over for the ideas to sink in.

Occupy elections: voter registration drives, town hall meetings, talk radio airtime, party organizations, nomination campaigns, election campaigns, and voting booths.

Above all: Frame yourselves before others frame you.

George Lakoff is Richard and Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley, where he has taught since 1972. He previously taught at Harvard (1965-69) and the University of Michigan (1969-1972). He graduated from MIT in 1962 (in Mathematics and Literature) and received his PhD in Linguistics from Indiana University in 1966.

Opinion: Direct democracy a crucial tool in protecting animals

By Jennifer Fearing | 10/20/11 12:00 AM PST

California is celebrating a milestone: the 100th birthday of the initiative and referenda process. The Humane Society of the United States actively works to defend this process of direct democracy born in the Progressive Era, given that it has been used to drive vital social reforms, including those protecting animals.

By Jennifer Fearing | 10/20/11 12:00 AM PST

The initiative process’ fundamental premise is that power rests with the people. When powerful, moneyed protectors of the status quo block popular reforms, this safety valve is built into the state constitution. It’s not a perfect process, but ultimately it strengthens democracy, enhances engagement in civic activity, keeps government more honest and transparent, and produces important public policies. Initiatives are a non-partisan process and have been used by people and groups from all across the political spectrum.

To be clear, The Humane Society of the United States supports representative government and it’s always our preference to work with state lawmakers. But when elected lawmakers fail to honor the popular will, we take our message directly to voters here and elsewhere.

One classic example was our campaign to combat cockfighting. In Arizona, Missouri, and Oklahoma, state lawmakers refused to act in the face of this cruel bloodsport. We tried for years in each of these Legislatures before turning to the initiative. In each case, voters in these states approved cockfighting prohibitions by wide margins.

In California, entrenched special interests have stymied progress in the Legislature on popular reforms. In 1990, citizens here passed a measure to prevent the trophy hunting of mountain lions. It was a jolt to the trophy-hunting camp. After six years of grumbling and scare-mongering about lion attacks on people, state lawmakers and the NRA joined to refer a deceptively worded measure to the ballot to reverse the original public vote. But the electorate saw through the deception and handed the trophy-hunting lobby an even more lopsided defeat.

Just two years later, voters approved a ban against cruel and indiscriminate steel-jawed leg-hold traps and two kinds of poisons used to kill predators – showing the wildlife management establishment that its practices and policies were out of step with public sentiment. On the same ballot, voters outlawed the slaughter of horses for human consumption, kick-starting a national movement to end horse slaughter in America.

And three years ago, California voters sent shockwaves through the agribusiness establishment by overwhelmingly approving Proposition 2. That measure took aim at extreme confinement of veal calves, breeding sows, and laying hens in the nation’s top agricultural state. Prop. 2 rolled up more “Yes” votes than any initiative in California history, showing the agribusiness lobby that people care about humane treatment of all animals, including those raised for food. It won in 47 of 58 counties, including many rural and agricultural counties, demonstrating that concern for animals is not just an urban or suburban issue.

With this series of wins providing a good barometer of public sentiment, and with the Prop. 2 vote fresh in their minds, lawmakers have passed a raft of animal protection measures in the last three years – most with strong bipartisan support. They’ve enacted thirty HSUS-backed bills and resolutions and rejected six bills inimical to animals’ interests.

Of the 15 or so bills we weighed in on this year in Sacramento, three related to changing or reforming the initiative process itself. Gov. Brown was right to veto SB 168 as it would have made qualifying a ballot measure more difficult, especially for grassroots organizations.

On the other hand, we supported two other bills this year that struck the right balance between reform and access. Gov. Brown signed one and unfortunately vetoed the other.
He signed SB 202, which shifts all ballot propositions to the general election ballots held in November of even years. Voter turnout is traditionally low during special or primary elections, and we think it’s better for more citizens to weigh in on the major issues of the day.

He vetoed AB 651, which would have required professional petition-gathering firms to train paid gatherers in relevant election law and barred anyone convicted of petition-related fraud from gathering signatures. We supported this bill because we want to protect the integrity of the initiative process.

A healthy and accessible initiative ballot box is important to the animal protection movement. So here’s to another century of grassroots democracy in action.

Consensus Is What Direct Democracy Looks Like

By Evan O’Neil

October 19, 2011

By Evan O’Neil

October 19, 2011

Video by Meerkat Media Collective.

If curiosity or solidarity has yet to carry you to Wall Street or one of the other occupied cities, this video gives a good sense of how the groups discuss ideas and make decisions. The General Assembly meetings rely on a process of consensus. Consent is the backbone of democracy; it’s what we withdraw from the system in times of crisis.

Here is the New York GA in its own words:

The General Assembly is a gathering of people committed to making decisions based upon a collective agreement or "consensus."

There is no single leader or governing body of the General Assembly—everyone’s voice is equal. Anyone is free to propose an idea or express an opinion as part of the General Assembly.

Each proposal follows the same basic format—an individual shares what is being proposed, why it is being proposed, and, if there is enough agreement, how it can be carried out.

The Assembly will express its opinion for each proposal through a series of hand gestures…. If there is positive consensus for a proposal—meaning no outright opposition—then it is accepted and direct action begins.

If there is not consensus, the responsible group or individual is asked to revise the proposal and submit again at the following General Assembly until a majority consensus is achieved.

It’s hard to make yourself heard over the trucks, construction, honking, and continual din of New York’s humming energy. To deal with this acoustic impediment, made worse by a police prohibition on amplification such as megaphones, the General Assembly uses a call-and-response technique called the People’s Mic. The crowd repeats the speaker’s thoughts so that everyone can hear.

