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Governmentalism:

As it turns out, even republicans have their limitations.

You might think that they have all of the answers, but, by making specific choices, they automatically neglect other possibilities. Of course, the democrats are no different in this regard. Looking at these two U.S. political parties, we could, in general describe them in terms of their approaches to economic issues and, to a lesser degree, their approaches to international relations.

A cursory glance at the distinctions would determine that the republicans in general lean toward less governmental control, less social services, more of a free market economy, and more motivation by need for the poor than support systems. They would also be typically seen as more isolationist by nature and more inclined to expend a good deal of money on military preparedness.

The democrats, on the other hand, are at the other end of the scale on these items, in favoring more focus on the individual worker and less on corporate interests, more social services to empower and support people, and a less isolationist, more collaborative approach to international relations.

But who's right?

The answer, of course, is both, in that both have legitimate but often conflicting views on the topics that concern them. These views don't necessarily contradict each other, but often just make claims about what aspects of similar issues are more important.

The real question is, however, is whether the issues of concern to these parties are the important issues at all, and, if so, whether we should really be looking to these people for answers to these perplexing issues anyway?

When we make a decision to support one or another of the opposing positions proposed by these opposing forces, we necessarily have decided not to address the important concerns that the competing party was addressing with their position.

In other words, there is no win-win, only a choice to favor one solution over another due to a decision that the set of priorities proposed by one group is more important than the ones forwarded by the other group.
A more laudable solution would address all of the concerns of both parties, but we rarely seem to get something so elegant.

This is the democratic model, however, which awards the majority with happiness, but requires the minority to be patient and mull over their defeat for the next round of battle.

This is a inherent flaw with the democratic model, if you think about it. There is always a portion of society - the minority - that is unhappy. A more elegant system would bring fulfillment to all parties. I'm not saying that I have such a system, just that even our revered institution of democracy has intrinsic flaws, by definition.
Of course, flawed governmental models are not hard to find.

Communism hopes to engage everyone in an enormous societal agreement to work for the whole, but it sadly overestimates human nature, which tends to get animated when it can see the immediate benefit of its recent action. It's also very difficult for an enormous bureaucracy to equitably distribute everything to everybody. Inequities inevitably pop up, almost immediately. Communism is not apparently flawed, in theory. It just doesn't work with real people.

You could always decide to be a fascist. This word is highly charged in our culture, just as is the word communist, almost to the point where it has lost meaning and means, simply, "bad guy." But the word fascist simply means a person who believes in a powerful central government that makes the major decisions for a people without their direct input.

The fasces was a Roman symbol of power and national unity. It was an actual bundle of sticks wrapped with leather thongs around an axe. The head of state or various officials would wield the fasces in public processions as a symbol of the power of the state.

This system of government, so denigrated in modern times due to some awful examples of the model, mainly Nazi Germany, is not fundamentally flawed in any intellectually recognizable way. In other words, there is no reason a central (can we use the word?) "fascist" authority couldn't govern well.

In practice, they haven't done very well, but there is no intrinsic reason for their failure, other than, again, the human limitation that very few people have the comprehensive vision to come up with policies and systems that benefit everyone and not get caught up in the trappings and intrigues of enjoying and maintaining such absolute (relatively speaking) power.

We have identified flaws in the democratic, communist and fascist models of government. It's almost a form of sacrilege, of course, for an American to cast doubts on the democratic model, since democracy as a concept almost has the reverence, in the U.S., of a system of religion.

What if, however, it is not necessarily the best for everybody? What if some countries would do better with other systems of government, even monarchy? If you look at it from one perspective, the insistence of a democratic way of doing things is hard to distinguish from an ethnocentric, cultural imperialist angle on the world.

What's the difference, functionally, between the fundamentalist religion that declares that all other peoples should be converted, or killed as infidels, and a political system that insists that it is itself the only way and all other people must organize themselves our way or be destabilized by CIA agents?

