MANY people hail the press or “fourth estate” as the final check on governmental abuses. Given media owners’ private interests, can the corporate media be counted as an objective guardian of the public interest? Where is the line between “fair and balanced” reporting or biased propaganda? And do we get the whole story?

When 3,000 people died in Al Qaeda’s air attacks against the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, press coverage lasted for months. When U.S.-led troops invaded Afghanistan in January 2002, the first U.S. death saw more press coverage than the 3,000 Afghanis killed. The American press spotlighted the death of the 2,000th U.S. soldier in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, but the press has barely reported estimates of 600,000 Iraqi deaths since the invasion. In fact, the U.S. Government does not keep track of Iraqi deaths. Are not all lives equal?

Given the consolidation of media ownership into fewer and fewer hands, the diversity of editorial viewpoints is dwindling. Once a free press voiced different perspectives from across the political spectrum. Now newspapers, magazines, radio, and TV seem to cover the same stories the same way. Why? The so-called “liberal” media are largely owned by conservatives allied with friends in government.

We can learn from a joke I made up decades ago. How many top government officials and media moguls does it take to screw in a light bulb? None. They want to keep the people in the dark.

Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels said, “It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion.” His tactic was to repeat a simplistic Big Lie loud enough and often enough until the people believed it. For instance, Hitler’s media said Poland posed a threat, so a “preemptive” invasion was justified. After weak Poland was easily occupied in 1939, Hitler said the invasion was necessary anyway. Does this sound like U.S. statements about the “preemptive” invasion of Iraq? Is the similarity a coincidence?

Why don’t journalists with integrity protest being used as tools of propaganda? Because speaking truth to power is very risky. Reporters soon learn which stories their editors will not publish. Objecting to censorship, I’ve learned first-hand, can cost reporters their jobs. This causes reporters to practice “self censorship” to keep earning a living, which is the most insidious form of press repression.

Without the mainstream press as a watchdog to report government misdeeds, state abuses of constitutional power too rarely are stopped by public outcry. That’s a shame. As Paddy Chayefsky advised, we need to tell government officials and media network executives that we’re as mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore!

THE third important U.S. constitutional “power center” is the Supreme Court and federal judges, which can check the president and Congress if either abuses their authority.

Supreme Court justices and federal judges are appointed for life. They are nominated by presidents and approved by the Senate. The House has no vote in court appointments. Why not? Was the judiciary ever intended to feel any allegiance to the common people?

The Supreme Court, like high courts in most nations, reflects the same legacy from feudalism as the president and the Senate. The term “court” itself derives from monarchy. Willful kings in court chambers once settled all disputes. (Remember King Solomon?) We can thank angry English barons in 1215 for the Magna Carta. Their insistence on curbing an abusive monarch gave to us the modern moral and political principle of a leader ruled by the law.

Politics create the laws before they reach the courts, which apply the laws. In a republic or democracy, judges must stay within the law, uphold trial by jury, and ignore political bias. Judicial independence is the best guarantor of equal justice under the law.

Does the U.S. Supreme Court embody fairness? In the close 2000 presidential election, the Democratic candidate won the popular vote. Then Fox News preemptively reported a Republican win in crucial Florida. The High Court intervened to stop a disputed Florida recount, effectively selecting a president instead of letting voters elect one.

If the Supreme Court had not acted, an Electoral College deadlock was possible. In that event, the Constitution provides for the House of Representatives to decide the election. Because the Republican Party controlled the House in 2000, the GOP still would have won, but the House was denied its due vote under the Constitution. Was the High Court’s action unconstitutional? Like the discounted and uncounted voters in Florida, were all Americans disenfranchised?

Is the U.S. Supreme Court a trustworthy body? Do the president’s appointees erode our trust? Will today’s Supreme Court ever reverse such unconstitutional measures as those in the Patriot Act?

*

LIKE Paine wrote about the English Constitution, it’s a fallacy to say the U.S. Constitution is a balanced union of three separate powers —executive, legislative, judicial—reciprocally checking one another. The phrase “separation of powers” rarely has real meaning beyond symbolic rhetoric. Cases may be cited where one government branch stopped abuses by another branch, but do not be fooled.

U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1950s, for instance, ordered all of his administration officials to stop testifying before the “unAmerican activities” committee of Sen. Joe McCarthy, the surly pursuer of communists in America; his tactics mirrored his foes in Moscow. When “Ike” cut off political support, McCarthy was primed for prime-time TV demolition by Edward R. Morrow and a free press. The “witch hunts” ended. The “blacklists” ended.

But Eisenhower acted only after McCarthy publicly humiliated a presidential war buddy. McCarthyism was halted only by personality politics, not by the Constitution. This was far better than no restraints at all on power and ambition. However, please observe the failure by “the rule of law” in curbing a nascent dictatorship in America.

