How to Save Democracy (A Primer)

Do you love democracy?  Think about it.  Do you love the idea that whatever the people want becomes the law -- government of the people, by the people, for the people?  It's a pretty great idea.  It certainly seems better than most of the alternatives.  But what if the majority decides that: starting tomorrow, all black people should be surgically neutered, or all fundamentalist Christians should be kept in prison, or all homosexuals should be summarily executed? Whoa! Wait a minute. That's democracy?  Yep, that's pure democracy and that is what can happen when an omnipotent majority rules.

"Now hold on," you say, "that's not right."

Sorry, when the majority wants to do something in a pure democracy, nothing can stop it.  

"Yeah, but that would never happen in America."

Right!  That's because America is a special kind of democracy. We call our kind of democracy a republic.

"But isn't a republic just a form of democracy where the people elect representatives to create the laws?"

It used to mean that until the Founding Fathers of America came along and invented a whole new kind of republic never before seen on the face of the earth.  These young men -- did I say young? Yep, on the day of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson was only 33, James Madison was only 25, John Adams was 40, and Alexander Hamilton was only 21 years old -- these young revolutionaries saw an opportunity to create a kind of government that would reflect the will of the people BUT at the same time protect the rights of the individual!

In order to accomplish that, they had to set in stone (parchment?), at the very top level of the structure, a list of rights declared to be unalienable for the individual, rights that were not arbitrarily assigned by the laws of men, but rather afforded to them by Natural Law and from Nature's God by virtue of their humanity. The majority could rule on everything else, take the nation or state in any direction, tax themselves, build armies, issue currency, whatever.  But that majority could never violate the unalienable rights of the individual, shining at the top of the governmental structure.  This is what makes the American style of republic the most humanitarian form of government ever fashioned.

The struggle for power underlies humanity's most basic instincts. When there is nothing to restrict them, the strong dominate the weak. And so, for the thronging multitudes of oppressed classes from time immemorial, democracy has seldom been more than a dream. Left to ourselves, in the daycare the strongest child gets the cookies, the strongest gang member gets the hottest gang girls, at least until someone puts a bullet in his head, the strongest tribe gets the best hunting grounds and tillable land, and on it goes, all the way up to the ruling of nations.

A monarchy is just the biggest strongest family with the most friends, who all agree that this family should be the ones in charge.  Their power is further consolidated by giving favors to a ruling class of aristocrats all of whom enjoy the fruits of being at the top, at the expense of those at the bottom. (hmmm, does that sound like anything going on in our own society? Maybe we have some work to do on that front).

Thus society sorts itself into a pyramidal hierarchy with the fortunate few at the top being supported by the masses at the bottom.  But once the working class becomes too large, or too aware of their own dignity, or their lives are too egregiously enslaved by the overlords, they revolt. Then of course they themselves fall victim to their own appetites and the whole thing crumbles into chaos. A new savage struggle to fill the power void ensues; witness the recent Arab Spring, or the continuously failing democracies of South America.  

But why is America different? After our revolt, we didn't decay in to the typical struggle for domination by the most powerful.  For the last 200 plus years, our American republic has protected us from our worst enemy: our own human nature. It was because of an idea, a beautiful idea called Liberty, and because of the foresight of our brilliant founders.  They realized that Liberty wasn't just freedom from oppression by the powerful, but also freedom from the whims of the majority.  Those framers of our Constitution purposely separated the governmental powers and pitted them against each other in a careful balance, they gave individual rights the preeminence, and limited the government from over-reaching into the lives of the citizens.

America is in a predicament at the moment. We've got two front runners in our presidential election process, neither of whom deserve to be president. And we have large factions on both sides of the aisle, large factions who normally follow party lines, sworn never to vote for their own particular abominable nominee. It seems inevitable that we are going to end up with a president who has been elected by a minority of the population. Things look dire for our democracy.