The hand gestures they use include: up for agreement, down for disagreement, a triangle of thumbs and fingertips for interjecting an important point, and crossed fists and forearms to block an idea that can’t be abided.

In the era of digital technology we have the potential for an entirely different citizen-government relationship.

That the protesters have to resort to such low-tech means (albeit alongside digital communications such as livestreaming) hearkens back to a simpler time when, say, you had to ride your horse to the Continental Congress. The structure of American representative democracy was determined at a time when citizen power was limited by physical presence.

Now in the era of digital technology we have the potential for an entirely different relationship between citizens and governments. We have seen some great preliminary progress in areas like digital campaign fundraising, app competitions, open government databases, and crowdsourcing of policy ideas and citizen feedback, yet it still feels like we are nibbling around the edges.

What the new technologies have unleashed is the sense that an entire branch of government has been missing, or just floating there all along like a powerless ghost. I’m talking about The People. If the Occupy phenomenon somehow leads to a larger (r)evolution in our direct participation, then this will be its major achievement.

Do We Need Politicians, Or Can We Cut Out the Middleman?

American Politicians Are Bought and Paid For

Virtually all independent economists and financial experts agree that the economy cannot stabilize or recover unless the giant, insolvent banks are broken up (and here and here). And the very size of the big banks is also warping our entire political system.

Politicians are wholly bought and paid for. As famed trend forecaster Gerald Celente writes in the current Trends Journal:

Politics today is little more than legalized prostitution. While a streetwalker gets busted for selling her body to a john, politicians get rewarded with campaign contributions for selling their souls to a corporation or lobbyist. With all of the whoring going on – the money exchanged and the pleasures lavished – the only
one actually getting screwed was John Q. Public.

But the chairman of the Department of Economics at George Mason University (Donald J. Boudreaux) says that calling politicians prostitutes is inaccurate – because it is being too nice. Specifically, Boudreaux says that it is more correct to call politicians “pimps”, since they are pimping out the American people to the financial giants.

So the state of banking and politics in America is grim, indeed. But do we really even need banks or politicians? Or can we cut out the middle man?

This post looks at whether we can use Direct Democracy to cut out the corrupt political middleman. In a separate essay, we look at whether we can use alternative financial arrangements to cut out the big banks as financial middleman.

Do We Need Politicians … Or Can We Cut Out the Corrupt Middleman?

Gerald Celente writes in this month’s Trends Journal:

For some years we’ve been seeing the promising stirrings of a global Renaissance;
a “new order” that would reject the gross materialism, excessive consumerism and
glorified militarism that has dominated contemporary western societies. But each initiative undertaken to retrofit and change the failing system has had its momentum blocked or sabotaged by the entrenched agents of “no change.”

***

Therefore, I’ve come to the conclusion that the only solution is to take that control
from the handful of “them” – the power possessors and power brokers – and put the
power into the hands of the people. But how?

***

I propose … of Direct Democracy – a potentially globe-changing movement that would replace today’s “representative democracy.” Positive change will not and cannot occur until power is taken away from the power obsessed.

While, in 2011, no one would dream of reinstituting the divine right of kings, what
is passed off today as “Democracy” is little more than a structure to clandestinely
support an ersatz nobility that perpetuates that very divine right practice.
The Direct Democracy solution I propose will not only transfer power to the
public (for better or for worse!), it will make “we the people” fully responsible for
creating the future. The choice is stark. Either we take action to create our destiny, or
others will continue to create it for us … and judging by past performance, we’re not
going to like what they create.

***

Regardless of who is elected – Republican or Democrat – the only solution I can see at this time that could save America (and be applied worldwide) is to take the power out of the hands of politicians and put it into the hands of the people.

In Switzerland, where this is practiced, it is called “Direct Democracy.” The people vote on major issues that affect them locally and globally, and the elected officials (whether they agree or not) perform their duties as “public servants,” carrying out the will of the people.

The US and other nations that call themselves “democratic” have “representative democracy.” In theory, elected officials pledged to carry out (represent) the will of the people. But, in practice, at least in modern memory, most elected officials carry out the will of special interests whose “campaign contributions” (a.k.a. bribes and payoffs) assure their subservience. While most everybody knows this, it’s both tolerated and
accepted as political business as usual.

***

Given today’s dire socioeconomic and geopolitical conditions and our forecast for them to dramatically deteriorate, I believe that changing from a faux-representative democracy to Direct Democracy would be a giant step in the right direction. If the Swiss can do it successfully, why can’t anyone else?

***

WHERE TO START Understanding the tremendous power that social networking
played in galvanizing the revolutions of the “Arab Spring” and the uprisings and protests raging through Europe, I propose using the same model to bring about a Direct Democracy revolution.

***

It should never be forgotten that no law is immutable. Laws are made only to be superseded by new laws. No clearer example can be given than the wholesale raping of the Constitution by the Supreme Court and successive presidents. What better time to write a new one? If the Founding Fathers could pull it off with horses, sheer will and quill pens, surely 21st century revolutionaries can make Direct Democracy a reality with the strokes of a keyboard. Not only can the Internet serve as the galvanizing force
to bring about Direct Democracy, it can also be used as the 21st century ballot box.

“Voting online could be subject to hacking and fraud,” the entrenched parties will argue. But casting a vote online is no more susceptible to “irregularities” than casting a vote at the polling place … be it stuffing the ballot boxes or rigging the voting machines.

In fact, voting online, with full transparency, would prove more secure than any polling place run by party operatives. I say, “If you can bank online, buy online, gamble on line, you can vote online!” Going to vote should be easier than going
to the ATM. And if you don’t have your own computer, there’s always the polling place.

