POLLSTERS AND POLLS, BAH, HUMBUG

         REPUBLIC INTO A DEMOCRACY OR THE REIGN OF THE POLLSTERS

In school I learned our government was not a democracy. In a pure democracy every person votes on every issue. Instead we are a republic, or a representational democracy, which means every person can vote to elect leaders or legislators, and these supposedly wiser men are empowered to pass the laws, and make the decisions necessary for running a government. A pure democracy could work only in smaller groups.  When clans gathered together into larger groups, forming towns and states, and technology allowed these groups to have food surpluses, which allowed different people to specialize in different things, some people were in charge of the hunting, some were farming, some became artisans, some soldiers, and some, usually braver, stronger, more experienced became the leaders. At first it was especially to the stronger, who often seized power, which then often became hereditary. We had our centuries of kings and despots, but eventually the demand to return to each person having a say in decisions affecting their lives, led to the idea of everybody voting on who the leaders would be, and then the leaders would vote on what their laws would be. The era of the grand republics was born. Of course I’m simplifying this, but it’s hard to condense centuries into paragraphs.

For the most part this system has worked admirably, as long as one person or group of persons, didn’t seize control, and refuse to relinquish it. If laws were passed that weren’t for the good of the group, the leaders could be voted out, and hopefully better ones put in their place. The world, and the problems each group faces, are constantly changing, which always calls for new tactics and solutions. As long as a society remains flexible, as long as it can continue to change to meet ever-changing challenges, as long as the electorate stays educated, and chooses even wiser people to lead them, they can have the best of governments. The United States was an example, not always perfect, in fact far from perfect, our Civil War an example of what can happen if we lose the path. Eventually we gatheried the strength of all the peoples who make up our diverse country to create one of the most powerful nations to ever exist. But suddenly we are standing on the brink of an era that could change all that.

With the advent of computers, and the revolution in communication technology, the Age of Instant Messaging, we are bombarded with multitudes of daily polls, on the spot analysis of what the pollsters are telling us the ‘Majority” wants. How we can ever believe their validity, when over and over again they are proven to be worthless, I’ll never know, but if our leaders start to make their decisions on the basis of these polls, instead of their own best judgments, we will have lost our republic and reverted to a democracy. I do not think this is in our best interest.

It is one thing to give everyone an equal vote to choose our leadership, hoping the majority can distinguish the dross from the gold. We know this isn’t always true, sometimes good looks and charm can outweigh wisdom and experience, sometimes it seems we even elect the village idiot to run our affairs, but for the most part, the people we elect usually rise to the occasion. And I hope they will continue to make the good judgments they were chosen to make, and not start letting the majority rule on every decision, based on whatever that day’s poll, flawed as it so often is, tells them the people want. Come on leaders, LEAD, that is what we chose you to do. Can you imagine running a household, with the children deciding, by popular vote, what food the family will buy and eat, what days they will go to school, and for how long each day, and what they will study? Can the factory line worker decide how much money a business should borrow to expand its business, or where to build its new factory? After you’ve chosen your doctor, do you try to tell him how to do the operation you may or may not need? Do you poll all your friends and then tell the doctor,” My friends say you must use method A and not B”? I’m taking it to the absurd, but when we have a poll for everything and our leaders become afraid to lead, or do so only on the basis of what the latest poll tells them “the people” want, it is equally absurd. I never hear figures on how many people they based their polls on, where the people came from, and if the numbers were statistically significant? When we are told 42 percent favor this and 44 percent favor that and 14 percent are undecided, it is meaningless. But that was one of the latest polls I heard on this morning’s news.

Enough with the polls and the pollsters! I don’t want them running our government. Even if they were infallible, and always correct, I do not want a return to every person voting on every issue. As people whose jobs lie in other directions, we do not have time to study in depth every issue; that is what we are paying our legislators to do. Even they break the almost overwhelming job into different committee assignments.

We must stay informed as best possible, we mustn’t be afraid to voice our opinions directly to our leaders, but they must still act, using all of their knowledge and not do just what pollsters, or the majority seems to tell them. I want wise people who devote their time to studying each issue in depth, in other words the person I chose to legislate and be a leader, making these decisions. If you agree with me, write your legislator, and tell him, do his job, put on his thinking camp and make decisions on the best information he can find on the issue and not what the man on the street knows about it.

       SMALLER GOVERNMENT- IN YOUR DREAMS!

Anybody whose mantra is "smaller government" is living in the past, when our country was smaller in population, and simpler in demands. Do you really want to go back to everyone having his own well, (no municipal water supply, or sewage collection), his own fireplace, make his own candles, (no nationwide power grid) and growing his own food, because there are no essential cross country farm to market roads? Do you want to give up all our highways, and trains, and planes that fly, and all the government actions that made these things possible, that keep them working with maximum safety? Do you want to go back to the danger of eating uninspected food, before the USDA and FDA went to work to save us? For years our government kept our mail circulating through the worst of conditions. There is nothing in your daily life that doesn’t depend on a functioning government, and the bigger our nation grows, and the more complicated our lives become, the more bureaus, and departments, and regulations we are going to need to keep everything working properly. The more we move about this great big country, whether it is moving merchandise or ourselves, whether for business or pleasure, the more we need nationwide laws, that allow us this freedom of movement. How would we like it, if we had to present a passport as we crossed each state border? How would we like it, if each state regulated how much of its coal or oil or water was allowed to leave its borders, and which state or states could share its resources?

We are one nation, for heaven’s sake, and if we attempt to Balkanize the United States of America by drawing lines, and more lines the UNITED states can’t cross, we will become as trivial as all the separate states of Germany or Italy would be today, if they didn’t act as a unified whole. Not only did all these separate states get together to make a unified and more powerful whole, but all of Europe is working hard to keep the European Union alive, a Herculean effort, but probably the best war deterrent there could be.

Let’s not let our powerful, most desirable country in the world fall apart because we are afraid of government, because we want to turn clocks back to a harsher time, because we believe the lies and hatreds that are being spewed by those who like to blame what ever problems they are having on anybody but themselves, and the government is often a good target. For a country as large and complex as we, and the world, has become, we need more laws and regulations, not fewer. We need to keep changing the laws, as situations change, and we need to be creative in making new ones, but every time one of our legislators refuses to do his duty of legislating, we take steps backwards. Every person that attempts to de-legitimize our government, is leading you down the thorny path to chaos and anarchy. Every politician who is afraid to legislate needs another day job. We don’t pay them to sit and do nothing, and we certainly should never vote into office someone whose program is “smaller government.”  That’s just a catch phrase that means to do nothing. It doesn’t work in the world we live in now, only in our dreams, imperfectly remembered, of an imperfect past.