Make no mistake, the democratic model (which is also, largely, a capitalist model), is very successful. It's working. There must be some truth in it. People are motivated by self gain, self improvement, and enjoy having a voice in their affairs. It's very freeing, and as a social experiment is doing very well.

Even so, the insistence that it is the best or only system of government could be seriously flawed. And not so much by the question itself as by the very idea that the particular form of government that we use is the answer to the world's problems.

This is what I call governmentalism, with an emphasis on the "mental" part, to imply that it's a bit "mental," or crazy, as in the colloquial usage, and on the "ism" aspect, in that it resembles a religion or "ism" of some kind.
This obsession with forms of government informed so many of the conflicts that we witnessed (some of us) in the 20th century. Communism versus democracy. Marxism versus capitalism. Fascism versus everybody else.
These ideas have served as the rallying points for untold millions to throw themselves at each other's throats.

And for what? When you look closely at communism, it's an idealistic view that people can work together for the common good in an egalitarian society. When you examine democracy it's an idealistic view that people can have majority rule and open dissent in a society of equal opportunity. They resemble each other far more than they resemble monarchy, for example.

It may not turn out to have been that important which way we went. I happen to believe that democracy and the free market economy work better than the communist model, but that may simply be for practical reasons rather than the intrinsic merit of either system.

And I firmly believe that it is nothing worth fighting over. Nor is it worth going over to some other country and imposing.

The United States was founded in 1776. This democratic experiment is, therefore, just over 200 years old. Are we saying, then, that only for the past 200+ years have people lived lives of relative significance and purpose? Are we saying that nothing before 1776 worked at all?

That would be a ludicrous view. Cultures have come and gone, great artistic, literary and culturally rich civilizations have been born, lived and faded out long before John Hancock wrote his name in big letters on the Declaration of Independence.

The fact is, we are happy with the functional success of the democratic model and the capitalist system that has allowed our country to flourish.

But to shove that system down the throats of every other country that we meet is just another example of the phenomenal ability that one people can have to be unaware and jingoistically idiotic in their relationships with other countries.

What sells in Peoria is anathema in Mecca. The punishments in Mecca are horrifying in Des Moines.

My claim is that either system, or any system, even monarchy or "fascism" could conceivably work if the people themselves are living on a higher level of existence. The fight, all along, has never been about this system versus that system, but about ignorance versus knowledge. Ignorance, stress and strain will destroy any culture and any system of government.

What we need to do is to quit thinking that our system is the only system, and to take a long look at our claims that we are spreading the democratic ideal to others, and see that for what it is, simply cultural imperialism of the baldest sort.

What we need to do is quit thinking that democracy is the answer, and accept a more pluralistic world view, such that no one religion and no one political system need be adopted by everybody.

Just imagine that.

"Imagine there's no heaven. It's easy if you try. No hell below us. Above us only sky. Imagine all the people, living for today. Imagine there's no countries. It isn't hard to do, Nothing to kill or die for. No religion too. Imagine all the people, living life in peace. Imagine no possessions. I wonder if you can. No need for greed or hunger. A brotherhood of man. Imagine all the people, sharing all the world. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope some day you'll join us, and the world will live as one."

*Sound familiar? I hope so. I'm not saying that I want all of those things, just that we need to get out of the restrictions that we've placed on our thinking.

Just imagine that religion is not worth killing over, and government or economic systems are even less worthy, and the entire focus of the human race is not on trying to tell other people what to do but on improving themselves, improving life, developing the highest possible non-polluting, non-aggressive, peace generating state of consciousness themselves, and by the help of groups of such peace generating individuals, that the entire race will feel a lightening, and then a growing warmth , and then experience the dawn, and then the full, warm, radiant, comfortable day of an age of enlightenment, lived in harmonious peace with all peoples, each of them worshipping, prospering and growing in their own way with all of their precious cultural values lively and mutually celebrated, adding up to one big, glowing, happy planet.

That's my idea of something worth living for. And it's good for both democrats and republicans.

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