It is due time Thomas Jefferson’s vision that “… in due time the voice of the people will
be heard and their latent wisdom will prevail,” prevails.

***

Publisher’s Note: “Representative Democracy,” the form of government we adhere to in the West, is no more than a cruel sham, a bone thrown to the proles following the overthrow of the aristocracies of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. The restive public was gulled into believing that, by voting for members of political parties pledged to represent their interests, their voices would be heard.

While attractive in principle, in practice, political parties come to represent the same very rich and very powerful interests that have ruled throughout history. Only the names and ranks have changed. No longer called Kings, Queens, Czars, Dukes and Barons, the new aristocracy is called the “too big to fail.”

***

Thinking people everywhere are recognizing that Direct Democracy can provide a blueprint for revolution in the New Millennium. Non-violent, intellectually and philosophically sound, emotionally empowering, and potentially inexorable … the greatest obstacle to Direct Democracy is to do nothing.

Celente also includes in his latest newsletter an article on direct democracy from Thomas H. Naylor. Naylor is Professor Emeritus of Economics at Duke University. For thirty years, he taught economics, management science, and computer science at Duke. As an international management consultant specializing in strategic management, Dr. Naylor has advised major corporations and governments in over thirty countries.

Naylor writes:

Taking note of the unsustainable, unfixable, gridlock nature of the US government and its inability to fix the American economy, Gerald Celente has proposed that the United States turn to Swiss-style Direct Democracy as an alternative way to resolve such divisive issues as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the magnitude of the government’s budget deficit, how to finance health care, the size of the defense budget, and national immigration policy. He envisions this being carried out on the Internet.

***

Over the past 700 or so years Switzerland has developed a unique social and political structure, with a strong emphasis on federalism and Direct Democracy….

Switzerland has a coalition government with a rotating presidency, in which the president serves for only one year. Many Swiss do not know who of the seven Federal Councillors in the government is the president at any given time, since he or she is first among equals. In Switzerland a petition signed by 100,000 voters can force a nationwide vote on a proposed constitutional change and the signatures of only 50,000 voters can force a national referendum on any federal law passed by Parliament.

Among the high profile issues that have been resolved by Swiss national referendums
are women’s voting rights, abortion rights, creation of a new canton, abolition of the army, and Swiss membership in the League of Nations, United Nations, World Bank, IMF, and the European Union.

***

Most political scientists agree that the Swiss have taken the concept of democracy to levels heretofore unattainable any place else in the world. In his excellent book Direct Democracy in Switzerland (Transaction Publishers, 2002), Gregory Fossedal describes Switzerland as “a Direct Democracy, in which, to an extent, the people pass their own laws, judge the constitutionality of statutes, and even have written, in effect, their own constitution.” That’s a lot!

All of this is in stark contrast to the United States in which our government is owned, operated, and controlled by Wall Street, Corporate America, the Pentagon, and domestic and foreign lobbies. Whereas the primary role of Swiss Direct Democracy is to protect the Swiss people from the Swiss government, the US government is more concerned with protecting its powerful clients from the will of the American people. In Switzerland the people own their government. In the
United States the government owns us.

[Given how much larger the U.S. is than Switzerland, and our different politicial system, it would be challenging to institute Direct Democracy in the U.S.]

But the alternative is a nation whose government has lost its moral authority and is tightly controlled by a self-serving military/industrial/congressional complex accountable only to itself – a nation that has become unsustainable economically, militarily, socially, environmentally, and politically. The United States is so large that it may no longer be governable and has possibly become unfixable.

If there is a way out of our nation’s death spiral, Direct Democracy just might be one of our last remaining viable options. We could do a lot worse than emulate the Swiss.

If American politicians have become so corrupt that they are beyond redemption, maybe we should use Direct Democracy to cut out the middleman.

And see this excellent description by Yves Smith of how the direct democracy-like process involved in the Wall Street protests is one of its greatest strengths.

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Alert: American Autumn Threatened

by Dr. Robert D. Crane

The 40-year-old Association of Muslim Social Scientists under its new leadership has its first major challenge in its core mission to rehabilitate classical Islamic and classical American thought. Richard Foley, who is a staple in the Just Third Way movement and supporter of Senator Mike Gravel’s 12-year-old Direct Democracy movement (ni4d.us, national initiative for direct democracy, and www.mikegravel.us) is sending out reports, including today’s one, that might not be covered by the mainline media. His report highlights a new Direct Democracy movement, which started in Greece a few months ago and now is being picked up by the Occupy Wall Street movement.

This development is a serious threat to peace, prosperity, and freedom through justice, at least in the United States as envisioned in classical Islamic and traditionalist American thought, because it advocates the abolition of representative democracy, rather than the addition of a parallel system of direct democracy for transparency. This can be counter-productive, like calls to End the Fed rather than to reform it as potentially a key instrument to End the Wealth Gap.

Now is the time for Muslims and others to network with the Occupy Wall Street leaders, because otherwise the socialist extremists may take over, like the guy who joined the New York demonstration from Tahrir Square in Egypt yesterday as the keynote speaker and advocated Marxism, to the cheers of a substantial portion of the crowd. Such potentially fascist extremism is a danger in all revolutions, because revolution, rather than reform, is made to order for those who threaten to impose a regime that in practice might become worse than the one they are revolting against. Che Guevara, who was killed in 1967, exactly 44 years ago today, comes to mind, as does the iconic Syed Qutb.

From the very beginning in my many articles I have been skeptical of the Arab Spring movements for the very reason that we may have to become skeptical of its American counterpart unless it advocates that money be created only for production to expand the economy, not for consumption to bribe the voters, and only in ways that reduce the wealth gap by making every citizen a capitalist (to use Ronald Reagan’s unfortunate wording). We must not let the twin evils of Socialist and Capitalist ideology, based, respectively, on envy and greed, crowd out the paradigmatic and pragmatic justice of the Just Third Way.

