I can't think my way out of one puzzle about politics: a government has to be stable and reliable and trustworthy over a long time for people to build rich lives inside it. I have to trust that the rules won't change in the middle of my projects, or I can undertake only small projects. Representative governments are as stable as the settled character of the people represented. In any country of substantial size and diversity that's -- not very stable at all.
To put this in contemporary terms: if you don't like Bush, electing Kerry still leaves you facing the uncomfortable fact that this country elected Bush (sort of) and may, after Kerry, elect another Bush. Bush3 will work very hard, one assumes to undo whatever Kerry did, and Kerry2 will pay Bush3 the same compliment, and so it will go.
I think it is no accident that, while people talk a lot about democracy, in practice Americans opt over and over again for dynasties, and have so opted since the foundation of the republic. Americans sense the need for more constancy than the national character can provide, and they seek that constancy in family traditions and the comforts of family look-alikes. Another Bush in the White House. Another Kennedy in Congress.
The problem for representative government is to ensure a greater stability in public policy than the character of the people can guarantee or support. In The Day the Earth Stood Still, they did it with killer robots. Cordwainer Smith suggests that a non-governmental quasi-religious order might do the trick. I don't have the answer to this one. Anything except representative governments frightens me, and yet I can't see how representative government can possibly work, over the necessary periods of time.
Posted by shea0017 at May 26, 2004 4:35 PM