Crackpot Idea Number #435: Representative Representatives

My subconscious mind is a veritable fountain of totally crackpot ideas, which my higher brain functions have to bat down on a regular basis.  Sometimes I succeed.  But other times, well, I end up blogging about them.

One that surfaced this last week felt utterly unworkable, meaning that while it's probably being tried in any number of alternate universes, it ain't about to happen in this one.  Still and all, I felt like sharing.

Our political system just seems to be doing a kind of craptacular job of representing us lately, particularly our House of Representatives.  It's always been a mess, the down and dirty manifestation of our national id.  That is how it should be.  It's a mess by design.

But with political participation dwindling and gerrymandering gamesmanship now honed to a fine edge by demographic analysis, our "representatives" are frequently elected by only a small subset of the individuals they putatively represent.  If you "win" with a slight majority of the 57% of the voters in your district who bothered to show up, you still win.   With those as the dynamics of elections,  it makes it far easier to rely on a loud and highly motivated partisan base instead of attempting to have broader appeal.

So I got to thinking: what if we messed with that a bit?  What if every member of the House of Representatives didn't cast one vote, but instead got exactly the same number of votes as were cast for them in their election?  My representative, for example, would cast 176,686 votes.

This would mean the vote tallies in the House of Representatives would be much larger numbers, sure.  But it's just addition, eh?  Get a spreadsheet.  Tally 'em up.  It's not hard.  House vote results wouldn't be two hundred and something to one hundred and something.  They'd be in the millions.

Such a system would be perfectly reflective of the actual "representativeness" of a Representative.

It also seems...although here it's hard to say...that this would increase the value of voter participation in the system.  The more participation, the more weight would be given to a particular Representative's influence on a piece of legislation.  If you've got 85% turnout in your district, and you're trying to appeal as broadly as possible to your electorate, you would have more influence than if you made it harder for folks to vote.

Every vote becomes important.  Registration and participation suddenly becomes a priority, because winning is leavened with participation.

And even losing candidates would influence the system.  Take, for example, John Boehner's last two election cycles.  When he was re-elected in 2012, he got over 209,000 votes.  He ran unopposed.  Your choice in the Ohio 8th District was John Boehner or John Boehner, exactly the kind of choice you'd have in the good old days in the You Ess Ess Arr.

Well, there was a proto-fascist running, a hard-core right winger.  He took a total of 409 votes from Boehner.

But in the previous election, when there were four choices (Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Crazy Person) Boehner only pulled in 149,000 votes.  Meaningless in the current system, in which he's still the winner.  But in a vote-tally House, it would reduce influence by over 25%.  Third and Fourth parties suddenly matter.  You wouldn't be "throwing away your vote" if you voted libertarian, for example.  You're saying: You have not persuaded me you deserve my power.

Finally, if you're centrist...a capable, pragmatic person with broad appeal and competence, not just one playing to a surface froth of wingnuts...you'll garner more of those votes.  That might make you even more able to influence the direction of the country.

There'd be potential downsides, sure.  With any system, there might be ways to game it.

But as a political concept, it's interesting to play around with.

The Flag of the Fifty-Second State

I find myself once again lamenting that the American Revolution is over.

It is, you know.  We can tell this because for all of the flag-waving and Constitution-thumping that passes for red-meat patriotism in our Republic, we are completely uninterested in any spread of our system of government beyond its current portion of the North American continent.

On the one hand, we proclaim that our form of government is an expression of a universal, the greatest and most marvelous and most...cough..."exceptional" way of living together that humankind has ever discovered.  All should look to us, and want to have what we have.  On many levels, this is true.  Our freedoms are truly God-given. 

But our actions as a nation show we really don't believe it.

When a people rise up against tyranny, yearning to breathe free, it does not even begin to occur to us that perhaps...perhaps...one day the United States could be more than just American.  The values of our Constitution are not viral, not on a global scale. We are not, gosh, what's the word, "evangelical" about our Republic, not when it comes to actually having others become a part of us.  When we reached the rolling breakers of Hawaii, we said "Aloha" to Manifest Destiny.

That's the "Goodbye" Aloha, not the "Welcome to Honolulu International Airport, I'm wearing a grass skirt and giving you flowers" Aloha.  Just to be clear.

We do not think that other peoples...of different colors, and speaking different languages, and of different faiths or no faith at all...could ever be a part of "We The People."

It does not even begin occur to us that perhaps the best way to spread freedom would be to stop propping up "our" despots and pouring out military aid, but to say...we have a system of government that will guarantee you the right to be free and to have a voice.  Join us!  In exchange, you'll get two Senators and as many representatives as you deserve, and equal protection under our laws.  We mean what we say, dagnabbit!