See www.cesj.org/thirdway/comparison3rdway.htm, capitalhomestead.org/notes/Core_Principles_of_the_Coalition_for_Capital_Homesteading, and capitalhomestead.org/notes/Organizations_in_the_Coalition.

How to Fix California’s Democracy Crisis

ONE hundred years ago today, California voters added the ballot initiative to the State Constitution, allowing citizens to use petitions to bring proposed statutes and constitutional amendments for a public vote.

But as California, the nation’s most populous state, marks this anniversary, the accumulated impact of direct democracy has made it virtually ungovernable. A two-thirds vote was required in each chamber of the Legislature to approve new taxes as a result of Proposition 13, the fabled tax initiative adopted in 1978. Ballot-box budgeting locks in large portions of the budget; Proposition 98, passed in 1988, dedicates about 40 percent of the state’s general fund to public education.

The “three strikes” law (Proposition 184, passed in 1994) greatly increased the cost of the criminal justice system. Term limits (Proposition 140, adopted in 1990) have reduced the number of state legislators with significant experience. Finally, once a measure is passed by a vote of the people in California, it cannot be overturned by the Legislature, but only by another vote of the people (or by the courts).

Direct democracy in California was born in the hopes of bringing the people into the governance process, but it has led to a kind of audience democracy. Voters have become consumers of television sound-bite campaigns and new-media messaging, not authors of the laws they give to themselves. It was supposed to take the role of money out of politics but it has, instead, created a vast appetite for advertising. Getting on the ballot costs millions of dollars to pay for professional signature gatherers because the threshold of signatures required is so high (5 percent of the number of voters who turned out in the last election for statutes, and 8 percent for constitutional amendments). So instead of the process being open to everyone, it is open mostly to those organized interests that can pay the entrance fee.

But the cure for the ills of democracy can be more democracy. Ballot measures have been approved in an attempt to address partisan gridlock — the “top two” primary system (in which the top two primary vote-getters advance to the general election, even if they are from the same party) and redistricting with a citizens commission (both for the State Legislature and Congressional districts). The public has an appetite for major reforms. It understands the state is not working.

The public complains about the lack of transparency in initiatives, often wondering what interests are really financing a proposal or the opposition to it. It complains about the complexity of propositions, sometimes not being clear what a no vote or a yes vote really means. And it complains about the torrent of ads, often misleading, untrue or sensational. Lastly, voters complain about not really knowing what a proposal will cost and how it will be paid for.

My colleagues and I heard all of these concerns when we gathered a scientific sample of more than 400 of the state’s registered voters in Torrance over the weekend of June 24-26, to discuss the ballot initiative and other elements of California governance. Our project, known as What’s Next California?, was the first statewide deliberative poll — a poll that gathers a scientific sample of respondents to answer questions both before and after they have had a chance to deliberate competing arguments and trade-offs. It provides a window on what voters think of direct democracy and what changes they would, and would not, support. Despite the evident problems, California voters have more confidence in the ballot initiative than they do in other elements of their state government. After spending a weekend immersing themselves in the issues and questioning competing experts about possible reforms, 65 percent of the sample expressed disappointment with California’s state government in general and 70 percent expressed disappointment in the Legislature, but only 37 percent were disappointed in the ballot initiative.

They do think the system needs reform, but in many cases not the reforms championed by policy elites. The popularity of proposals to involve the Legislature in the initiative process sank once voters in our poll discussed their implications. After deliberating, they did not want the Legislature to be able to place a counter-measure on the ballot or to amend an initiative that has passed, or even to remove an initiative from the ballot by enacting it into law. They held the Legislature in low regard (at an approval rate of only 14 percent). They viewed the ballot initiative as “the people’s process,” and they wanted the Legislature to keep its hands off it.

There was, however, strong support for requiring the names of the top five contributors for and against a measure to be published in the ballot pamphlet and for requiring ballot measures with new expenditures to indicate how they will be paid for. And there was majority support for lowering the threshold voting requirement in the Legislature for new taxes from two-thirds to 55 percent — a surprising willingness to reconsider the best-known aspect of Proposition 13. Regardless of party, the people wanted transparency and accountability and they wanted government to be able to make decisions.

These are reforms that people support once they really think through their implications. A real reform of the initiative process would let the people’s considered judgments — after a process of deliberation, and not just yes or no — set the agenda, not influential special interests that have the money to collect the petitions. Something like this happened in the first democracy, in ancient Athens, where a deliberating microcosm chosen by lot, the Council of 500, set the agenda for the votes by everyone in the assembly. If the ballot initiative process is to survive for another century, it must take into account the considered judgments of voters coming together to deliberate hard choices and not just cast a vote based on sound bites. If this succeeds it will help bring California much closer to the ideal that voters were striving for 100 years ago: legislation genuinely initiated by the people.

James S. Fishkin, a professor of communication and the director of the Center for Deliberative Democracy at Stanford University, is the author of “When the People Speak.”

Occupy Wall Street: A Blank Slate?

by Mike Maharrey

The Occupy *insert place here* movement could represent an incredible opportunity to advance the idea of decentralization and Constitutional restraint. It could also pose the greatest threat to liberty seen in a long time.

by Mike Maharrey

The protesters exemplify a growing frustration and disillusionment with the status quo seen across the United States over the last year. We’ve seen evidence of this in other measures of public opinion. A recent Gallup poll revealed more than half of all Americans are “dissatisfied with the nation’s governance,” and further that nearly half of those polled believe the federal government possesses too much power and poses a threat to individual liberty.

