“For the People” The New Populism?

Populist notions can frustrate me at times. It seems to be that on the Left the idea now is to hamstring government from doing things that “we the people” don’t all agree with or explicitly ascent. The “not in my name” crowd is vocal and potent. Indeed, we should think about how reflective and responsive government should be to the people. In the time of absolute monarchies or at least monarchies that had vast amounts of political power, there was little responsiveness from the Monarch to the people. Monarchs that responded to the people tended to be more popular and keep their heads longer than Monarchs who did not. There were still others who worked to create strong power bases among the nobility to make sure that they didn’t have to deal with the hoi polloi and could conduct policy as they wished. Part of the rise of republican government in the 18th century was to create government in the name of the people that was ruled and controlled by those same people. Obviously, the poster children for this type of government are France and the United States. Most other systems of republican government have been built off those two models as Britain tends to be the model for Constitutional Monarchies and certain parliamentary systems.

You can’t argue with the fact that many terrible things are being done, particularly in the United States, ostensibly in the name of the people of this country. Pile that on top of what corporations do in the the name of themselves while enjoying the benefit of being from the US or another developed country and it seems like the wealthy and politically connected are running roughshod over the entire world. I would not necessarily disagree with that assessment. Now, more than ever before, the world seems out of control and not only is the government non-responsive to the people it works for, but it seems powerless to stop the wealthy from operating within and without the law. That being said, moving government policy to a purely direct democracy model would be just as terrible an idea as what we have at present.

People forget about the tyranny of the majority. You have to protect the minority as much as the majority. All people includes rich people, poor people, middle people, disabled people, all kinds of people. Trying to say that “society” or the “great underclass” is all that matters leaves out a great deal of people in the middle class or those that are doing better than others and is not reflective of how our economy works. Do we need to work incessantly for the public good? Yes. Do we need to lynch all rich people? No. I am not saying that our government doesn’t need some reform. I’ve argued for wholesale changes to the  U.S. Constitution including the right to fire congress. In the effort to reform, we should not overdo it and leave public policy to the tyranny of the majority because that tyranny of the majority is far harder, more cruel, and harder to stop than any single dictator. History has some stark examples including the Jim Crow American South, the Salem Witch Trials and the Reign of Terror in France. When we look at how to reform the system we should look at how we can create a system that works for everyone. Where we can balance the need of the individual and the needs of the group. I think the best way to do this is through making sure that everyone contributes to society through fair taxation (including corporations) and that we have a strong social safety net to back up that system. If we match that with strong employment protections regardless of the status of that employment (part-time, full-time, contract); we have a society that we all want to live in, can contribute to, and feel like we’re getting something from. It is much easier to believe in a society where its people benefit then to look out into the street and see a society that hasn’t done anything to benefit anyone besides the elite few. That is real populism.