Morality, Religion & Philosophy: January 2008 Archives
Despite many proposals to "fix" the "broken" primary system, I may be the only American left who likes the undemocratic status quo. Most opponents of the primary system lament that a small handful of states do most of the winnowing, leaving the majority of citizens with only a few choices and little direct say in the nomination process. All true!
But remember: voting is not a "right", it is merely a means to an end. The goal is to create and maintain an honest, fair, and open government that will protect us and preserve our liberty. Democracy is one tool we can use to build that government, but democracy should not be seen as an end unto itself. Our Founding Fathers knew this, which is why the voting franchise was limited even though the rights protected by the Constitution were reserved for all people. They believed that the rights of everyone would be best protected by reserving the power to vote to a subset of the population. History has shown that they were right in some regards and wrong in others, but no one can dispute that America has been only somewhat democratic since its inception.
Even now there are a whole host of undemocratic controls built into our government to prevent tyranny by the democratic mob. The Senate is perhaps the most obvious example, its membership being based states rather than the citizenry. The Supreme Court is also undemocratic, as is the Electoral College, as is the President's veto power, as is the requirement that both houses of Congress approve a bill before it can be signed into law, and so forth and so on. These institutions are democratic to varying degrees in that the wielders of power somehow trace their authority back to the People, but that derivation is purposefully indirect. And these institutions have served us reasonably well for more than 200 years, preserving for us the most enduring Republic and the safest and freest society on the face of the earth.
And so the fact that my primary votes have never counted as much as those cast in Iowa or New Hampshire doesn't distress me. I think Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina are fairly representative of the population as a whole, and I don't feel like the results would have turned out much differently if Missouri has been an early primary state. Additionally, I like that a little-known candidate can compete in these small states and ramp up their campaign gradually rather than having to fight in California, New York, and Florida right out of the starting gate. Without a system like we've got, Barack Obama would have had no chance against Hillary Clinton, and Mike Huckabee would have been dead in the water.
I for one hope that we stick with something similar to the current system. I'm not adverse to any change whatsoever, but I think it would be a mistake to make drastic changes to a system that has served us pretty well thus far. Remember that democracy is only a means to an end, a tool to help us maintain our liberties and security. It's ironic that people simultaneously complain about the primary system and how "one vote can't make a difference". Be content as a cog in our wonderful Republic that somehow keeps chugging along despite its flaws.
Even though we humans can only perceive three dimensions of space and one dimension of time, Itzhak Bars thinks there may be two dimensions that we're missing.
"There isn't just one dimension of time," Itzhak Bars of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles tells New Scientist. "There are two. One whole dimension of time and another of space have until now gone entirely unnoticed by us." ...Changing our picture of time from a line to a plane (one to two dimensions) means that the path between the past and future could loop back on itself, allowing you to travel back and forwards in time and allowing the famous grandfather paradox, where you could go back and kill your grandfather before your mother was born, thereby preventing your own birth.
He has proposed some experiments for testing his theory with the Large Hadron Collider when it opens this year.
It's fascinating to consider how humanity might appear to a creature capable of perceiving all six dimensions described by Bars. I highly recommend the novella Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions to get a flavor for such speculation. (Having been written in 1884, Flatland is available free from Project Gutenberg.)
