Recycling the Patriot

This morning, when I left the house to get my coffee, I stepped on a leaflet, called The Patriot, which had been left on our doormat. The material that I saw on the cover of it, before I put it into the recycling bin, indicated that it was promoting the values of the Tea Party People. That would probably have been the end of it, and I would have gone on with my day, but, on that cover, there was an article that put very clearly the position of the Tea Party, which embodies their basic ignorance of what being free and being American is.

The article in question proposed that the last election was similar to a firing of employees, and that it was crazy to allow fired employees to have any contact with the business (government) for fear of vandalism from those disgruntled employees. This represents the danger of making false analogies. Our government is not like a private business, and no election is a firing of any employees. Our government derives its stability from changing periodically to reflect the will of the voting public. It changes without resorting to violence, because its method of change is governed by law. The "lame duck" period of the legislative or the executive branches of our government is the completion of a legitimate governing period governed by specific rules. The actions taken during that time are taken with the knowledge that the balance of power is about to change.

In the article, the pronoun "we" represented the views of the writers, but presumed to include all Americans. This is wrong, since their view does not represent us all, and is a wrong use of "we" in democratic politics. "We", in a democratic sense, should be reserved for those parts of the political structure that governs our behavior towards each other to protect all our freedoms (from the tyranny of each other's opinion). Particular views need to be qualified, even when they are the prevailing ones, in order to hold open a place for those who do not agree. Prevailing in democratic government does not mean eliminating opposition.

If we all are to be included in our society, we do not need to prevail in public decisions, but we do need to be heard, and our votes be used to determine (by majority decision) what kind of government we are going to have during any particular period of time; and what ever government is chosen, that it will abide by the basic rules that "we" (all of us) have accepted as the structure of our peaceful political system.