Something missing

"Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood." H. L. Mencken. This quote my son Peter came across and kindly forwarded to me, no doubt feeling it throws light on our slow progress to a better democracy.

Who then is Mencken? I went to Google and found an American journalist/ philosopher/atheist, the ‘Bad Boy from Baltimore’, 1880-1956, ‘renowned for his rather tough, cynical style’.

His ‘creed’ has much to say about the current condition, including: ‘Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.’
Obviously a man who had very clear opinions! I would like to discuss his second point a little later but I find myself basically in full agreement with the first. Why?

Clearly there is something missing in the manner and effectiveness of our democracy to fulfil the onerous responsibilities famously assigned to it by Abraham Lincoln—government OF, BY and FOR the people. A real democracy would have a much more significant power to unite us, both socially and morally. Our fragmented society fails us in many ways.

We have the vote, to choose who governs us, what more do we want? As Mencken implies, we need to be both wise and free. Popular wisdom requires popular participation which the Athenians had in spades, but we don’t, with our system of party politics excluding any serious relevance for popular participation in the decisions to be made.

And again, the domination of the election process by party candidates, loaded with money and man power, severely restricts our choice of who shall represent us, (a situation which could be improved by ‘optional preference voting’). It has been truly said that decision without choice equates to slavery.

In 1911, Hillaire Belloc and Cecil Chesterton in their book, ‘The Party System’, p 17, spelt out the essentials of genuine representative government:
1. An absolute freedom (of the public) in the selection of representatives;
2. The representatives must be strictly responsible to their constituents and to no one else;
3. The representatives must deliberate in perfect freedom; and
4. Especially must they be absolutely independent of the 'executive'.
So, that’s what’s missing! Pericles would turn in his grave!
Just how could we have got it so wrong?