They’ve seen the spiraling debt, endless war, and increasingly concentrated power. They recognize the problem.

But many seem less sure of solutions. This creates the opportunity to educate the disaffected and create allies in the quest to rein in overreaching federal power. But it also leaves the door open for others to push the movement toward tyrannical actions.

TAC deputy director Bryce Shonka spent nearly five hours talking with folks at Occupy Seattle on Oct. 4. He said he saw a lot of potential in the gathering. He called it a, “Blank page youth movement waiting for leaders.”

What will we write on that page?

The initial call for Occupy Wall Street apparently came last summer from a magazine called AdBusters. The publication, based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, describes itself as, “a not-for-profit, reader-supported, 120,000-circulation magazine concerned about the erosion of our physical and cultural environments by commercial forces. Our work has been embraced by organizations like Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, has been featured in hundreds of alternative and mainstream newspapers, magazines, and television and radio shows around the world.”

David Graeber, an American anthropologist, was one of the initial organizers of Occupy Wall Street. He taught at Yale, but the university declined to rehire the controversial professor in 2007. He currently holds a position as Reader in Social Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is known for his anarchist views and has ties to Industrial Workers of the World, an international labor union that advocates for an abolishment of wages. The union website describes the organization’s goal

The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.

Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth.

In an interview with the Daily Kos, he explains how the event was organized. On July 2, a general assembly was held, but Graeber said that a Marxist group was already acting like it was running the show and it seemed more like a rally, so he and several others pulled a group together to hold a real assembly.

“AdBusters had already advertised the date to 80,000 people. And their date was a Saturday. You can’t really shut down Wall Street on a Saturday. So we were working under some significant constraints. We assembled 80 or 100 people and formed working groups for outreach, process, so forth and so on. And we began meeting every week,” Graeber told the Daily Kos.

The movement really has global roots.

“One thing that helped a lot was a smattering of people from Spain and Greece and Tunisia who had been doing this sort of thing more recently. They explained that the model that seemed to work was to take something that seemed to be public space, reclaim it, and build up an organization headquarters around that from which you can begin doing other things.”

Graeber described the root philosophy of the movement in terms of decentralization and direct democracy, thus the lack of any direct demands.

“We’re trying to reframe things away from the rhetoric of demands to a question of visions and solutions. Now, how that translates into actual social change is an interesting question. One way this has been done elsewhere is you have local initiatives that come out of the local assemblies,” he told the Daily Kos.

Of course, other groups have moved into the spotlight at well. Traditional left leaning organizations and unions have voiced support and participated in the occupation.

“It is organically happening, but there are definite problems that occur. We found this back in the days of the globalization movement. Unions were very supportive and provided resources, but they’re very different organizations. The real difficulty is how to work with people who are top-down and have a funding base, as it means there are things they can say in public and things they can’t, and groups where people can say whatever they want and the whole idea is to be decentralized. One problem I’ve already heard of is that people are coming in and changing the tenor of the general assemblies to speeches, and that’s not really what it’s supposed to be about. So you have to balance the aspect where you’re trying to show what direct democracy could be like and the effort to link up with groups that have a form of organization we’ve rejected,” Graeber said.

The message of decentralization certainly aligns with the core principles of the Tenth Amendment Center. After all, a powerful federal government dictating one-size-fits-all policy for the entire United States stands in direct opposition to the philosophy advocated by OWS organizers. On the other hand, direct democracy was something the founders of the United States found dangerous. James Madison wrote:

From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. 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 good news; Shonka said many participants in Seattle expressed a basic distrust of the feds.

“I don’t have any faith, and I don’t trust the current federal government,” one OWS Seattle occupier told Shonka.

“Right there you’ve got it,” Shonka said.

But the direction the action will ultimately take remains up in the air.

“They know a few things about a few things. Enough to be dangerous, or to be our allies,” Shonka said.

The small group gathered in front of the Chase Bank building in downtown Lexington seemed completely unaware of the bigger picture, expressing a hodge podge of ideas and points of view. One young man, a self-proclaimed socialist, advocated for higher taxes on the “rich” and corporations for the purpose of wealth redistribution. When the conversation turned to constitutional restraint as a possible solution to America’s problems, he turned away in disgust.

“Oh yeah, the Constitution that enslaved black people and women. Yeah. Right.”

But others said they simply wanted to live their lives, find decent jobs and earn a decent living. They described themselves as the “99 percent,” and although much of the discussion was tinged with class warfare rhetoric, the group seemed generally open to the message of constitutionally restrained government.

But lacking any core principles, they also seemed easily swayed and gave the impression that they would favor coercive government power if they thought it was wielded to their benefit.

After spending an hour or so with Occupy Lexington participants, I left them with a message.

“Remember, any power you give the federal government to advance your cause, whatever that may be, you grant the feds the same power to turn against you.”

Seems a fitting message in these times.

Michael Maharrey [send him email] is the Communications Director for the Tenth Amendment Center. He proudly resides in the original home of the Principles of ’98 – Kentucky. See his blog archive here and his article archive here. He also maintains the blog, Tenther Gleanings.

Democracy means governance through the people

Michael Efler is the spokesperson for ‘Mehr Demokratie,’ an initiative calling for more referenda and a better electoral law on the German and European level. He also says Western systems can learn from the Arab World.

"Mehr Demokratie" was founded in 1988. Today, the initiative has 13 regional branches, eight offices and close to 6,000 members. "Mehr Demokratie" is the largest non-party organization promoting democracy in the European Union. Michael Efler has been their spokesperson for two years.

Deutsche Welle: What are the biggest challenges for our modern democracy here in Germany?

