Frank's Musings

Can democracy be saved without resorting to military force?   How ironic.  The preservation of the American political system is not threatened by state secession; its stability is being weakened by the large number of disaffected citizens who sre asking, “What’s in it for me?”  

 They are frustrated n with political parties that have become engaged in a zero-sum game, in which the winner is whoever can block the other party from appeasing its special- interest supporters.

“Civil war” has been used to refer to violent rejection of the political system. The government is in danger of becoming nothing more than the arbiter of competing sectors of society. Their memberships vie with each other for financial gain or for self- esteem.  

Social media and other Internet communications channels, along with ready access to weapons of war, have empowered seditious opponents of Constitutional order in the U.S. and other Western liberal democracies   Moreover, even compliant citizens of those nations recognize that their common welfare is usually only the serendipitous outcome of government actions.

Perhaps that is the inevitable result of the professionalization of politics.  It takes bold and skillful leadership fairly to distribute the benefits of government order.  That goal cannot be achieved without democratic government; but that government must never lose sight of its constant dependence on civil order.