But before you sell all your stuff and move to Australia, or start making plans to secede from the Union, think about this.  We don't have to trust the actual people who get elected, we can trust in the form of our government to protect us.  People come and go, some are good and some are bad, but the Constitution remains. What a rare and precious governmental form this is. Do I pledge my allegiance to this republic, a republic with liberty and justice for all? Unreservedly.

There is one thing that fundamentally holds a republic like ours together.  It is a golden thread which our form of government depends on for its very existence. A friend of mine shared this concept with me one day and for that kindness, I will be eternally grateful. I can only hope that you'll share it with everyone you know because if we lose this one simple principal, we lose everything. This wonder is called "The Faithful Opposition." It's the idea that after a particularly contentious campaign, either for a political candidate, or an issue of great importance, that those who are on the losing side, do not resort to violent insurrection. That is the recourse of impotent irrelevant small minded parties like those in the failing democracies around the world. Rather, those who lose, but are lucky enough to live in America, put their trust in this republic. They don't have to like the president, but they still agree that he or she is in fact the president. They know that times will change, and that as long as the Constitution with its Bill of Rights stands, they will have another chance to convince the majority that their idea is worth putting into law, or their candidate is worth putting into office.
 
No form of government is perfect, but there is nothing that even comes in a close second to the American style of republic. Let's not throw it away on a couple of loser presidential candidates this fall by giving in to our base fears in short sighted violence. Let's keep the golden thread of "The Faithful Opposition" intact. Let's put our trust in once again, and pledge our allegiance once again to this republic.

How to Save Democracy (Internet Freedom)

In this, my second installment exploring the technological threats to the survival of democracy, I will expose another impending hazard that is just as dangerous as digital voting machines.

If democracy is the right of the people, ALL the people, to rule themselves, then not only should the weak be treated equally under the law, but there should also be limits on what the powerful can do.  In any free system there will be those who gain wealth and power, rising above the rest of the herd.  That power can be used to overwhelm the system and force outcomes to go in their favor.  In a democracy, that should not be allowed.

In the arena of economics, a monopoly is able to overwhelm the system of normal market forces, and impose its will on those who use it.  That is why in 1974 the United States Department of Justice filed an antitrust law suit against AT&T, finally bringing down the Ma Bell phone monopoly in 1982.  Telephone service had become not just a luxury for rich people, but rather an integral part of everyday life and economic transactions for the entire population.  The Bell monopoly in this case had become the enemy of democracy, no longer serving its customers as the market demanded, but rather dictating prices and services, without the free enterprise limits of competition.

As technology changes, new areas for human interaction arise.  And because there is no legal precedent, these new technical landscapes become vulnerable to exploitation by the rich and powerful.

No sooner had the government reined in the phone company, than a new network was born which would so far surpass the phone company in the scope of its integration into normal human affairs as to make it seem insignificant by comparison: the Internet. 

Ever since the Internet moved out of the realm of a 'cooperative exchange of information tool' for the military and education, and moved full bore into the realm of commercial landscape, the powerful have been slavering to get control of it.  Not just to use it to sell things, but to literally get their fingers on the switch.  If you are allowed to control the switch, you can limit where the customer can go, you can limit what the customer can consume, you can force your prices and opinions on those who have to use your system to transact their exchanges, and find their information.

Think of the possibilities this power could open to those who held it.  Of course the obvious one is to increase their income.  If you can no longer stream your movies from Netflix for under 10$ per month, you'll end up paying for the movie service from Comcast for $30 per month instead.  Comcast wins because they control whether or not you can even get to the Netflix service.  But that is only the beginning.  What about public opinion?  What about politics?  What about law?  If you control what people are able to consume, you control public opinion and eventually everything else.

But our telecommunications companies would never do anything like that to us would they?  As if they knew it was wrong, in the early days, the telecoms began to surreptitiously make little experiments like adding packets to torrent streams to slow uploads and downloads of private individuals.  Comcast famously slowed Netflix traffic prior to rate negotiations.  And those are only a few of the known early encroachments.  Since it is difficult to detect, packet manipulation on a network is often completely hidden, especially if no one is looking for it.

