"Democracy" has become afetish in American political discourse. People complain constantly thatparticular Presidents/legislators/judges/dog catchers follow policies which areunfriendly to "democracy" and expect that to constitute a refutation ofthe policies proposed by those individuals.
Anarchist groups and Neoconservatives both lay claim to an absolute monopoly on the termand often will try to prove their point through the most undignified, polemicalaccusations about the intentions of rivals. And here in California,the one objection which frequently comes up in the debate over Proposition 11seems to be that it will damage "democracy."
It is regrettable thatnobody remembers the death of Socrates, for if they could, it would certainlyhelp to combat this irrational focus on maintaining a purity of"democracy." The American system has never been a pure democracy; infact, the founders did their absolute best to keep democracy restrained as muchas possible. While a despotism of one is doubtlessly unpleasant, the despotismof the mob has the potential to be just as bad, and there is ample reason tostop the people of a State from voting themselves into misery by putting checkson their agency. Proposition 11 does this in the best possible way.
Proposition 11 sets up a 14person commission to draw district lines, instead of allowing the electedlegislators to do it themselves. Given that any rational legislator wouldchoose to maximize their own power (and thus their own job security), thestatus quo should be obviously unacceptable, since it leads to clumsy districtdrawing based more on political musical chairs than on actual shared interestswithin a community. Proposition 11's commission, being composed of seven Democratsand seven Republicans, and no lobbyists or big donors, would retain the sort ofpartisan balance which theoretically should exist in the legislature now. Thisbalance would allow both parties on the commission to check each other and thuscreate genuinely balanced districts, rather than skewed districts based onwhatever party happens to be in power at the time.
This sort of check on theability of parties to perpetuate their own power is desperately needed.However, because of the national obsession with "democracy", thisneed has been obfuscated by talk about the legislative majority's inalienableright to draw district lines just because it is the majority. This ignores theliberal (small 'l') tradition in America,which specifically protects against abuse of power by the majority, andbesides, at the point where a policy leads to the distortion of democracy bymanipulating the sample of voters, it is arguably nothing but a parody ofdemocracy. This parody should be laughed off and Proposition 11 should be votedinto law.