More recently, Republicans in Congress told K Street lobbyists in Washington, DC, to hire only Republican staffers and contribute only to Republican campaigns, or else they’d be denied access to majority GOP legislators. The press reported the “pay to play” scheme in 2004, and a top lobbyist went to jail for corruption, but know that nothing in the Constitution has ever halted such abuses of power.

LET US examine the parts of the American Constitution, as Paine did for the English Constitution. We immediately find traces of two medieval tyrannies, adapted to modern republican tastes.

First, the remains of monarchical tyranny reside in the office of the president and the executive branch, modeled on Britain’s king and his court, which was ruled by decree.

Second, traces of aristocratic tyranny endure in the U.S. Senate, modeled on Britain’s House of Lords, the nobility.

Serving the common people is the U.S. House of Representatives, modeled on Britain’s House of Commons. The true republican spirit still dwells in these American and British legislatures. On their virtue rest our best hope for preserving democracy.

The Senate and House combined form the United States Congress, mirroring Britain’s combined Parliament. Each assembly in America and Britain is a majestic body. Sadly, those elected to these bodies too often contribute too little to our actual freedom and prosperity.

Now focus on the U.S. system. A president can serve two four-year terms. Senators can serve unlimited six-year terms. Representatives can serve unlimited two-year terms. Because private wealth funds their campaigns, they are not beholding to the common voters. They feel little affinity for those persuaded to elect them. They’re supposed to maintain frequent contact with voters at home to keep their seats. Instead, they devote far more time to fundraising than to lawmaking. Their interests lie apart from those they represent.

*

PRESIDENTIAL power is checked by the Congress. The Senate ratifies cabinet and court appointments while the House approves a president’s budget. The Constitution gives the president a countering power to check Congress with a veto of their legislation. A so-called “ balance of powers” exists because, as Paine wrote,

“A [chronic] thirst for absolute power is the natural disease of monarchy.”

Yet in fairness, we must concede that this constitutional system of checks and balances is based on two contradictory presumptions. The veto provision assumes that the president is wiser than all of those in Congress, but the right to approve appointments and budgets assumes that Congress is wiser than the president. How can each be wiser than the other? Paine declared that this same illogical disparity between the British crown and Parliament was a “mere absurdity!”

And there’s a ludicrous aspect to the job of the presidency itself. Presidents are encircled by layers of protective buffers, much like in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, where tiny Lilliputian “flappers” must move the king’s lips and ears before he can communicate. In the same way, the president is cut off from hearing about alternate policy options, yet the president has the power to act in cases that require the most informed judgment possible. Notice the contradiction.

Security for a president isolates the high leader from the world, but the business of being president requires that leader to know the world intimately. Opposing and undermining one another, these conflicting demands for security and access must make the routine character of the presidency feel surreal at times. The confusion must inevitably confound sound decision-making in the White House.

Also, the private interests backing the election of a president often filter out options of higher merit that do not serve their cause or their ideology. The president winds up in a self-contained echo chamber. As a consequence, short-sighted policies prevail. A president’s work product can be ineffective at best or destructive at worst.

The fundamental principle of a free government
is the equal representation of a free people
– Mercy Otis Warren

INDIVIDUALS need a system of moral rules to govern their lives responsibly. For governments, such rules are called constitutions. Thomas Paine wrote,

“I draw my idea of the form of government from a principle in nature, which no art can overturn, viz, that the more simple any thing is, the less liable it is to be disord-ered, and the easier repaired when disordered.”

In this way Paine launched his discussion of the English constitutional monarchy in 1776. I’ll paraphrase him in this chapter to speak about the constitutional republic in the United States today. We’ll apply Paine’s insights to other nations in the next chapter. The principles of national government equally apply to self government, and we’ll tie these together throughout the book.

The U.S. Constitution—while inspired by Athenian democracy, the Roman republic and the Iroquois confederacy—primarily was modeled after the English Constitution. Both are noble documents, given the dark and slavish times when they arose. In a world ruled by absolute kings, the British and American constitutional democracies appeared on earth like a glorious divine rescue from despotism.

“But that it [the Constitution] is imperfect, subject to convulsions, and incapable of producing what it seems to promise, is easily demonstrated.”

The British and American social contracts are the flawed products of political compromise deals. As a result, each system of government is so exceedingly complex that the people

“may suffer [abuses] for years together without being able to discover in which part the fault lies; some will say in one [part] and some in another, and every political physician will advise a different medicine.”

If the prescription is public safety, Paine wrote, the only means for a government to guarantee total security is to turn totalitarian.