The Internet has become the market place of the new millennium.  It is the market place of thought as well as commerce.  And those who provide our access to it, should never be allowed to determine where we go, or what we buy, or what speech we use.

The term Net Neutrality was coined by Columbia University media law professor Tim Wu in 2003.  It is the principle that the Internet should remain open and that those who provide access must not influence the traffic on the network.  In other words, you pay for a certain amount of Internet usage, and you can use it to go anywhere you want to go.

In the end of 2013, president Obama appointed Tom Wheeler, a Washington D. C. lobbyist for the telecoms, to the position of chairman of the FCC.  The FCC is the regulatory commission with jurisdiction over the Internet.  Mr. Wheeler immediately set about to dismantle any rules restricting the telecoms and forever destroy our chances of having a free Internet.  But Tom got his education when the FCC solicited public comment on the issue and received the largest ever response in the commission's history.  

John Oliver, HBO personality, Internet phenomenon, comedian and commentator, during this perilous time, produced one of the most informative and influential episodes of his career, exposing this move by the power brokers, and calling on the public to get involved.  If you haven't seen this piece of humorous but educational rhetoric, you owe it to yourself and to our democracy to watch it.  I must warn my readers that Mr. Oliver is extremely irreverent and the video may be offensive to those who have no tolerance for obscene language.  If you can overlook this kind of behavior to see the message of democratic freedom he's advocating, please take the time to watch.

Four million private citizens took time to tell the FCC to hold the Internet providers accountable and to keep the Internet open for all users.

President Obama took note of the public indignation and substantially changed his stand on Net Neutrality, calling for the FCC to classify telecom Internet providers as "common carriers".  The FCC bowed to the president and public opinion, giving us the American people one of the greatest wins for democracy since the American revolution.


Not surprisingly, companies like Comcast and Verizon have been spending gargantuan budgets on lobbying congress to reverse the open Internet rules imposed by the FCC.  And sure enough on April 15th of 2016, the day we all pay our taxes, our elected officials in the House of Representatives in Washington D. C., stabbed us in the back, and passed a bill that would allow Internet providers to break out of those very restrictions.  If you live in a locality where your Representative voted to give away your Internet freedom, you should be hopping mad.  At this writing, the senate has not yet voted on the bill, and I still have hope that it will be defeated.

As you can see, our Internet freedom, which now amounts to our public activity freedom and our freedom of speech, is hanging by a thread.  Unless individual citizens are vigilant to stay abreast of what is happening and be willing to call their congress men and women when the urgency arises, we will lose this precious freedom.

Republicans in particular need to get involved.  I've been a Republican all my adult life, and I believe this should be a Republican issue.  Isn't our freedom at the core of Republican values?  If you're a Republican, please talk with your Republican friends, party associates, and office holders.

Here is a link to a site where you can contact your senators.  They need to hear from you right now regarding this heinous bill HR2666 :

U. S. Senate: http://www.senate.gov/senators/contact/#

I would also like to recommend a couple of organizations that are fighting for Internet freedom.  I urge you to sign up for their newsletters and support them financially.

FreePress: http://www.freepress.net/
Electronic Frontier Foundation: https://www.eff.org/ 


If you don't sign up for these newsletters, how will you know when the redcoats are coming to take your freedom?  If you don't call your congress persons, how will we preserve our free Internet?  Become a Net Neutrality activist.  Save the Internet!

How To Save Democracy (Digital Voting Machines)

Democracy, as we have known it, is teetering on the precipice of oblivion.  This treachery has nothing to do with radical jihadists, or failing economies, or even extremist presidential politics.  It has to do with simple technological development.  My purpose here is to raise awareness of the dangers directly threatening our American democracy.  If you care about our American freedom, please share these articles.  The next three posts including this one will be about the most urgent matters at hand.

