In his article titled Too Much of a Good Thing – Why We need less democracy, Economist and the former Director of the office of Budget and Management for President Obama, Peter Orszag stated, “In an 1814 letter to John Taylor, John Adams wrote that “there never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” That may read today like an overstatement, but it is certainly true that our democracy finds itself facing a deep challenge: During my recent stint in the Obama administration as director of the Office of Management and Budget, it was clear to me that the country’s political polarization was growing worse—harming Washington’s ability to do the basic, necessary work of governing. If you need confirmation of this, look no further than the recent debt-limit debacle, which clearly showed that we are becoming two nations governed by a single Congress—and that paralyzing gridlock is the result. We need less Democracy.”i Regardless of how he intended this statement to read, the words have a lot of meaning in and of themselves among the American people. Clearly there is some confusion about the word democracy and its place as it relates to American understanding of it.
We constantly hear commentaries suggesting we are a democracy, for that reason it would seem prudent to repeat it over and over again that we are not. But of equal importance is the understanding of what we are (were meant to be) and the sippery slope we are traveling on. Modern America in its haste for tolerance and understanding for all has drifted away from our core beliefs and our individual liberties as protected by the Constitution. Individual freedom and liberty were at the forfront of the founders mindset, these rights were put into place in an effort to protect our individual rights and freedoms, they did not intend to dictate rights and liberties for the masses as a whole. CONTINUE READING
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