Democracy on a mass scale can be a good way to keep the peace, but it rarely produces much to be proud of.
That's why the founders made democracy such a small part of our system. Federal judges don't stand for election (nor did U.S. senators, till 1912). Even the president is supposed to be chosen not by some mob, but by either Congress or an electoral college (whose delegates are not required to mimic the popular vote. In 1972 a Virginia elector cast his vote for Libertarian nominees John Hospers and Theodora "Toni" Nathan -- the first woman so honored. That elector's vote counted; he was not led away in chains.)
If the group must settle on one thing for lunch, by all means let's get whatever the plurality of "voters" want. Just don't try to convince me the ballot results "prove" McDonald's offers the best cuisine in town.
Consider the recent balloting among 700 "music professionals" which led cable network VH-1 to declare the Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction" to be the greatest rock song in history.
The winning entry may be the most familiaro song in rock history. It may be the most easily recognizedo song in rock history. But it isn't even the Rolling Stones'o best song, for heaven's sake. (This is the band that brought us "Brown Sugar," "Sympathy for the Devil," and "Tumbling Dice.")
"Satisfaction," one will recall, is the classic anthem of teen rebellion against a commercial culture whose pitchmen tell us "how white our shirts can be" -- a major social crisis of the '60s which seems to have receded a bit with time, recorded by a set of scruffy teens who, at the earliest opportunity, ran out to buy country estates and Bentleys and medium-sized Latin American countries with more amiable banking laws. (And God bless them for it.)
Anyway, what happens in such "democratic" tallies is that such masterpieces as "Stairway to Heaven (No. 4), "Hotel California" (No. 7), "Johnny B. Goode (No. 15) and "Layla" (No. 16) -- not to mention the life work of folks like Lennon & McCartney -- effectively cancel each other out. Acquired tastes are cast out, and what remains is a consensus of mediocrity. We can only thank our lucky stars the victory didn't go to "Wild Thing" (No. 50) or "Hang on Sloopy."
Which brings us to the similar exercise now occurring in the parallel political universe, where Americans will soon choose whether the next corrupt millionaire socialist to rule America will be Al Gore, George W. Bush, John McCain, or Bill Bradley.
Oh, is "socialist" too harsh? Just tell me which of these four candidates stands opposed to graduated federal taxes on income, corporations, and inheritances; and massive federal insurance programs for health care ("Medicare," "Medicaid") and old-age pensions ("Social Security.")
Calls for such programs made up the major platform planks of Norman Thomas' 1932 Socialist Party, which even Franklin Roosevelt and his Democrats savagely reviled at the time as "fantastic and un-American" -- even if they did promptly turn around and enact most of it, as soon as they'd gotten themselves safely elected by promising "an immediate and drastic reduction of governmental expenditures ... of not less than 25 percent ... by abolishing useless commissions and offices."
The only way to identify a non-socialist in American politics today is to wait for the Washington Post, the New York Times, and everyone allowed to appear on camera for CBS and NBC to shriek in unison that said candidate is a "doctrinaire right-wing extremist" who only gets votes "as a protest" or by "buying them."
These commentators quadrennially mew that the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary are a terrible place to start choosing our presidents, complaining the demographics of these states are too white and too rural. They especially object to the caucus process, in which only the votes of those who are active in a political party, own cars, and are able to follow a map to the caucus location, count.
What this objection really means, of course, is that the kind of folks who dominate the New Hampshire (and particularly the Iowa) process are politically knowledgable Americans who work and pay taxes, speak English, and may even once have read the U.S. Constitution.
Just look at how quickly these media poobahs assured you nothing important happened in Iowa last Monday. When they don't mind flogging hundreds of thousands of words about some 6-year-old Cuban immigrant found floating in an inner tube, why the big rush to drop the curtain of silence and "move on to New Hampshire" (and then quickly to states with even bigger numbers, where the races are even more dependent on the media), assuring us the Iowa caucuses are a dumb show that mean nothing, nothing at all?
Because Iowans this winter got a close look at two candidates whom the national news media hope you'll never get to see. Other than Libertarians (who are apparently all painted that special shade of blue which disappears when placed in front of a TV camera), if one had to name the two candidates active in the process today who would be most likely to completely eliminate the personal income tax and the tyrannical, counterproductive War on Drugs, those candidates would clearly be magazine publisher Steve Forbes, and a black American and former ambassador named Alan Keyes.
And when all those taxpaying rural Republicans got together in Iowa Monday night, only 40 percent of them voted for Texas Democrat (even Texas Democrats say he's a Texas Democrat) George W. Bush -- the anointed, big-money, "inevitable" candidate who was immediately declared the "victor." Wasn't he?
While 44 percent of them voted for either Steve Forbes or Alan Keyes.
Didn't they?
But that wasn't worth a headline. Oh no. Because that might indicate that, after 67 years of "New Deal," the yokels are starting to wake up.
So it's: Pay no attention to the little people behind the curtain. They're not "diverse" enough. They're too "conservative." They're too "white." They're too "rich."
They're too inconvenient.
Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. His new book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available at 1-800-244-2224.
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Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com
"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." -- John Hay, 1872
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken
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