In his address to a gathering at Singularity University, Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist, explained that 100 years ago, less than 10% of human deaths were the result of poor decision making, while today over 44% of human deaths are the result of bad human decisions.  He suggested that a large part of that increase is directly related to developments in technology.  We've invented new ways to kill ourselves.  For example, texting while driving is six times more likely to cause an accident than driving drunk.

In his talk, he goes on to expound on how we can mitigate this trend and even use our technology to make us safer.  But the fact remains, that as new technologies arise, the things we value, like democracy or privacy, will be threatened at an ever increasing pace, and if we want to preserve them, we must recognize those threats, and as a society, act decisively to mitigate them.

Three areas of vulnerability stand out at the present time, however, with the rate of technological development increasing more than exponentially, these three are only the opening salvo in the destruction of a system that stands on representing the will of the people.  The onslaught will continue indefinitely into the future.

In 2006, a research group from Princeton University demonstrated how easily they could hack a Diebold voting machine.  They used a simple flash drive, and hacked the machine in one minute with a virus that could spread to other voting machines.  You can still see the video on YouTube.  If you value your vote, you should watch this video.  

As a result of this whistle blowing, voting machines fell into disrepute.  No doubt, since then, Diebold has beefed up their security and made it much more difficult for the machines to be tampered with.  But the reality is that NO computerized system is immune to hacking.  And with millions, billions, or even trillions of dollars on the line, there will always be those who are willing to leap the hurdles to make sure the "Right" person is elected, or the "Left" side of the issue prevails.

With these facts clearly known to the public at large you would think that there would be no computerized voting or counting machines left.  But apparently, we are so lazy, or stupid, or both, that we haven't even made sure to kill this well known scam.  Below is a current map of voting machine use by state.

  
Notice that more than half the states use DRE (Direct Recording Equipment) either with or without paper tracking.  Now remember from the video you just watched, that paper tracking without actually counting the paper ballots, doesn't mitigate the issue.  So this means that more than half the states in our country are susceptible to hacking the vote.  This has got to stop.  While this situation exists, we cannot have confidence that our votes are being accurately tallied.

The only way to maintain a democracy is to have hard copy ballots which are counted and tabulated by hand with oversight from all interested parties, and a feedback loop to verify that what is reported officially is also what was counted and tabulated.  Certainly, this will cost more money, take longer, and require more effort!  Is that so bad?  Is democracy worth the effort?

What is wrong with us that we don't value our democracy enough to take the time and trouble to do this task?  For the sake of convenience, we are throwing away the will of the people, and putting our rights and even our very lives in the hands of the rich, powerful, and dishonest. 

US World War II Era: Nearly Forgotten

    Last night I had the opportunity to listen to my father-in-law recall memories from his childhood. My son sat with me as we listened, and a window was opened for us into a world that now exists only in the hearts and memories of a dwindling number of elderly but fiercely proud Americans.

     Even as the post-modern academics and philosophers of the time were counting true value all but dead and buried, a nation awoke to a driving conviction that right makes might.  The fear of an evil force brutalizing innocent European villages, subjugating hapless nations, and bent on world domination, electrified the American people into a single minded, unified, brotherhood of righteous indignation and monolithic resolve.  The images of a cruel and immoral Nazi regime plundering Europe nettled the Christian conscience and provoked the American sense of fair play, even though this nation was still struggling in the quagmire of economic hardship.