Michael Efler: People have massively lost trust in our parliamentarian democracy over the past 20 years. They haven’t lost faith in the state form of democracy itself, rather in how it’s done. We are committed democrats in both Eastern and Western Europe, but people are irritated that politicians make decisions without taking into account the population’s opinion a lot of the time.

We need to regain this trust. But that’s only possible if you take citizens seriously. We need to create instruments of direct democratic participation – like referenda and a better electoral law – on the federal and on the European level. That’s the core challenge, amongst others, such as transparency.

What is your definition of democracy?

Democracy means governance through the people, and this is to be taken quite literally. It doesn’t mean that the people have to decide on everything. Our representative institutions are there for a reason, and we’re interested in keeping them. But they need to be complemented by participatory and direct democracy. Germany’s Basic Law stipulates in Article 20 that all power comes from the people. But how can a system be justified which reduces the people to voting their representatives for the Bundestag? That’s not enough.

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Michael EflerWhen the German Bundestag, the Parliament, passed the extension of the European Bail Out Fund on Thursday, for instance, the politicians decided about billions of euros in taxpayers’ money. This decision has unpredictable consequences. I’m not sure that our representatives have sufficient legitimization to make this kind of decision. The public happens to have a very different opinion in this matter. Too often, people in power will just base their decision on their own interests and ignore the citizens’ opinion.

Which challenges and which opportunities does the Internet provide?

Let’s start with the opportunities. Everybody knows that the Internet played a crucial role in the uprisings in North Africa. If we look at how we can make use of the Internet here in Germany, it can for instance play a role in collecting signatures for petitions. Interestingly, it hasn’t been integrated into legal procedures anywhere in the world. But I believe that’s something to tackle.

The European Citizens Initiative, which comes into effect in April 2012, gives voters the possibility to sign online – that’s a first in a participatory democratic instrument. The Internet is also a valuable source of information, of course.

But there are a number of challenges, too. We don’t have Internet access everywhere yet. And of course security standards must be guaranteed 100 percent. Citizens must be sure to know that their vote has been counted, and that it has been counted correctly and that no hacker has interfered.

Coming back to the Arab uprisings – what can Western democracies learn from this process?

In general, Western democracies can learn and must learn from other regions. We shouldn’t think that we’re the crème de la crème of democratic progress and that we have to teach others and not listen. There are of course totally different conditions in the Arab World still. It’s a region with traditionally autocratic and dictatorial forms of governing, election fraud happens all the time. Democracies are only slowly emerging.

The army and the police play a big role, human rights are being violated in many places. That’s of course something which the people were bound to rebel against, in countries like Libya or Egypt. There’s also still a lot of social injustice.

And that interestingly also exists in Europe, and it has led to the protests in Spain and Greece. So it’s a difficult comparison, but it’s important that we don’t just focus on democratization, but also on establishing social balance. And that’s clearly something we also need to work on here in Europe.

Interview: Nina Haase
Editor: Rob Mudge

Occupy Wall Street in Boston

I just received this press release. So it looks like I may not have to wait to get a better feel for what is going on. The protest is right by South Station so I’m thinking about taking the train. Boston has about the worst parking situation in the country, but nothing in downtown is really very far from anything else.

I ended up not being able to make it, but I did get a report, which I may post later.

“OCCUPY WALL STREET” INSPIRES PROTESTS IN BOSTON

I ended up not being able to make it, but I did get a report, which I may post later.

“OCCUPY WALL STREET” INSPIRES PROTESTS IN BOSTON

*Friday, September 30th, Concerned Citizens Gather for the Kick-off of Occupy Boston*

The conversation that began on Wall Street on September 17 has swept northward to Boston, and inspired a powerful national movement. Joining with nearly 100 actions in cities from Los Angeles to Dallas, Chicago,and Washington D.C., concerned citizens have come to speak out for greater economic equality.

Occupy Boston will gather at Dewey Square in Downtown Boston on Friday,September 30 at 6 p.m., to begin an ongoing protest, discuss the state of the union and develop out of that discussion a list of specific changes to ensure our government actually works for the benefit of all citizens.

Planning this event began with a group of over 200 people from all walks of life who assembled on Boston Common Tuesday evening to discuss taking action. Paul Harris of the Guardian covered the meeting, saying,”[..]the people behind Occupy Boston showed a strong dose of media savvy and organizational skill on [Tuesday] night, as they drew a committed crowd of volunteers to their cause: to occupy a slice of the city.”

Occupy Boston is the beginning of an ongoing discussion about the problems with America’s economic system and how it has damaged government and the fabric of society as a whole. The top 1% owns 50% of the nation’s wealth -and more importantly, how that wealth is used undermines the founding principles of America’s democracy.

Through the use of direct democracy, Occupy Boston is working to define and solve the problems of: an opaque and exclusive government, a Wall Street without conscience, and a state struggling to guarantee basic human rights. Everyone is invited to join this conversation about reforming how business and government operate.

In the coming days and weeks, Occupy Boston will persist in advocating the need for change, defining the change we need, and reaching out to policy-makers, business leaders, and the citizens of our Republic in this mission.”Our country is owned by the top 1%. We are the 99%.”

Join the conversation!

For more information about Occupy Boston visit http://occupyboston.com/

Wieland, Or The Transformation: An American Tale by Charles Brockden Brown

Published at 6:14 PM on September 19, 2011

By Daniel O’Leary

Wieland, Or The Transformation:
An American Tale by Charles Brockden Brown

I Hear Voices … Two Centuries Old

<i>Wieland, Or The Transformation: An American Tale</i> by Charles Brockden Brown

Published at 6:14 PM on September 19, 2011

By Daniel O’Leary

Wieland, Or The Transformation:
An American Tale by Charles Brockden Brown

I Hear Voices … Two Centuries Old

Although not the very first, Charles Brockden Brown is likely the most cherished and highly regarded penman of the first generation of Early American writers. Born in Philadelphia in 1771, four years before the Battles of Lexington and Concord, and in the midst of the events that led to the outbreak of the American Revolution, Brown’s politics and worldview directly stemmed from the tumultuous times.

