by Michael Krieger, Liberty Blitzkrieg:

War is not a foregone conclusion or a national necessity. Each successive occupant of the White House only needs you to believe that in order to centralize the power of an increasingly imperial presidency, stifle dissent, and chip away at what remains of civil liberties.

– Danny Sjursen, retired US Army officer, The Pence Prophecy: VP Predicts Perpetual War at the West Point Graduation

Whenever I mention direct democracy, a certain segment of the population always comes back with a very negative knee-jerk reaction. Since this response tends to center around several concerns, today’s post will dig into them and explain how such pitfalls can be structurally addressed.

Minority Protection

The first thing that worries people is a fear there will be no protections for minority populations within such a system. Take the U.S. for example, where approximately 80% of the population lives in urban areas and only 20% in rural. If we moved to a system where direct popular vote played a meaningful role in deciding the majority of issues, rural populations would lose out every single time. It would end up being an oppressive system for people who live in less populated areas and would tear up the U.S. even faster than is happening now.

I definitely think this sort of thing is a problem, but people misunderstand what I mean when I discuss direct democracy. Fundamentally, I’m a firm believer that governance should be radically decentralized compared to what it is today. America is a great example of a good idea gone completely off the tracks.

Localism

While the founders envisioned a decentralized structure in which core politically entities known as states would decide most issues, we’re now stuck with a centralized imperial system in which virtually all major decisions are made in Washington D.C. by gangs of hopefully corrupt and compromised politicians. But it’s even worse than that. Power hasn’t merely been concentrated in D.C., but it’s also become increasing concentrated within the capital itself in the hands of a reckless imperial presidency.

For example, the separations of powers outlined in the Constitution when it comes to war has been all but obliterated. Congress is supposed to declare war, yet the U.S. military is involved in conflicts all over the planet, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and Niger without any such declaration.

To illustrate how insane all of this is, read the following from a Vicearticle published last year:

The U.S. is officially fighting wars in seven countries, including Libya and Niger, according to an unclassified White House report sent to Congress this week and obtained by the New York Times.

Known officially as the “Report on the Legal and Policy Frameworks Guiding the United States’ Military Force and Related National Security Operations,” the document is part of a new requirement outlined in the 2018 defense spending bill. The White House is already required to update Congress every six months on where the U.S. is using military force.

We’ve somehow gone from Congress must declare war, to the White House will update Congress every six months on how all the undeclared wars are going. This is madness.

The U.S. is currently drowning in an overly centralized and corrupt imperial government based in D.C. For direct democracy to truly function well, it should based in local governance. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the places currently using these tools most successfully, Switzerland and Liechtenstein, focus on localism.

There are many reasons I believe decentralized, local governance is a superior model . First, it’s an insane level of conceit to assume a country as geographically and culturally diverse as the U.S. should be in the business of making one-size fits all decisions for 325 million humans. While the urban/rural divide I mentioned earlier is one important factor, so are other cultural distinctions.

Though city-dwellers in Seattle and Houston may have urban living in common, cultural differences mean these two populations will often want to handle similar problems very differently. Even within states, you often have serious friction from county to county, and power within the states themselves likewise can be too centralized and dismissive of local concerns.

A perfect example can be seen in the state of Colorado where I live. Fracking, and oil and gas drilling in general, is a very contentious issue, and what often happens is cities will try to ban or regulate drilling in their communities only to be overruled by politicians in the state capital. Who should decide whether drilling happens, the people actually living near wells, or politicians in the statehouse?

As reported by Westword:

Under Colorado law, communities have virtually no authority to stop these facilities from popping up wherever a company can acquire land, obtain a state permit and decide to start drilling.

The situation has sown a sense of powerlessness — and frustration suffused an October city council meeting in Republican-leaning Loveland. That community of 76,000 recently woke up to letters informing residents of — not asking permission for — a project that will drill a dozen two-mile-long horizontal wells underneath many of their homes and schools.

An overflow crowd packed into council chambers to hear a presentation on the drilling proposal and share concerns. Most were residents of the neighborhoods under which the planned drilling would take place — retirees anxious about how it would affect their health, parents worried about their young children. As city employees briefed council members on the plans, however, it became clear just how little control Loveland would be able to assert over the situation.

As this past weekend’s EU elections demonstrated, humans everywhere are increasingly frustrated with the political status quo and feel utterly helpless in the face of corrupt and centralized bureaucracies. Similar to how many people in Loveland, Colorado feel alienated and disempowered when confronted with oil and gas interests and a state government that doesn’t care, billions of people across the planet are experiencing a similar level of disenfranchisement and revulsion with the political establishment. Increased local decision making combined with more citizen power via tools of direct democracy, as opposed to professional politicians, could be a key to improving outcomes, quality of life and a sense of self-government so sorely lacking in today’s world.

Civil Liberties

Another key thing to keep in mind when thinking about future political systems is civil liberties. One of the great gifts provided to the American people by the founding fathers is the Bill of the Rights of the Constitution. These civil liberties protections, which include freedom of speech and the press, are the highest law of the land. While they’re subject to interpretation by the courts, they cannot be legislated away by Congress or suspended by the president (at least in theory). In a future system more defined by direct democracy, similar protections should be institutionalized. A conscious and healthy political system should define up front certain basic civil liberties considered untouchable, while empowering the community to experiment widely beyond that.

17/ So the key points to my idea of utilizing direct democracy would be.
– More direct powers to citizens, neuter representatives, make them tools to carry out the will of the people.
– Maintain Bill of Rights.
– Localism.

— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) 24 May 2019

Propaganda and Manipulation 

The other pushback I get when mentioning the merits of direct democracy is how easy it is to fool and manipulate people. This is used as an argument against putting more power in the hands of average citizens, which is considered by some to be dangerous and irresponsible.

It’s undoubtably true that while the social media era has made it easier for humans across the world to directly communicate and collaborate, it has also made mass propaganda and psyops easier to perpetrate amongst a population. Nevertheless, this isn’t a good argument against the need for more direct democracy. Remember, the primary purpose of injecting more direct democracy into political systems isn’t to get rid of a separation of powers, but to disrupt the archaic and broken practice of representative democracy, i.e., the goal is to disempower professional politicians by giving more direct say to the public in matters that are currently handled by elected representatives.

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