     As evening gathers in the corners of my living room and the light in the windows fades toward purple, my father-in-law pauses, gazing up into a Kodachrome past only he can see, calming his emotions so he can continue.
     "I recall the day my older brother had to leave for basic training.  We'd eaten dinner together, Mom, Dad, Don and I.  At the time, I had a paper route, and do you know, we had to collect once a week! My, that made it hard on us paper boys.  The newspaper didn't take kindly to excuses, but people were never home, and often had excuses of their own."
     He pauses again, then continues, looking down into his cupped hands.
     "I didn't want to go to the bus station to say good bye, so I said I had to do some collecting.  I didn't want my brother to see me blubbering like a baby when he was going off to fight like a man and maybe lose his own life.  To me, a fifteen year old younger brother, Don was some kind of hero. We had dreaded the day he would be drafted, but when he was, there was no complaining. We knew it had to be done.  Everyone had to do their part for the war effort.
     Dad took on a second job.  Mom was a wonderful seamstress and made all our clothes.  We didn't have a rototiller, but Dad turned most of our double size lot over with a spading fork by hand and planted a Victory Garden, so we could feed ourselves as much as possible.  The farmers all over the country had to produce food for the soldiers, so the rest of us, who couldn't go to the trenches to fight, well, we had to grow our own food.  And we did.  No one complained. No, you didn't complain.
     Don didn't have to fight in the trenches, but served in a military hospital.  Of course there was always the possibility that his orders would change and he'd have to take his turn.  Anything could happen.
     During the summer, I was sent to my uncle's farm to work.  The farmers didn't have to fight either, but they were just as much a part of the war effort.  We all knew it.  I worked hard for my room and board and a salary of thirty five dollars for the whole summer's work.
     I remember the day we heard the news.  I was driving a tractor pulling an implement that turned the windrows of hay over to dry."
     His eyes fill with tears as he once again looks up into the beatific scene.  And now his voice comes rough with emotion and barely audible among the struggling breaths.
     "The war was over!  Even though it was a miserable hot day out in that field, I suddenly felt a joy that turned that dusty old field into a golden heaven.  Don would come home - alive!"

     I've often heard people talk about how war is used by governments to improve their economies. I find that hard to believe in most cases.  Think of the war ravaged third world of today.  Is it helping?
     While war may have been the trigger, it wasn't war that pulled the American economy out of the Great Depression. It was grit.  It was a people who believed in God, and who believed in the moral imperative of their fight.  It was the reality of a hammer in the hand, not an avatar on a screen. It was a people who knew that each shovel driven into the garden, each rivet welded onto the boat frame, each sweater completed in the knitting mills, was putting a bullet in Hitler's forces as much as the boys with their guns dying on foreign beaches.  And all that effort, all that labor, all those 'second jobs', walked America right out of the end of the Great Depression, and right into one of the most powerful economies the world has ever known.
     There are still many who remember that time.  But they are now the ones in the nursing homes and retirement centers.  They won't last much longer.  Don't wait.  Before they are all gone, go to them and ask them to tell you about the wonder of the Greatest Generation.

Is There a Glitch in the Matrix?

      The morning started out the way you'd expect, 4:30am 3 block walk to the office, two hours of writing, 7am walk home, breakfast and coffee with my wife, cleaning up the breakfast dishes while Anne took her shower.
     The odd thing happened after my shower.  Of course, that's because I'm the one this blog is about.
     Why did it happen?  What possible buffoonery was God playing at, perhaps enjoying a moment of random entertainment?  Could there actually be glitches in the fundamental fabric of the universe?  I will make you doubt, and wonder, and perhaps consider that odd thing which happened to you once, but which you dismissed as irrelevant.  Here's what happened:

