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June 2006

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Promoting Democracy In The USA

By Bertell Ollman
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When someone asked what he thought about Western civilization, Mahatma Gandhi replied, “I think it would be a good idea.” Inspired by this, three dozen progressive scholars, lawyers, and activists—including Howard Zinn, Gore Vidal, Mumia Abu Jamal, Ramsey Clark, Immanuel Wallerstein, Ellen Wood, Michael Parenti, David Harvey, and I—have created the International Endowment for Democracy (IED) to highlight: 

  1. the tragic and rapidly deteriorating state of democracy in the United States 
  2. the hypocrisy of our government’s efforts to engage in what it calls “democracy promotion” 
  3. the kind of fundamental reforms needed to make our country into a real democracy 
  4. the activities of many groups and institutions in the United States who are trying to turn things around 

U.S. democracy has never been what it claimed to be. 

What’s different now is that the person sitting in the oval office is a usurper (more Napoleon III than Bush I), having stolen the last two presidential elections and, with this, even the modest degree of influence Americans once enjoyed over their rulers has practically disappeared. The policies followed by this illegitimate government display the same arrogant disregard for democratic values and procedures that brought it to power. At home, the tragic events of 9/11 were used as a pretext to make an unprecedented assault on American civil liberties in the so-called PATRIOT Act and to carry out an economic program that favors corporations and the rich as never before. 

Abroad, our illegitimate government has become the major danger to world peace, having started two unnecessary wars (at least one of which was based on lies) and threatened several others. Economically, by bullying and bribing weaker nations to adopt “free market” economies, the rapidly growing gap between America’s rich and poor (including the misnamed “middle class”) has been reproduced virtually everywhere. While in the environment, the U.S. government’s unwillingness to admit global warming, let alone act on it (other than to make it worse), has raised the stakes to the point where the future of our species is in jeopardy. 

The solution would seem to be more democracy. But if big money dominates the political process at every turn (drawing up programs, nominations, campaigns, advertising, consulting, media, lobbying, to say nothing of setting and administering the election rules)—as it clearly does in the U.S.—then, as a popular joke goes, “our government is the best that money can buy.” The formal right that everyone has to speak their mind and vote, and the regular occurrence of elections help legitimate what is, in effect, a pre-determined outcome. 

Democracy, like any other set of practices, is connected to a whole set of preconditions, which in this case involves a significant degree of social and economic equality among all its participants. It comes along with these preconditions or it doesn’t come at all. Thus, any serious attempt at political reform must include equally strenuous efforts to democratize all the sectors of social life (especially the economy) that feed into the political process. Only by leveling the political playing field in this way will the United States ever have a government that is truly “of and by the people.” 

Democracy promotion, the declared aim of U.S. foreign policy, therefore, has to start in the country that needs it most, which is the U.S. This is not because there is less democracy in the United States than anywhere else—a few other lands are worse off in this regard—but because the democratic deficit from which we suffer is a greater hazard to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness all across the globe than the policies followed by any other government. 

T he International Endowment for Democracy (IED) has been set up to enable people everywhere to play a part in the struggle to extend democracy in the United States by expressing their solidarity with and giving aid to some of the many groups that are involved in these struggles. Where some of the most important interests of Americans and non-Americans coincide, the enormous potential for cooperation has hardly been tapped. Together with the World Social Forums and the spreading actions against the political and economic dictates of the U.S. ruling class, we consider the International Endowment for Democracy part of the essential next step in the democratization of capitalist globalization—except this part also allows people everywhere to join in the struggle at the very heart of the world system that needs to be transformed. 

Our motto: in the words of the U.S. comedian, Dick Gregory, “If democracy is a good thing, let’s have more of it.” A lot more of it. For more information, www.iefd.org. 

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