When the Internet was born out of the Cold War, the Defense Department felt that it was not necessary anymore in the defense of our Freedom. So, they released the Internet to the general public in what will become known someday as the greatest technological improvement in the history of the world as well as the greatest political advance.
When this nation was born, the Republic was formed, a kind of kindergarten democracy where people would be forced to pick someone and send that lucky person to a central meeting place, at first Philadelphia, and now Washington D.C., where they would presumably vote the will of the people who voted them into that vaulted position. And that worked fairly well for the first two hundred years of our democracy.
Over the last few decades however, our democracy has been all but scrapped by the intervention of the lobbyists, with the blessings of the Two Party System, who go to Washington D.C. to “Help” the electred representatives form their decisions. Of course these decisions are most often weighed under the close scrutiny of people who are weighing their chances to get reelected and the money that lobbyists often provide for that reelection greatly outweighs the consideration of the best solutions for the folks back home.
Democracy in America is dead, most of us know it, we just don’t have the courage to admit it in public just yet because to do so would seem almost treasonous. The evidence is clear. If democracy were really alive and well, then, the vast majority of the electorate would have better jobs, no more outsourcing of the best jobs to China. We would have national health insurance in some form. We would have a balanced budget. We would have better schools, roads, trains, electric powered vehicles, cheaper alternative forms of energy, freedom from terror and most likely lower taxes, secure retirement plans, a more ethical corporate world, cheaper gasoline, less homelessness, a solution to illegal immigration and so much more.
Instead, we have the kind of power elite in this country who generally votes for the side of any given issue wherein they have been bribed by a lobbyist or group of lobbyists. Again, everyone knows this, it’s just that no one has any power to do anything about the death of democracy in America. That is, no one thinks they have any power to do anything about it. Actually, we have all the power to do something about it, and better than that, we have the machinery to do something about it. We have the Internet, until and unless they take it away from us.
To prevent the worst catastrophe in the history of this country or any other country, we must act and we must act now. We must start to use the Internet for Voting on the Issues, finding the best solutions of the day. Not only must we vote for better politicians, but we must help them make the right decisions, decisions based on the needs of the ordinary people of this country. AND, more importantly, we must help them by making some of the decisions ourselves, on the Internet, by placing National Initiatives and Referenda on the Ballot so that True Democracy may be born once and for all in the only nation capable of such a wonderful and hopeful thing.
We must start by having Demonstration Balloting on the Internet. These would serve to show the rest of the people of this country how a Direct Democracy could work without the possibility of bribery getting in the way of fast, effective and equitable laws. We could begin our new demonstration of real democracy by voting on the Internet, tomorrow for a pullout of troops from Iraq. (This fiasco, predicated on Presidential lies has already cost the American people two Trillion Dollars and counting.) We could vote on a cure for Social Security. We could force them to balance the budget so that our children and their children are not burdeneed with overwhelming debt. We could vote on taking money out of the Defense Department and reallocating it for spending on a Defense against the possible Bird Flu Pandemic that every expert says is coming. We could reallocate some of these funds to fight Global Warming, something the present administration says does not exist yet we can all see in our worsening weather patterns. We should reallocate some of the money we now spend on useless bombs and bombers and put that money to work in helping real people live their lives better instead of murdering countless thousands of people overseas and then waiting for them to kill countless thousands of us.
We should cut out the overburdening expenses for Departments that don’t work such as the Energy Department. The Energy Department spends billions of dollars of our hard earned tax dollars every year and yet they are yet to bring to the American public a single kilowatt of energy. They just keep supporting the oil Industry, rubber stamping everything they want. And do we really need a C.I.A. and the N.S.A. who are now spending our own tax dollars snooping on us? Billions of dollars, perhaps even trillions have been spent on these bureaucrats who didn’t even learn about 9/11. This was the most expensive blunder of intelligence gathering in history. And what about FEMA? Do we really need to support an agency who waited weeks, then purchased thosuands of trailers and hid them away from the people who actually needed them? We would have been better off without the Fema Dollars so that the people directly effected by Hurrican Katrina might have been able to find them on their own.
