Repulsively undemocratic

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				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
Repulsively undemocratic				June 23, 2004

In one of his more lucid moments, Thomas Jefferson suggested that the continued vitality of the young nation he helped fashion depended on an activist citizenry. To this end he went so far as to propose that their should be a citizen rebellion and a resultant rewriting of the Constitution every 19 years. Outrage, he thought, was probably a good thing.

That this hasn’t happened is perhaps indicative of the high degree of compliance and complacency to which we have become accustomed. As we float through the crises of our own lives, we tend to leave politics and societal problems to those whom a meager few of us elect to positions of power

Yet, far from being a crackpot, and silly as his suggestion sounds now, Jefferson knew what he was talking about

For instance, one constitutional relic that should be tossed on the trash truck to nowhere is the institution known as the Electoral College. Concocted by the Founding Fathers as a means to introduce a misguided sense of electoral equality between small and large states, the Electoral College now serves little purpose other than to disenfranchise reds living in blue states and blues living in red states.

Virginia, for example, hasn’t voted for a Democratic president since Lyndon Johnson. Like most other Southern states, it’s been gliding through the Virginia reel at the Dixiecratic Republican cotillion for years.

Why, then, should Virginia Democrats even bother to vote in the upcoming presidential election? Since John Kerry has little chance of winning the state, Democratic votes here will be about as meaningful as Republican votes in Massachusetts. Thanks to the Electoral College, there is no popular national referendum on the presidency. And that, I submit, is repulsively undemocratic.

Add to this the fact that partisan redistricting has so befouled the process that over 90% of incumbents are re-elected, and you begin understand why election day spawns more yawns than votes. To make matters worse around here, Rep. Jo Ann Davis (R-1^st) will evidently get a free ride back to the House.

When you come right down to it, Democrats in Williamsburg and James City might just as well move to California or stay home and play cribbage until the November elections blow by.

Yet, there is little outrage at a system that effectively disenfranchises up to half the people who vote for president. Why?

Here in Jefferson’s own bailiwick there’s another piece of twaddle, called the Dillon Rule, that should, with the electoral college, immediately join the face on the barroom floor. You would think that the Republicans, who bloviate constantly about smaller government, would have gotten rid of this monstrosity long ago. But they haven’t. Rather than turning their local governments back to the people, the Richmond power pumpers, like some dog clamping his clenched jaws on a maggot-ridden old bone, continue to force localities to beg the General Assembly for approval of ordinances that should be in the purview of local boards.

Indicative of how chaotically idiotic things can get under Dillon is the fact that the state legislature allows cities such as Williamsburg to have architectural review boards. However, according to a 1996 ruling by the attorney general’s office in response to a case involving an historical area in Warrenton, “local review boards do not have the statutory authority to dictate types of materials or the manner of construction of a building.” In other words, polka dot vinyl siding or gaudy red roofs are perfectly legal anywhere in Williamsburg until the state legislature decides otherwise.

Conversely, we should add to the state Constitution an amendment banning the meddlesome interference of past governors traveling some illusive comeback trail. Has-beens like Jim Gilmore and Doug Wilder only embarrass themselves and us by poking their noses into current state business and rattling rusty cages that have long been abandoned by their former inhabitants. It’s over for these political relics, and they should buzz off and butt out. There’s a Shining City on the Hill just waiting for them to check in.

Finally, there should be moral outrage in these parts at the fact that William & Mary stubbornly persists in retaining Henry Kissinger as its chancellor. In the latest group of declassified Kissinger tapes we find not only ribald conversations about Playboy bunnies, but further evidence that Kissinger and his Nixonian cronies were deeply involved in the overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile.

Just recently, Kenneth Maxwell, an expert in Latin American affairs, quit his post at the Council of Foreign Relations to protest the stifling of debate about American intervention in Chile in the 1970s. According to Maxwell, there was “intense pressure” from Kissinger and his associates to prevent discussion of the Allende affair, as well as of the murder of Allende’s foreign minister, Orlando Letelier, in Washington D.C. in 1976.

Should someone exerting intense pressure to stifle debate about anything really be the chancellor of a first-rate academic institution? I think not.

How Jefferson would feel about all this is hard to say. Given his activist bent and his insistence that political and moral rebellion is the ultimate task of a free people, I suspect he would not be amused by our silence.