“Absolute governments (though the disgrace of human nature) have this advantage with them, that they are simple; if the people suffer, they know the head from which their suffering springs, know likewise the remedy, and are not bewildered by a variety of causes and cures.”

A solution is self evident. First, remove the master from authority. Since absolutist leaders rely on cult psychology to retain power, the second step is helping the True Believers give up groupthink. In time, those programmed to obey learn to trust their own wisdom.

Liberty is not the tradition in every land. Where representative or republican democracy has become a habitual way of life, the ongoing personal growth needed for genuine democracy is difficult. It’s hard to release a long-standing, comfortable prejudice for wanting leaders to control our lives. Responsible self rule frightens most of us.

Our imagined state is now two steps removed from self rule. The people have grown reliant on government for choices they once made themselves, like when to plant a field and how to price the grain. Life in a republic diverts people from recalling life in a direct democracy. Soon their memories of living without any government vanish.

In time, even the basic tasks of a proxy democracy in the republic seem alien and futile. If people believe money buys the ballot box, that their votes do not count, they stop voting. People swallow bland public policy pabulum because they feel powerless. They lose hope. As apathy spreads, power shifts even further to the leaders.

Without deep feelings of community to sustain the social contract, people forget about self control or self realization. They indulge their lowest appetites. The people turn numb to suffering in themselves and others. They forget about compassion and mercy.

As the government loses accountability, access to leaders is tightly controlled. Those few people who bother to complain or protest are punished. When free speech dies, the social contract between voters and leaders fails. The bonds of community finally snap.

A communication breakdown between government and the people breeds revolt. Chaos ensues as communication failures multiply. With a promise to restore law and order, a charismatic leader arises to be a king. The people give up their civil liberties for the sake of security. Soon they forget the meaning of “freedom.” They are willing slaves who cannot be free because they do not know they have a choice.

*

PAINE’S parable shows how any “nation state” can migrate from individual self rule to a direct democracy to a representative republic and then slide into tyranny. The foothold of freedom stands forever on a slippery slope. As his words prove, Thomas Paine understood and championed the value of personal democracy.

“Here then is the origin and rise of government, namely, a mode rendered necessary by the inability of [individual] moral virtue to govern the world; here too is the design and end of government, viz,* freedom and security. And however our eyes may be dazzled with snow, or our ears deceived by sound; however prejudice may warp our wills, or interest darken our understanding, the simple voice of nature and of reason will say, it is right.”

* From the Latin videlicit, one may see. In the 18th century, viz meant “namely.”

IMPERMANENCE might be the one permanent truth in our universe. The settlers’ initial struggles in our isolated community united them in common cause, yet in that first generation or another, human frailties and vices surface, such as robbery, rape or murder. Seeing others sin, the resolve for self control evaporates. As a distrust spreads, wrote Paine, the settlers discover the necessity of

“establishing some form of government to supply the defect of moral virtue.”

The settlers decide they need a government to rule them because they cannot or will not rule themselves without a government.

“Some convenient tree will afford them a State House. Under its branches the whole colony may assemble to deliberate on public matters…. In this first parliament every [hu]man, by natural right will have a seat.”

Thus, the people form a “direct” or genuine democracy.

Most likely, the first laws will carry the muted titles of Guidelines. Regulations will follow. The early laws may be enforced by a penalty no more severe than social disdain—the old cold shoulder.

As the population grows, community concerns increase. But some members now live too far away to attend all meetings at the Council Tree. Personal inconvenience creates a communication barrier—the first block to all of the people participating in their democracy.

When meetings grow too unwieldy, people discover the necessity of agreeing to leave the job of lawmaking to a few wise heads, chosen by the community. Power shifts from the people to their leaders.

The new assembly of delegates has the same concerns and interests as the people electing them. These representatives vote the same way as the whole body would act if they all were present. Under this new social contract, the people form a representative democracy. To use the correct term, they form a simple republic.

With the population growing, new districts need to be represented. The legislature adds seats. Each district elects its representatives, who vote as the majority in the district would vote if they all were present. In this way, any republic may prosper honorably in the land.

To stop the representatives from forming any interest groups apart from the common electorate, Paine wrote,

“prudence will point out the propriety of having elections often; those elected may by that means return and mix again with the general body of electors every few months; their fidelity to the [voting] public will be secured by the prudent reflection of not making a rod for themselves.”

Paine was alluding to corporal punishment. He meant that corrupt officials give their foes a reason to beat them at the polls.

Lively, open speech between the electors and elected, Paine knew, helps representatives stay connected with all parts of the community being represented. The electors and elected, therefore,

“mutually and naturally support each other, and on this (not on the unmeaning name of [a] king) depends the strength of government, and the happiness of the governed.”