Can Direct Democracy become a reality, or is the Swiss model unique and the Greek vote a one-off?
On issues ranging from federal to local — foreign entanglements, foreign aid, trade agreements, immigration, taxes (federal, state, school, value-added, etc.), health care reform, abortion, drug decriminalization, capital punishment, right to die, oil drilling, hydrofracking, same-sex marriage, zoning, eminent domain, currency unions, budgets (federal, state, local), education — “Let the people vote!”
The following is a list of Direct Democracy pros and cons most frequently posed:
Q. Switzerland and Greece are small nations.
A. Big or small, a vote is a vote.
Q. Frequent voting can be costly, especially in a nation the size of the United States.
A. Frequent voting will cost several billion dollars less than a $13 billion aircraft carrier.
Q. Most people are too uninformed to make sound decisions on complex issues.
A. Most national, state and local politicians have unbroken track records of making disastrous decisions on both simple and complex issues.
I believe it is due time for Thomas Jefferson’s vision that “…in due time the voice of the people will be heard and their latent wisdom will prevail,” prevails. What are the choices? In the US, for example, the facts prove that a vote for any Republican or Democratic candidate running in the 2016 Presidential Reality Show will be a vote for either more of the same or a lot worse. Nothing any of the candidates promise will bring peace, prosperity or “hope” or “change you can believe in.”
Regardless of the nation or the political parties long in power that run them, only the names are different… the levels of incompetence, corruption, fraud and ineptness are generally the same.
Publisher’s note: While the US and other nations call themselves “democratic” and allege to practice “representative democracy,” in practice, the vast majority of elected officials represent special interests that fund their campaigns and buy them off with bribes and payoffs (aka campaign contributions).
What if America — the superpower that slaughters millions of innocent people around the world, invades sovereign nations, assassinates their leaders and occupies foreign lands in the name of spreading freedom and democracy — were to consider a Direct Democracy referendum?
In the land of “exceptionals,” the exceptionally irresponsible, power-hungry Republican and Democrat duopoly running the nation would stall, block, derail or postpone a referendum for months, if not years, under the guise of whatever bureaucratic excuses, lies and deceptions they could conjure up. And, the complicit presstitutes who work for one of the six corporations that control over 90 percent of the media would do the bidding of their masters by ridiculing and dismissing Direct Democracy as undemocratic, unpatriotic and unconstitutional.