The Responsibilities of a Democracy / Sally Andriamiarisoa, Ph.D.

The Responsibilities of a Democracy

The debate about what democracy means is getting ugly these days.
Every time Congress meets, as so many butchering surgeons wrestling over the fate of our strangulated economy, and threatens to amputate this or that limb of the gasping beast, someone is bound to scream in a fit of righteous indignation:
"No! Why Me?"
...Followed by lachrymal, quasi-pious invocations of the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, the meaning of democracy... "one for all, all for me" kinds of speeches, all invariably leading to stultifying, zero sum voting games most of us have by now grown accustomed to.
What happens to the American ethos bellowing to Copeland evocations of vastness and to our nationwide almost genetic capacity for unlimited ambitious consumption when we hit the frontier of our finally exhausted resources, in what Umberto Eco envisioned as the fast drying of the pioneering spirit as it approached the finitude of the conquered West?
For one, it has to mean that if we are all the same, it cannot mean in all things.
As American history reminds us, if some got the land, others did not.
Many, in fact, were killed in the process of "our" getting it.
As for what nature doles out, let's simply be content to point out that the likes of Einstein, Beethoven, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Adams, don't come a dime a dozen, making a compelling case for distribution of labor on the basis of capacity for expertise.
Sounds elitist? What can I say: Nature is a tough accountant!
The liberal riposte quickly docks in: "Nature is a construct with its resulting social stratifications allowing for the materialization of capacity for expertise."
Which then leaves us with the following: If democracy does not mean that we are all the same, except in the hope for the materialization of each one's potential, whose responsibility is it then to define this potential, to enact it, and if need be, to limit it?
Classical literature and politics have a ready answer, called "the Greater Good of All." But for that, the Celebrity Craving, Ego Serving, Wealth Seeking Me of Individualism would have to Concede to a more eco-centric definition of We, informed by the consensus of Shared Values and Solidarity of Spirit as systemically upheld by the institutions of democracy itself, namely its collective distribution venues for education, justice, health, and wealth.
In a word, the equal hope for one's potential can be a reality only to the extent that the delivery systems ensuring the manifestation of that potential are themselves democratic.
Which is why we eventually had to free the slaves and allow women to vote.
Which is why we will eventually have to educate every child, care for every patient, and, finally, when the time comes, bury every soul, with a level of dignity possible only in a democracy.

Copyright 2011
Gaia Global Elite Mentoring

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