In an alternate universe, perhaps that might be true.  You know, the one where Puerto Rico was the fifty first state. 

But in this universe?  Here, it's not even an option.  Instead, we continue to prattle on about how wonderful and exceptional we are, while showing the world through our actions that we really don't mean it.

The Supreme Court and The Sound of Elections To Come

Much political press has been given to the recent success of the Republican right wing, as "Tea Party" activists have wrested control of the GOP away from crazy namby pamby liberal RINO apologists like Karl Rove. Seriously. When the right wing's shouting heads are accusing Karl Rove of being inadequately Republican for having the audacity to note that a particular Tea Party candidate isn't well suited to the state she's running in, we've wandered into a very strange place.

While that whole sliding away into madness is certainly fascinating, I've been struck by something else more locally. In DC, Mayor Adrian Fenty has been ousted by DC Council Chair Vincent Gray in the primary. In part, this is Fenty's fault. He comes across as a serious SOB. He's not someone you like. But he's someone you can appreciate. He's a technocrat, a hard charging manager who suffers fools and the incompetent lightly, and he's made things notably and markedly better. He made a point of paring the bloated ranks of DC's governmental bureaucracy. In particular, he and his take-no-prisoners School Chancellor went after the outlandishly wretched DC school system, which spends more than $25,000 per year per pupil and yet still manages to have buildings falling apart.

In doing that, he made enemies, particularly in DC's teacher's union and the unions that represent the swollen ranks of DC's government workers. Vincent Gray has repeatedly and outspokenly spoken in defense of those poor teachers who were fired for the sole reason that they happened to be demonstrably crappy at their jobs. Unsurprisingly, Gray is the serious beneficiary of union support and endorsements.

But the union support for Gray manifested itself in a new way this primary season, and that augurs some interesting stuff in this next election cycle. I listen regularly to WTOP, an all news radio station that's the market leader for ratings here in the DC metro area. If you want to influence someone here, buying ad time on WTOP is the gold standard for broadcast media in Washington.

What I heard on WTOP, for the first time ever, were political ads. Yeah, we've all heard them before, but not like this. These were not ads run by the Gray campaign. They were ad buys funded entirely from the coffers of the unions Gray represents. The cash came not from shady organizations that were created as proxies, but was done openly and explicitly. We are the union. Vote for Gray.

This has not happened in prior elections, not in my lifetime. It's a direct result of a recent Supreme Court decision in which the conservative wing of the court ruled that corporations...and, by extension, unions and any other private interest... had the same right to openly support political candidates as individuals.

I haven't seen it yet on the national stage, but I can't imagine that 2010 will look quite like 2008. We've already seen NewsCorp, the corporate parent of FoxNews, funnel over $1,000,000 to the Republican governors association. As corporations and unions seek to defend their profits and their interests, I can expect that we'll see more and more of this.

Religious Freedom, Afghanistan, and The Point of It All

This last week, a little news item flitted across the religion news pages, to be quickly forgotten. It had to do with two Christian relief agencies, both of which provide material support to the Afghan people. The Afghan government shut down the operations of both, alleging that they were involved in proselytizing, which is explicitly forbidden under Afghan law.

Neither Church World Service or Norwegian Church Aid could be described as evangelical. They're not out there trying to convert. They're trying to fulfill the Christian mandate to provide care for those in need. Both are progressive, ecumenical, and sensitive to the needs, culture, and religious sensibilities of local communities. Take a look at the Church World Service web site. Winning souls for Jesus ain't their schtick.

But after a local television station began making allegations based apparently on nothing more than innuendo and the word "Church" in their name, angry mobs took to the streets. Now both groups have been forced by the Afghan government to suspend operations, as it investigates whether these groups have violated provisions in the Constitution of Afghanistan that forbid conversion from Islam. I have two reactions to this.

First, the allegations are clearly false, but that doesn't seem to matter much in Afghanistan. Truth is hard to find, but it ain't like most folks bother tryin'. Rumors that feed existing hatreds are just so much easier. The cultural sensitivities within that community are as twitchy as a recently-set antipersonnel mine. Outrage comes as easily as flipping a rather well-worn switch. Reminds me of the Tea Party, for some reason.

Second, we recently entered into new territory in Afghanistan. It is now the single longest military commitment in American history. We've been there longer than we were in 'Nam. Thousands upon thousands of American servicemen and women have put their lives on the line in Afghanistan, and many have made the ultimate sacrifice in the service of their country. Without the support of the United States, the government in Afghanistan would not exist.