Early in his life (he died at the ripe young age of 39), Brown forsook his parentally determined calling as a lawyer in favor of transforming himself into a man of letters. He undertook an ambitious literary self-education and wrote (or started) various novels and fictional political dialogues, most famously the feminist pamphlet, “Alcuin.” Brown is best known for four gothic novels—Wieland, Ormond, Arthur Merwyn, and Edgar Huntly—written in 18 months and published from 1798 to 1800.

Brown is widely regarded as the father of American Gothic fiction, a form that emerged in Europe during the latter half of the 1700s as a dark, generally melodramatic development of late medieval Romance literature. He used genre conventions, but also fashioned significant and unique innovations, repopulating the gloomy Gothic themes with the elements of the relatively young history of America. Many of America’s most beloved authors, including Melville, Hawthorne, Poe, and Fenimore Cooper, considered Brown an important influence.

With his intellectual and Enlightenment interests, Brown invested Gothic fiction for the first time with a higher and more urgent calling than pure sensational entertainment. He used the genre to explore a dark and irrational underside of his life and times—the secret and hidden consequences of the new American political system.

Those explorations feel eerily relevant today, in a nation that seems somehow politically idealogued and atomized at the same time.

Wieland unspools as a dark and mysterious American tale. The plot, complex and intricate, begins with a bit of history concerning the immigration of the Wieland family and the somewhat fantastical rise and fall of the father of the novel’s protagonists, Clara and her brother, Theodore. (Spoiler alert here, too good not to mention: The father dies in one of the first recorded literary episodes of spontaneous combustion.)

Wieland is an epistolary novel. Clara Wieland narrates, presenting the tale as a letter written to a friend. Clara is a comfortably independent and well-educated young woman living in the heart of the American colonies—something of an anomaly for her time. She possesses a sound mind and a strong sense of virtue, but also a flirtatious, playful side. Brother Theodore, a virtuous, extremely knowledgeable colonist, carries an air of “gravity” and harbors a fervent, but rational religious streak. He and his wife, Catherine Pleyel, live near Clara in Mettingen, a rural hamlet of Pennsylvania. Catherine’s brother, Henry Pleyel, is a friend of the group, and it appears that the four have known each other since youth.

Together the four young Americans spend their time in an idyllic independent rural paradise, a plausible working model of Jeffersonian agrarian virtue. They live a utopian and carefree existence. They read the classics. They engage in rational debate and discussion. All characters share equal footing, man and woman. Each harbors different scientific and religious beliefs. Strikingly, in contrast to today’s political climate, these four love each other and respect each other’s opinions despite very different intellectual and religious ideologies.

The honorable, intellectual rustic serenity is soon disrupted as strange happenings begin to plague each character. The first sign comes when Theodore Wieland, while walking along a path, encounters the seemingly disembodied voice of his wife. He quickly returns to his house to find Catherine home, where she’s been all along. A new path—of twists and turns—proliferate from this event. Henry Pleyel next hears his sister’s voice in the woods, this time in the company of Theodore. What first seemed a fantastical “creation of the mind” quickly appears to be supernatural. Things then take a sordid, sexual turn as Clara Wieland hear a voice inside her bedroom—that of a man, not Catherine.

We come to learn that the presence of these voices is the work of Carwin the Biloquist, a mysterious and shadowy figure with gifts of ventriloquism. Carwin has arrived from Spain, but was originally born in America. He’s admitted into the group and revered for his remarkable intellect, and he’s a hot topic of conversation even when not present. His double-sided character represents two primal fears: the unrest of foreign infiltration … and the deliberate wiles and deceit of powerful educated Americans.

Soon after Carwin’s mysterious appearance, Clara again hears voices in her bedroom. She finds Carwin hiding in her closet. Carwin confesses his intention to rape Clara late that night, but claims that a loud and divine voice had interposed, commanding him not to commit the crime … and saving Clara’s life.

That same night, after leaving Clara’s house, Carwin uses his voice-throwing ability to stage an auditory spectacle on a nearby riverbank within earshot of Henry Pleyel. The false revelation leads him to believe Clara and Carwin are having an affair. This suspicion drives him mad, and damages his relationship with Clara. When Henry learns Carwin is on the lam from authorities in Europe for robbery and murder, things spiral out of control. Relationships are demolished, family members betrayed, lives lost, and minds destroyed.

In an “Advertisement” prefacing the text of Wieland , Brown states that “his purpose is neither selfish nor temporary, but aims at the illustration of some important branches of the moral constitution of man.” He goes on to explain that “it is the business of moral painters to exhibit their subject in its most instructive and memorable forms.”

Brown’s effort to delineate what he calls “the moral constitution of man” is essentially an aim to define the innate nature of humans—what philosophical contemporaries termed natural man. The young American author deliberately aligns the project of his fiction with the larger phenomenon of scientific and philosophical discovery that rose from the Enlightenment. He views himself as a “moral painter” and writes to spark enlightenment debates over the nature of human psychology, in a way that would be “instructive” to his fellow man.

