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.