John McGowan, pinch-hitting for Michael Berube, posted an important diary today on Berube’s blog. He’s talking about democracy, and that it can never be real with one-party rule:
The basic idea is simple: it’s not a democracy unless the “outs” have a reasonable hope of someday becoming the “ins.” Another way to put the same idea: it’s not a democracy (in Iraq or anyplace else) unless you have had at least two peaceful transitions in which an incumbent party loses an election and hands over power to a rival party.
Ghana, which had a peaceful transition recently, is well on its way to democracy, then. Iraq, which has no “opposition” within the system (just a strange ruling coalition), is not.
Here, we are moving away from democracy (defined this way): just look at the House of Representatives today. James Sensenbrenner:
chairman of the panel, abruptly gaveled the meeting to an end and walked out, followed by other Republicans. Sensenbrenner declared that much of the testimony, which veered into debate over the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, was irrelevant.
When one party can make such a claim, no matter the topic, and bring discussion to a close, the government is losing sight of the possibility (it used to be the fact) of transition, that the other side will eventually be in power again.
That may be, in fact, the whole point: the Republicans are banking on the idea that there never will be a transition of power between parties again in the United States. So they no longer are interested in the rights of the minority. So Sensenbrenner can turn of the microphones of those whose points he doesn’t feel are important.
So Sensenbrenner can ignore the concepts of debate and free speech that once were the basis of our country’s political discourse and stability.
No longer is it one party that is on the outs. Today, democracy itself, I’m afraid, is on the outs.
Nice diary.
What’s that thing where you design a government under which you will live but the catch is you don’t know which role you’ll have in it? Because IIRC, people are very careful to protect minority views when they might be a minority.
Your references to the “outs” is a smaller subset of this.
Good comment. The Republicans are doing everything they can to remove that catch.
that the Republicans’ language and attitude projects no concern of facing the voters. The accelerating incivility and ‘let ’em have it’ invective makes this clear. The coup d’etat has already happened. We are frogs in a pot of water that is heating up. When will those who speak of retaking the congress in 2006 wake up to the fact that the DRE’s are rigged and it is already too late? How do we propose to change to paper ballots now?
Aaron, you are right, and I hope this is also posted at dK and doesn’t just scroll away. We need now to come up with a new plan for awakening the electorate. Only if the polling is very lopsided our way can we hope to hold on by our fingernails to the ledge long enough to lift ourselves back up and retrieve our democracy.