Yet the government that America has put into place there imposes restrictions on human freedom that are totally antithetical to our values as a nation. Yeah, I know, nobody likes proselytizing. But a nation-state that bans it is not worth the blood and sweat of our troops, nor is it worth all the money we've borrowed from China. I'm not saying that as some way of channeling Ann Coulter, asserting that if we just forced 'em all to follow Jesus, things would be copacetic. Not at all. I just can't see the point of creating a nation...and it is our creation...in which a citizen cannot choose not to follow the religion of the majority.

An Afghan should be free to be Muslim. But also Christian. Or Buddhist. Or Hindu. Or Jewish. They should be free to be an Atheist, if they so choose. Not only that, Afghan Christians and Buddhists and Hindus and Jews and Atheists should be free to talk about what they believe, and free to attempt to persuade others of the merits of their belief. Those are the blessings of liberty which were ordained and established in the American Constitution. Those are the values that make America a good thing, even with all her blemishes.

Yeah, I know, imposing this set of values on the Afghan people would have been an affront to their culture. What we don't seem to have realized as we've poured blood and treasure into that region is that the problem in Afghanistan wasn't governmental. What made Afghanistan the seedbed for attacks against our soil wasn't a regime. It was a set of values broadly held by the society.

We've mistakenly assumed that the processes of democracy are the same as the values of our republic. And though we've done some good there, I do find myself wondering, more deeply than I have before, about the point of it all.

A Reasonable Decision in Our National Interest

There's been a tension here in D.C. lately that troubles me. Well, there've been many tensions, but this one bugs me more than about 74.375% of other issues. On the surface, it's a little budget thing, but it feels to my admittedly overtuned sensibilities like a harbinger of a potential future. Let me elucidate, and you can tell me if I'm being paranoid. I do tend to be that way, you know.

There is a disagreement rumbling around the community here in DC between the Department of Defense and the Congress. The Secretary of Defense is deeply aware of the major crisis that our national debt will eventually cause. Defense Secretary Gates is particularly concerned that the military will be impacted by this debt, and is pressing for some reductions in military spending. In particular, he wants pay increases and benefits for our troops to be limited to a level that's rationally sustainable. There are also several weapons systems that both he and top military brass want discontinued as cost-savings measures, like the development of an unnecessary new engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter or building unneeded transport aircraft.

Arrayed against Gates and top military brass are our elected representatives in Congress. Congressmen and women want to be seen as Supporting Our Troops (tm), and have passed numerous laws increasing the mandated benefits for troops and vets and their families. That's a surefire way to get votes, kids. Surefire vote-getting way number two is to make sure that the defense contractors who have positioned factories and offices in their districts continue to produce the weapons systems that produce jobs for folks who vote.

They haven't raised revenue to pay for those expenses, of course. That would mean breaking their promise to Never Raise Your Taxes (tm). It's not one or two members of Congress who do this. It's the nature of the critter. This is just how our representative democracy works. It may also be how representative democracy finally fails.

I'm pretty progressive, and would unabashedly accept the label "liberal." But when I see this disagreement between our unelected military leaders and our elected representatives, I find myself thinking the military is willing to act in the national interest, and Congress is not. By focusing on their own electability and narrowly drawn local interests, our representatives are making decisions that will cripple us as a nation. This seems obvious. They only do this because we make them do it, of course, but we'd rather forget that. Top brass, well, they're making the hard decisions that need to get made. It's the way the military works. That I should have that response is telling.

What worries me, seeing this, is that eventually the debt will hit the fan. We might see massive cutbacks in spending coupled with an increase in taxes. This would be painful, but would preserve the integrity of our republic. Being the pessimist that I am, I doubt this will happen. We would never, ever, ever elect anyone who would do this. If someone slipped through and started making the changes necessary to turn our debt around, we'd run 'em out on a rail.

More likely, we'll eventually see some form of default. When that happens, things will get bad in a way that makes the market seizure of 2008-2009 look like salad days. In that atmosphere of genuine crisis, I can see...and to a certain extent, feel...the temptation to set aside a clearly broken system of governance for one that gets the job done. If it's an emergency, then emergency measures would need to be taken for the security and well-being of the nation. Would we trust Congress to do this?

Or would we, perhaps, see how patriotic and hard-nosed and well-organized the decisions made by our military leaders can be in a time of crisis? Why not turn things over to them for a while, you know, until things have improved?

I can see how people might think this was a reasonable decision in our national interest.

