Faith Reaffirmed

In this campaign year, now at a conclusion following Election Day 2012, the essential faith in democracy held by the American public has been reaffirmed with the reelection of President Barack Obama. This faith was sketched by the President in his victory speech:

Democracy in a nation of 300 million can be noisy and messy and complicated. We have our own opinions. Each of us has deeply held beliefs. And when we go through tough times, when we make big decisions as a country, it necessarily stirs passions, stirs up controversy. That won’t change after tonight. And it shouldn’t. These arguments we have are a mark of our liberty, and we can never forget that as we speak, people in distant nations are risking their lives right now just for a chance to argue about the issues that matter, the chance to cast their ballots like we did today.

Our national faith in democracy held fast in the face of an almost overwhelming assault by corporate and moneyed elites. Today’s United States has witnessed a widening gulf between the haves and the have nots, the rich and the poor. The Citizens United decision in 2010 that empowered corporations as “people” has propelled this disparity and allowed millions of dollars of corporate money to be funneled into a rightwing opposition, an opposition that in its extremes—and sometimes at its heart—is profoundly anti-democratic.

Democracy is enacted through coalitions among disparate groups of like-minded individuals. In some Western democracies, particularly those with parliamentary forms of governance, the coalitions are more fluid than in the United States, where groups tend mainly to coalesce under the banner of Republican and Democrat. Few other parties have gained more than token traction during the modern era, since the mid-twentieth century.

The Republican coalition has become virulently rightwing and, I would argue, has dragged the country right of center generally. On its most radical fringe are the Tea Party tax resisters, religious zealots, homophobes, xenophobes, and racists. Unfortunately, mainstream conservatives have seen fit to pander to these anti-democratic factions in an attempt to hold political power. That strategy has worked in various places at various times. It did not work for this presidential election.

The Democratic coalition, pulled right by the ardent conservatism of the Republicans, is consequently more centrist with a purely tepid radical left. Fortunately, the Democratic Party has not been pulled so far right of center that it has abandoned basic tenets, such as universal civil rights and equality in education, job, health care, and so on. The Democrats remain the “big tent,” where folks of all races, sexualities, and incomes can come together. It is under this big tent that hope resides that the American middle class can be salvaged and, in time, expanded. President Obama put it this way:

I believe we can keep the promise of our founding, the idea that if you’re willing to work hard, it doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from or what you look like or where you love. It doesn’t matter whether you’re black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or young or old or rich or poor, abled, disabled, gay or straight.

The presidential election has affirmed that we will not, as a nation, follow a path where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer…at least not for the next four years. The electorate has reaffirmed its faith in American democracy, not corporate oligarchy.

Faith in the People

Thomas Jefferson wrote, “I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”

Sadly, we have not followed Jefferson’s advice. The consequence is that corporations have increasingly come to dominate our national sense of direction, so much so that the United States now leans strongly toward corporate oligarchy as a form of governance. Is “we the people” becoming “we the corporation”?

In this election year we are seeing the effects of corporate “personhood,” as it is called, particularly in the arena of campaign finance. Much of the current presidential contest revolves around money, and not just Mitt Romney’s personal fortune and where he keeps it. It has become, to the disgust of many across the political spectrum, a tenet of the current conservative contenders that votes can be bought and lies passed off as truth if enough money is thrown into the mix. In the party of the wealthy, who has the money? Corporations, of course.

Two Supreme Court cases dominate. In Buckley v. Valeo (1976) the Court held that political spending is protected by the right to free speech in the First Amendment. Then, crushing Jefferson’s hope, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) the Court held that corporations have a right to free speech under the First Amendment, just as though they were individuals. The latter decision opened the floodgates for corporate spending to promote the interests of monied elites—wealthy corporate entities—over those of individuals.

Democracy invests faith in the people to govern. The United States was founded on the democratic principle that all citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. This principle has yet to be fully achieved. But progress has been made incrementally over the past two-plus centuries, granting equal civic personhood through freedom and enfranchisement of various segments of the demos, such as African Americans and women.

In this progressive realization of our democratic principle, however, the granting of corporate personhood has been a misstep. When the powers of governance come to be held by a small number of people, an elite of any sort (the military, royalty, etc.), which is the danger of corporate personhood, then we trade democracy for oligarchy. For Aristotle, oligarchy was synonymous with the rich.

Most of us—the 99% much referred to this year—are not rich and are being disenfranchised, our individual personhood diminished, as wealthy corporations become an ascendant aristocracy. Whether the American “experiment” can survive will depend on whether we the people can revive the power of the demos in our democracy.