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Politics : The Left Wing Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mac Con Ulaidh who wrote (4661)	4/30/2001 2:49:22 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 6089

politicians are OUR representatives. We are responsible for what we get, and responsible for how our nation acts. It's not like all those treaties with the Indians got broken without a lot of public consent. That's the theory. Do you still believe it in practice? Have been listening to a lecture series on tape on American history. The political views Americans before the revolution were fascinating. They had a real commitment to liberty. From what I can tell, there were riots, street actions, etc. to make the Seattle and Quebec actions look tame in comparison. The Boston Tea Party was just a minor skirmish. Back then, the people really did have both a longing for liberty and a willingness to put themselves on the line for it. I don't see that today. "A Nation of Sheep" was written, what, 40 years ago? But it becomes more true every day. IMO this is the real danger of globalization. The more centralized, the larger, the further from the people, any political structure becomes, the less responsive it becomes. Local small town government is almost perfectly responsive to the people. I see our county commissioners on the street every week, they read the letters to the local paper, they know what people want. And if they don't provide it, they're out. The further and further up the chain you go the less responsive, in my exeperience, until you come to the IMF over which the desires of the commom folk have no influence whatsoever. In the 1790 census, Boston had a population of 18,320. Was presumably less than that in the 1760s. People could know each other, could influence events. With Boston today at 574,000, what influence does the average individual have? This is, IMO, one of the dilemmas of liberalism. We value each individual and value personal liberties -- we properly rail against a Supreme Court decision which expands the powers give to the police. OTOH, we tend to prefer government at the national level to the local level for several reasons. The limited resources available to liberal interest groups can be more effectively deployed on the federal level than the state level (it is easier to get a federal clean air act passed than 50 state clean air acts passed). The power of city interests and populous areas, which tend to be liberal, can overwhelm the power of rural interests, which tend to be conservative. That is, the congressional delegations from New York City, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, which have a large population base but small geographic base can overwhelm the congressional delegations from Montana, Utah, Idaho, the Dakotas, which have small populations but a large geographic base. Thus a law which would have no chance to be passed in Montana can be passed in D.C. So we tend to prefer centralized government. But it has some downsides. One is the increasing marginalization of the voice of the common citizen in the political process. Another is the diminution of certain personal liberties as accountability for restraint of those liberties moves further and further from the local level. I see liberal voices complaining about some of these losses of liberty, as in the Texas misdemeanor arrest case, but I seldom see the connection between the two compellingly made. As I've said before, I'm quite certain that the Texac case will not become the law of Washington. Our Supreme Court, which is elected, takes (except for Phil Talmage, who is now off the bench) personal liberties more seriously than the Federal supreme court does, and often finds that our constitution provides greater protection than the US constitution, as interpreted by the federal supreme court, does. So in this case my liberty is denied by the federal courts but protected by the state courts.