Many Enlightenment thinkers were convinced that apprehending the innate nature of individual man would allow them to design systems of government directed toward promoting the virtue and security of individuals. Those debates mattered in the age when Brown created his fiction, an age that fed his dark thoughts about the country’s political system and made his synthesis of political debate and gothic themes most apt. From 1786-1787, Daniel Shays led a rebellion in rural Massachusetts to protest unreasonably high taxes and rampant foreclosures on the farms of lower-class farmers who had fought for the Revolution. The Whiskey Rebellion occurred in 1794 as a similar uprising of rural, lower-class Americans taxed out of their livelihood by the Federal government, specifically under the influence of Federalist Alexander Hamilton.

In 1798, Congress passed four acts supposedly intended to promote the defense and security of the American people, most famously the Alien and Sedition Acts. Essentially, the Alien act allowed for the deportation of aliens deemed a threat to the safety and good of the American people and government, while the Sedition Act allowed for more or less unrestricted government censorship of press deemed critical of those in power and their actions. In large part, these measures aimed to prevent French political radicalism—another way of referring to democratic fervor—from infecting the minds of citizens of the American republic.

The Federalist Party presided over the fledgling American government in these trying times. Federalists wanted a government insulated from the common man of America—the uneducated rabble, as they perceived them. Anglophile Federalists feared the infiltration of French radicalism, because they worried that average Americans could be incited to the kind of democratic enthusiasm (and bloodshed) associated with the instability of the French revolution. Rather than promoting a deliberative republic in which a diversity of opinions could be synthesized into a common good, the Federalists preferred a less-democratic, more-uniform national front. (Ironically, the language and the fear tactics they employed were eerily reminiscent of those used by the Jacobins leaders of the French Revolution who moved to purify the French nation of anti-revolutionary sentiment. That movement resulted in the Reign of Terror.)

Brown was an educated young man, enlightened beyond many of his contemporaries. He was also a Quaker, a religion endowed with an unflinching sense of equality among genders and races. Brown stands as one of our country’s earliest feminists, and although no full-fledged abolitionist movement existed at the time, his writings strongly suggest he would have been a strong proponent. These beliefs informed his politics and his writing.

It is undeniably clear that one of Brown’s key political influences was Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the man after whom Brown modeled his own literary development.

Rousseau remains one of the most influential and controversial political thinkers of all time. “On the Social Contract” ranks among the most important political writings in the philosophical canon and has continued to influence important thinkers, including John Rawls and Hannah Arendt, into modern times

In “the Social Contract,” Rousseau advocated a direct democracy. He envisioned a democracy sustained by a system of public education that would enable all citizens to participate effectively in matters of the state. They would become virtuous and knowledgeable through learning.

Under the Social Contract, each citizen would express individual will or opinion on all decisions, and the sum of all these viewpoints constituted what Rousseau called a “general will”—the only “Sovereign” authority and force. Government would simply be a group of public servants that enacted the general will precisely as expressed by the body politic. Importantly, those in government would never try to represent or forecast the will of the people, and they would never make decisions on their behalf. Why? Rousseau believed that every representation necessarily involved a distortion, that humans were inherently incapable of selflessly representing others’ interests. He held that the condition within the Social Contract was the most perfect state humanity could attain.

Brown believed his mission was to provide this enlightening kind of education to the citizens of America so that they could understand and influence the affairs of their own government. He joined an intellectual group based in New York called the Friendly Club. Composed of prominent physicians, historians, lawyers, artists, and, of course, writers, club members read current and classic texts, and debated ways to participate in politics and influence public opinion. Above all, they wished to disseminate knowledge throughout the new American Republic as the path to direct democracy.

Soon after Wieland published, Brown sent a copy to the newly elected president taking office in 1801, Thomas Jefferson. One can’t help but think that Brown hoped that Jefferson would understand his message and restore America to the principles Brown believed most important, most importantly the direct democracy he believed the Republic was founded upon.

Of course, our contemporary political scene bears no relation to direct democracy or direct participation. The system’s theoretical nature of representation is far from ideal, and the issue of representation in our current structure of government has recently been complicated by the effects of the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court and by the influence of special interests and lobbyists. Corporations and the incredibly small percentage of people that control them now find disproportionate representation in our political system, and individuals have little actual representation whatsoever.

In Wieland, the villainous Carwin’s vocal representations not only misrepresent what is good, but they also deliberately seduce and trick characters into various forms of emotional and physical pain and suffering. Brown means for these dynamics to deliberately represent the destructive and seductive nature of political rhetoric.

This issue is not foreign to the modern reader. Political rhetoric in the modern media and lawmaking arenas creates the kind of foggy legislative paralysis that inhibits promotion of the common good. Stasis is not the only issue—people endure pain and suffering while they wait for politicians to act. Modern political language and voice is also employed to mislead people and to obscure truth, just as Carwin does with his vocal trickery in Wieland. We see these tactics on display today in debate over taxes on the rich, the health-care debate, and the budget crisis.

The Tea Party, in fact, results from the anger people feel towards a government they perceive as wholly uninterested in representing their interests or solving their problems. Their cri de Coeur is Brown’s too. They want better representation and a government that will do what people want it to do. Unfortunately, while the Tea Party shares Brown’s affinity for this type of political representation, the movement clearly lacks the intellectual drive and direction that focused Brown and made his efforts both viable and admirable.

Wieland is a remarkable novel, at once both a warning and a lesson for old times and new. For Brown, Rousseau’s “general will” was the only legitimate sovereign voice for the new Republic … or republics to come. The final tragic chapters of Wieland capture Brown’s idealistic anxiety … and should capture our own. It’s a damning view of the consequences of a political system that feels today all to familiar—an increasingly concentrated, disproportionately wealthy and isolated form of representation combined with the unwillingness of able people to express their own free will.

Daniel O’Leary is a senior studying English and Psychology at Northwestern University in Chicago.