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In the democracy, the people's will is exerted at election time with
choices being made from the will of the people as to whom they have
decided will be their leaders. All too many times, however, the
people are disappointed by the style or consequences of an
individual's leadership performance after the person has been
elected to office. Sometimes, in our modern society, more often than
not, after the election the person who was elected moves the locus
of control by shifting it from the people onto the official. The
will of the official is exerted on the people. Since 1776 at the
beginning of our Declaration of Independence, we have changed from a
republic to a democracy and then drifting to almost an autocratic
form of government. Instances of that shift have presented
themselves periodically. Certainly we experienced the cessation of
the habeas corpus during the Civil War. Of course, that was a very
unique time when states seceded from the Union and engaged in the
armed conflict with each other.
As time has passed, however, the presidency and the Congress have
achieved an almost autocratic power over the people. With the
congressional leadership, this has been manifested in individuals
without the benefit of term limits by serving lifetime appointments
through the election and re-election process. With that kind of
longevity, they have developed a seniority process that makes them
powerful enough to exert their will over people on a national basis.
The office of the president has grown stronger during more modern
times, with the president being described as "the most powerful man
in the world." That extreme power from a centralized government
interferes with the concept of the power of the people.
Today we see polls that indicate the will of the people regarding
various issues, and yet we see officials in the government exerting
their own will on the people. Often the policies, orders and laws
are counter to the majority's will. We are currently seeing this in
the gigantic law passed exclusively by Democrats only in the House
and Senate and signed by a Democrat president. This law resulted in
no bipartisan efforts, hence, no real representation of the people.
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We have made the change from a republic form of government to
democratic form at every election cycle. "We the people" elect their
officials, who are supposed to be representative of the people who
elected them. We find, however, much of the time the officials began
to rule according to their own needs. They look to what they need in
order to continue to be re-elected and try to give the people what
they think they want until after the next election time. After the
election is over, they begin creating policies, laws and regulations
that affect the longevity of their own office.
We are experiencing that in our country even now. We see polls
constantly, on a daily basis, telling us the people are dissatisfied
with various forms of management. If the polls are gathered using a
random sample, we must assume that we can generalize the results of
that poll to the total population. If that is the case, we have a
majority of Americans who are not in favor of transforming our
health care and insurance system into a system of government
control. Yet, we find the president and the Democrat Congress
continually resisting the will of the people, trying to push the
changes to the health care and insurance system onto people who are
losing the benefits that they have under their current insurance
policies.
The only thing that seems to bring them around to representing
the people, and the will of the people, is an impending re-election
campaign for many of them. They look forward to that re-election and
start bending their own policies while running away from the
previously supported policies for which they voted, toward what they
think the people want. One wonders if after the election, safe and
secure in their re-election, will they revert to governing from
their own standards rather than the will of the people? When that
cycle is repeated year after year, the person holding the office
becomes very powerful, and replacing that person becomes almost
impossible to achieve.
Think about it. Politicians who believe we can't distinguish
between their governing model and their re-election model are
counting on the electorate having a very short memory. One wonders
if the elected officials are aware of the will of the people but
govern differently only to change to the will of the people as they
approach their own re-election. Don't they know it is insulting and
offensive for the people who witness that metamorphosis? Do they
believe the people are so stupid or uninformed as to not notice the
difference? People are fed up with politicians who seemingly play
their constituents .for fools.
[By JIM KILLEBREW]
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