     Okay, first for the embarrassing avowal of my early morning toilette.  After I shower each morning, I spend around five minutes drying my hair with a blow dryer.  I have, ever since I was in Junior High School.  Pretty much every day. Yeah.  I'm that guy.  But I look like such a dork if I don't.  I know you don't really care, 'just get on with it.'
     So I'm drying my hair, holding it in place with a plastic brush, which, by the way, is never where I left it the day before, even though I have explained the issue to every single person in the household.  Multiple times.  Drying my hair, I say, when I begin to feel a little annoying tickle on my nose.  I brush at it several times with the back of my brush hand to dislodge the irritant.  It continues to tickle, and in fact is escalating to unbearable proportions. So I set the brush down and look at my face in the mirror, very carefully, to ascertain the source of the irritation.  And there it is, a hair, stuck in the crease of my left eyelid, above my eye, behind my eyelashes.  The end of it is hanging down at just the place where it is dragging on my nose, and tickling like a son-of-a-gun.
     I deftly take the hair between my thumb and forefinger, and pull it out from the grip my eyelid has on it with a satisfying slith.  I drop the hair on the floor. (Don't get upset honey, it was just one hair).
     This may not seem like anything miraculous or worthy of a blog post until you understand that no sooner had I put brush back to hair, and resumed my coiffure, than my nose began to tickle again in exactly the same way.  Instantly, I performed the precise same assessment and removal of the hair from the crease in my eyelid, slith.  The sequence was so completely replicated that it awed me.
     I was immediately reminded of the scene from the Matrix when Neo sees the black cat shake itself - twice in exactly the same manner. You know the one I mean.  The one that portends imminent danger, and the death of most of the team.
     I realize that this could have been a coincidence.  But I've gone over and over it in my mind.  I've never had a hair get stuck in my eyelid before.  And there just wasn't time for a second hair to get stuck in my eyelid.  And I know that I pulled the first one out completely and dropped it on the floor, which I did with the second one, in complete reiteration as if I was in some kind of Outer Limits late night re-run.  (I know, even mentioning the idea of 're-runs' dates me)
     There is no doubt in my mind that this event was simply impossible.
     Very much the way the next story I'm about to relay was impossible.

     Several years ago, still working at the University, in the same capacity I now inhabit, I had an occasion to visit the receptionist's area on the second floor of our building.  The secretary was looking something up for me, I can't recall now what it was, but I'm sure it was mission critical. Anyway, I'm standing there waiting for her, tipping back on my heals, whistling a little Irish ditty, tucking my hands in my back pockets, when I begin to notice something at the tips of the fingers on my right hand.  I scissor it between middle and forefinger, and draw it out of my hip pocket.
     At first it seems inconsequential, a bit of card paper, a strip about a quarter inch in width and an inch and a half in length, edges showing evidence of being originally perforated.  I continue whistling my ditty, waiting for the secretary, and casually looking over the little piece of minutiae. The first hint that something is amiss comes when I begin to notice how old the paper looks.  It's a pinkish beige, partially because of oxidation I believe.  Then I read the words printed in a very old fashion courier typeface.

George M. Fulton
DExter 78-3266
Ballard, Wash.

What the...???
     I felt like my head was zooming out to the edge of the galaxy and then rubberbanding right back into the office within an inch of the crazy artifact, and snapping back out past the spiral arms again.  
     To put a fine point on it, I had taken the jeans I was wearing at the time, right out of the hot dryer that morning, and put them on in the laundry room.  I don't wear super tight jeans as they tend not to be flattering on me.  But these were tight enough that there was no loose gap in the back pockets that could have caught something falling from the... what? the sky? the edge of an eighty year old luggage desk at a hotel I'd never been to?  What was that thing doing in my pocket?!  It showed no sign of having gone through the wash, in fact, except for a little bit of oxidation, it was in pristine condition, as if it had just been torn off the end of a sheet of labels which had been typed that very morning.

*the hush of wind whistling through ancient branches in the night*

These stories, I swear, are relayed exactly as they happened.  You can even ask Dorothy, the hapless secretary who had to endure my ranting about the little piece of paper in my pocket.  She was forced to look at it several times while I accused her of pranking me by slipping it into my pocket when I wasn't looking.  I am now convinced that she did no such thing.  And no one else had been anywhere near me that morning.

Now it's your turn.  Have you ever had something happen to you that was completely impossible?  If so, please describe it in detail in a comment - I will read every one, and maybe even put them into a book if I get enough of them.

Thanks for reading -

Rob the Voyager