02/23/2010

From an article by Harriet Fraad of Tikkun Daily:

France, Germany, and most other Europeans have stringent laws prohibiting any private money in elections. They have a choice of many parties, including several non-capitalist parties. If 12% percent of the electorate votes for an anti-capitalist party like they voted for the Linke Party in Germany, that party has 12% of the seats in the governing body. They can and do influence their government. They are in a democracy. America is now “the best democracy money can buy.”

I must say that it’s frustrating for me to vote mostly Libertarian in every election (local, state, and national) and never see my candidate win. Under our electoral system it’s all or nothing. The minorities don’t really get a voice, and our two-party system is broken in so many ways that I don’t know how it’ll ever get fixed.

An interesting metric might be how much we as Americans talk about reform. It seems like there’s an ongoing political agenda to reform almost everything about our government:

  • Social Security
  • health care
  • taxation
  • education
  • the electoral college
  • marriage laws
  • budgets and spending

    • If we feel like we need to change everything about our government, maybe it’s time to take a long hard look about the system of government itself and consider what might make it more of a true democracy.