Newspaper logo  
 
 
   No Wonder People Feel Disfranchised

COMMENTARY:

No Wonder People Feel Disfranchised

by Sheldon Richman

It may be starting to dawn on people that government has been largely inept at what they would regard as its most important task: keeping them safe from foreign attack.
In a recent poll of cable-television viewers, only 20 percent said the general public has much say in what the government does. Maybe people are finally catching on. It's about time.

The poll, by Peter D. Hart, can't be pleasing to those who make a holy shrine of the ballot box. "Our key finding was that people are really unhappy about their role, or lack of it, in the democratic process," Hart told the Washington Post.

Recent events could hardly be expected to build confidence. It may be starting to dawn on people that government has been largely inept at what they would regard as its most important task: keeping them safe from foreign attack. The revelations after 9/11 demonstrate what some people have long known: government is like the Wizard of Oz. Behind the imposing façade are a bunch of clueless bureaucrats and politicians who are more interested in extending their tenures in office than anything else.

This is a bipartisan phenomenon. The current debate over who was more incompetent, the Clintonites or the Bushies, is just a distraction. When it comes to the fraud known as "national security," it's strictly a one-party system. (It's really not that much different in domestic affairs.)

Bill Kristol, editor of neoconservative magazine The Weekly Standard and a leading advocate of replacing the old American republic with an empire, gave the game away the other day. On Fox News's "Special Report" with Brit Hume, Kristol had harsh words for former Clinton and Bush anti-terrorism specialist Richard Clarke, whose new book indicts the Bush administration for not taking al-Qaeda seriously enough before 9/11. Kristol criticized Clarke for breaking a tacit agreement between Democrats and Republicans. What was the agreement? Not to score political points by pointing out each other's failings in guarding the American people against terrorism.

Conservative editor Bill Kristol publicly criticized Bush administration critic Richard Clarke for breaking a tacit agreement between Democrats and Republicans. What was the agreement? Not to score political points by pointing out each other's failings in guarding the American people against terrorism.

Close observers wouldn't have been surprised by Kristol's point. But I wonder what the average American would think about this agreement. Perhaps "conspiracy" is a more precise word for what Kristol was talking about.

Several hundreds of billions of dollars are extracted from the earnings of the American people every year, ostensibly to keep them safe. But they were not kept safe, beginning with the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Then they were lied to-by Democrats and Republicans. After 9/11 administration officials, such as National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, said they never dreamed anyone would hijack airplanes and crash them into buildings. But we know there were intelligence warnings about just this tactic before the attacks. Why do they lie to us, except to save their own skins?

Then there are those phantom weapons of mass destruction. Need anything more be said? Since US forces took over Iraq, the administration has been spreading money around like melted butter. No scientist or other informed person in that country could fail to realize that providing evidence of such weapons would bring a small fortune. That's a sure sign that there is no evidence. It also refutes any administration official, such as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who insists that weapons might still be found.

Given all this, why shouldn't people believe that the government is something separate from them and out of their control?

In the presidential season one might expect people to feel that this is their chance to make a difference-until one looks at the "choice" facing them. Who is set to oppose the incumbent who ignored warnings about terrorism and then misled the American people into war against a country that had nothing to do with that terrorism? John Kerry, a senator who voted to give President Bush a blank check to go to war (in violation of the Constitution); who voted to give Attorney John Ashcroft astoundingly un-American powers to curtail civil liberties (including habeas corpus); and who now says his votes don't mean what they clearly do mean. Or as Groucho Marx said once, "Who are you going to believe, me or your eyes?"

Two hundred and eighty-five million people cannot rule a country. But a small clique can rule and say it's on behalf of the people. The last few years have been a valuable civics lesson.


Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation in Fairfax, Va., author of Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State, and editor of The Freeman magazine.



Copyright © 2004 The Baltimore Chronicle. All rights reserved.

Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent.

This story was published on March 30, 2004.
  
Local News & Opinion

Ref. : Local Newsbriefs

Travel
Films, Arts & Education
Letters

Ref. : Letters to the editor

Open Letters:

06.24 Mr. Holder, You Must Hold Torturers Accountable

Health & Environment

06.29 Thinking about Climate

06.26 False Health-Scare Ad on CNN

06.25 Louella Learns the Limits of Medicare

06.23 The Simple Answer to America’s Health Care Crisis: Medicare for All

06.23 Tell ABC: Include Single-Payer in Healthcare Debate

06.23 Serving the Medical-Industrial Complex

06.22 Thinking about Recoveries

06.20 Obama's Health Care Waterloo

06.15 Obama, Like Clinton Before Him, is Blowing the Chance for Real Health Care Reform

06.11 Two Key Health-Care Numbers

06.10 Big Breakthroughs for Single Payer Health Care

06.10 Readying Americans for Dangerous, Mandatory Vaccinations

Media Watching

06.29 WP's Connolly Back, on Health Reform

06.17 Hypocrisy and Hope: Western Coverage, Iranian Courage

06.15 Excusing Outrages of the Right

06.11 Tying Obama to Bush's Budget Mess

US Politics, Policy & Culture

06.30 Obama's Torture Hypocrisy

06.30 Court Circular: Annals of Imperial Continuity

06.29 Obama, They Want You to Fail

06.26 Who to Trust on a Truth Commission?

06.26 Tarnished Shields: The Morally Bankrupt 'Family Values' Republican Leadership

06.25 America's "Bases of Empire"

06.24 Twelve Angry White People: Jury Nullification in a Pennsylvania Coal Town

06.24 Touring Empire's Ruins

06.23 Employers are Undermining the Economic Stimulus Program

06.19 Criminalizing Dissent: Obama Pot Calls Iranian Kettle Black

06.17 Afghanistan's Operation Phoenix

06.16 Are You Ready for War with a Demonized Iran?

06.13 Where's the Anger as the Wheels Come Off Obama's and the Democrats' Recovery Program?

06.10 Waiving the Rules for Old Glory

06.10 Obama's Era of Openness Is Closed

“High Crimes?”

07.03 Reviewing Marjorie Cohn and Kathleen Gilberd's "Rules of Disengagement"

07.01 Iraq: A Bitter Strategic Failure

06.25 It's All Good, Again: 'Uptick' in the American-Made Tides of Violence in Iraq

06.22 Obama Opposes Plame-gate Release

06.21 Dexter's Legions: The "Good" Killers of the "Good" War

06.18 Extending the Tradition: Proudly Taking American Torture Into the Future

06.15 New UN Report Denounces America's Human Rights Record

06.14 Fear Rules

Economics & Business Non/Mis/Malfeasance

07.01 Michael Hudson's "Super Imperialism:" The Economic Strategy of Imperial America

06.23 Obama's Financial Reform Proposal - A Stealth Scheme for Global Monetary Control

06.10 Cyberscares About Cyberwars Equal Cybermoney

International

07.01 Pirates of the Mediterranean

06.29 Color Revolutions, Old and New

06.25 Iran Divided & the 'October Suprise'

06.23 Astringent Corrective: AbuKhalil on Iran's Turmoil

06.22 Reviewing F. William Engdahl's "Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order:" Part I

06.20 Are the Iranian Protests Another US Orchestrated “Color Revolution?”

06.20 Through a Glass Darkly: Sifting Myth and Fact on Iran

06.19 Iran's Election and US - Iranian Elections

06.16 The Ir-Af-Pak War: Obama Looses the Manhunters

06.12 Israeli War Crimes Against Children During Operation Cast Lead

We are a non-profit Internet-only newspaper publication founded in 1973. Your donation is essential to our survival.
Google
This site Web

Public Service Ads:
Verifiable Voting in Maryland