Snyder vs. Phelps and the Price of Freedom

It was perhaps inevitable that America's third most relentless attention hogs (Hi, Glenn! Hi, Sarah!) should make their way back into the baleful glare of the national limelight.

This last week, the Supreme Court began consideration of a case against Westboro Baptist, that sad dark cult of intensive hatred that blights Topeka, Kansas and is misused to assail the entire reputation of Christian faith. One of the many families who lost a soldier-son in recent conflict filed suit against Phelps after his family engaged in one of their trademarked hate-fests outside of the young man's funeral. After an initial $5 million dollar verdict for inflicting emotional distress, an appellate court overturned the award. Now it has come before the highest court in the land.

The issue is freedom of speech. Phelps and his brood are justifiably despised by essentially everyone. Even the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled in favor of Phelps, described his activities as "highly offensive" and "repugnant." But the broader ruling asserted that the speech was "intended to spark debate about issues," and was therefore protected speech.

I can appreciate the intent of the Circuit Court argument, and think that ultimately it's necessary to permit even the speech of nasty pieces of work like Phelps if we take free speech seriously.

That said, I do wonder if the idea that this speech serves the cause of debate is actually...well...you know...true. Discussion and debate are not really things that the Phelps clan care a whit about. They are opening an exchange, sure. But they aren't opening a discussion or a debate. Not really.

Let's say I start a conversation with the phrase: "You are a worthless piece of ****, and you and your mother****ing piece of **** dead child can just **** my ****." That's not an invitation to have a discussion or a debate. It's an invitation for you to give me a little closed-fist dental work. What Phelps is doing is simply that, with a slight gloss of "religion." It's just being abusive and nasty-truculent.

That's not to say that plenty of folks aren't under the misconception that being cruel and hostile somehow constitutes debate. Tens of thousands of internet trolls seem to think precisely that. But while disagreement can get intense even within the bounds of normal political discussion, there is a point we reach when it ceases to be part of the dynamic tension of democracy. It's just screaming and tearing and brokenness.

Ah well. Maintaining even the freedom of those who have no respect for others is necessary for freedom itself to be maintained.

The Only Real Christians Live In Denmark

I've just done a fascinating bit of reading over at Public Discourse, a conservative web journal. The article I'd commend to your attention is written by W. Bradford Wilcox, a University of Virginia sociologist. He opines at totally manageable length about the impact of social democracy on faith, drawing from a recent 33 nation study by two University of Washington sociologists. That study confirmed something many folks have noticed anecdotally: that nations that provide cradle-to-grave care for their citizens tend to be less religious.

For Dr. Wilcox, this reality poses grave concerns for the landscape of American faith during an Obama administration. Given this administration's focus on providing health care, a functioning infrastructure, and an educational system, things could get particularly ugly for the church if all of those things are successfully provided. Why? The answer is simple, says the good doctor:

"The bottom line: as government grows, people’s reliance on God seems to diminish."

Why is this? It isn't that folks aren't religious in countries like Norway and Denmark. There are Christians...just not as many of them. Why? In his review of the 33 nation study, Dr. Wilcox pulls out the core finding:

How do we account for the inverse relationship between government size and religious vitality? As Gill and Lundsgaarde point out, some individuals have strong spiritual needs that can only be met by religion. This portion of the population remains faithful, come what may. But other individuals only turn to churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques when their needs for social or material security are not being met by the market or state. In an environment characterized by ordinary levels of social or economic insecurity, many of these individuals will turn to local congregations for..support.

So let's make the shift from sociology to theology. What does this mean theologically?

It means, if we're attending to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, that the "success" of American Christianity only comes because most American Christians don't have a clue what Jesus actually taught. The findings tell us that we turn to God when we are seeking material well-being. We turn to Christ seeking physical security.

What we do not appear to be seeking is the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. We're as confused as the Samaritan woman at the well, who had trouble grasping the difference between water and Living Water. We come to Jesus not because we feel the yearning to be conformed to the will of God and transformed by the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. Instead, it's because we got us a jones for some a dat schweet, schweet Mammon, and we expect that Jesus in his infinitely beneficent blingitude will supernaturally serve it up if we ask real nice.

Perhaps, to flip Dr. Wilcox and his conclusions on their head, what a welfare state actually does is help separate the wheat from the chaff, the True Kirk from the Church of the World, the Heavenly City from the Earthly City. Those who would otherwise go to church seeking first their own interests and their own comfort find what they seek in the state, and fall away.

Those who recognize that there is more to our purpose life than material possessions and security...well, they keep seeking the Holy until they find it.