“Shouldn’t the community have some say in this before it’s just decided for us?”
I saw that question in a comment this week and have been thinking about it ever since.
Because yes. Of course, the community should have a say. But maybe not quite in the way we have come to think.
Somewhere along the line, a whole bunch of us got the idea that democracy means everybody gets to vote on everything. That if a city council, county commission, school board, or legislature makes a decision without first asking the whole community what it thinks, then somehow the people have been left out of the process.
Except that isn’t really how our government was built.
We have representative government. Which means we vote for people and then, for better or worse, those people make decisions. That is their job.
It is why we have city council members, county commissioners, school board trustees, legislators, and members of Congress instead of dragging the whole town down to City Hall every Tuesday night to vote on sewer lines, copier contracts, and whether the public works department needs a new pickup.
Depending on the week, that might be entertaining. The idea is much older than our local government meetings, of course. The Declaration of Independence says governments get their “just powers from the consent of the governed,” and that is the most important part.
Government does not get its authority from the king. Or the governor. Or the mayor. Or some guy with a title and a nameplate. It gets its authority from us.
But that has become the difficult part.
How exactly do a bunch of free people govern themselves without making an absolute mess of it? The Founders spent a great deal of time on that question. They did not particularly trust government. They also did not particularly trust us.
Which, when you think about it, was probably wise.
James Madison gets into this in Federalist No. 10, which is my favorite of the Federalist Papers and one I keep coming back to. Madison was worried about factions. Basically, people.
Groups of people with strong opinions and interests who might get enough power to run over everybody else.
Madison understood that you could not get rid of factions because you would have to get rid of liberty to do it. As long as people are free, they are going to disagree.
I feel like Madison would have taken one look at Facebook and felt terribly vindicated.
His concern was what happens when one faction gets enough power to impose its will on everyone else. And that includes the majority. We toss around “majority rules” as though that is the whole American system. If 51 percent of us could do absolutely anything we wanted to the other 49 percent, we would have a pretty lousy system of liberty.
One of my professors during my undergraduate studies was always reminding us that a majority can, quite literally, vote itself out of a democracy. So the Founders built in layers.
Representation. Two houses of Congress. Separate branches of government. Checks and balances. Federal and state power. Elections. A Constitution that limits what government can do even when a whole lot of people would very much like it to do something.
It is maddeningly inefficient. On purpose.
Representative government is one of those layers. We elect people to listen, study, argue, deliberate, and make decisions on our behalf. Sometimes they make decisions we like, and sometimes they make decisions that leave us wondering what on earth they were thinking. That does not necessarily mean the public was denied a voice.
Our voice came earlier when we elected them and sent them off to handle what truck to buy.
We also have a voice while they serve — we can call them, write them, show up at meetings, read the agendas, ask questions, request records, stand at the podium during public comment, raise a fuss, and organize our neighbors. And when election time comes around, we can fire them. That is an awfully big say.
The more useful question, then, may not be, “Why didn’t they ask us first?”
It may be: Did they actually have the authority to make that decision? Did they follow the law? Was the decision made in public when it was supposed to be? Did the public get proper notice? Did they listen before they voted? Did they explain themselves? And are we still willing to trust them with that authority?
Those questions, though, require us to know something about how our government actually works. Which, inconveniently, is where civics comes in. A class our parents had, but many of us did not. That’s a whole other column.
Federalist No. 10 is a good place to start if you want to understand why the Founders chose a republic instead of direct democracy. Federalist No. 51 is another.
That is the one where Madison writes, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”
I love that line; it tells you almost everything you need to know.
The system was not designed with the assumption that politicians would always behave beautifully. Or that voters would always be wise. Or that everybody would agree.
It was designed around the knowledge that human beings are human beings.
Which brings me back to that comment. “Shouldn’t the community have some say in this before it’s just decided for us?”
Yes, we should, and we do. The trick is knowing where that say takes place, when we exercise it, and what we have already entrusted our representatives to do.
Which, it turns out, requires knowing how the government works.
Before she started local community newspapers, Rachel Dahl studied political theory at the University of Nevada, worked on political campaigns, and served on the Fallon City Council. She also taught government and civics as a discussion leader for Western Traditions at the University of Nevada and at Western Nevada College.
Comment
Comments