The greatest lesson in history is that bureaucracy can never replace common sense. The greatest common sense realization of this century is that nothing is working in our country, the last best hope for democracy in the world. We have a President who was barely elected to office and made it to a second term only because of the unbelievable bungling of John Kerry. This is a President who was obsessed with getting Saddam Hussein because he tried to assassinate his Daddy and in so doing has stopped hunting for the real enemy of this country, Osama Bin Laden. This is a President who tried to kill Social Security, who has ruined the economy, who squandered a huge surplus from the Clinton Administration and gave us almost instantly, unprecedented deficits that are going to ruin the economy even more. This is a President who’s grade point average in college was a ‘C’. Is it any wonder that his administration gets even poorer grades. It’s an administration who decided to break the law and spy on its own citizens and then they go after the people who leaked this fact to the public. I wonder who are the real terrorists in this world?
We all know that the only solution to all our problems is the one that is staring you right in the face. If you’re reading these words, it’s only because the Internet has allowed me to publish them. Without the Internet, these thoughts would never have made it off of my own individual computer. The internet cannot and will not ever be deterred or discouraged. We can use it to put real solutions to real problems on the table for every voter to pass on it. We can use it to discuss the greatest and most pressing problems, educate ourselves as to the most efficient and cost-effective solutions and then put the best ones to a vote, on the Internet, where they cannot possibly be influenced by the Lobbyists.
Sure, this type of direct democracy would spell the end of the monopoly of the two National Party system, with all kinds of parties rising up on the Internet to foster one political philosophy after another. But, at the end of the day, it would be individual, ordinary, working class people who would be the decision makers in every case. And, after all, the Two-Party system has really shown itself to be more like the Model T Ford. It was built for the days when there were practically no roads in this country and so owning one of these early automobiles, horseless carriages, waw more of a status symbol than a useful device.
Today, we have freeways and superhighways. We have bullet trains, jet airliners and space travel. The way of the future is not in using the old Model T Fords, but in using the vehicles that are yet to be built. The Internet is the fastest most efficient, most democratic way to express the will of the majority than any other means ever devised.
After a few demonstrations of this great tool perhaps we would find the will to amend the U.S. Constitution to allow the Internet to be used officially to cast our votes for ideas as well as candidates. Under this true democracy, the candidates, all of them, will be forced to be more responsive to our needs because it would be far easier to vote them out of office if they failed us. Under this true democracy, we could help them in making better laws because we would be putting some of the best ideas on the ballot directly without the need of even bothering them.
With one swift and decisive Amendment to the Constitution, we would get around the powerful Committees who actually decide which laws are voted on in Congress. We would get around the bribery of the lobbyists and all that this influence implies. We would be able to overrule the ineptness and the negligent laws that are made every day. We would be able to decide when to go to war, not just on the whims of Presidents. We would be able to go after the true enemies of Democracy, like Osama Bin Laden, and the rest of the terrorists around the world. We would have better preparation for Natural Disasters and Diseases. We would be able to balance the budget by cutting the unnecessary and spendthrift bureaucracies. We would be able to build more homes for the homeless. We would have secure retirement plans. We would have more ethical corporations which would result in better and more plentiful jobs. We would have cheaper gasoline because there would be alternative methods of transportation other than just SUV’s and trucks.
We would, in short, have the greatest nation in the history of the world once again. Is it obvious to us all that this great nation is sliding into more and more mediocrity every day. Is it obvious to most patriotic Americans that we are becoming more and more like a third world nation? Is it obvious to most of us that the political leaders of this country are selling us out? Is it obvious to most of us that something has to change, change soon, and change for the better? Is it obvious to most of us that Voting on the Internet is that way?