Comments
by Donavan Hall, Ph. D.
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Legitimate Government
"...G. W. Bush gained office through an act of judicial usurpation.
We will not 'move on.' Indeed, some of us will work for the next four years
to correct this affront to our constitutional order.... The best that can
be hoped for under such circumstances is that this illegitimately gained
presidency will give rise to a determination on the part of the people
to resume the burden and the privileges of self-government.."
--William Kristol, The Weekly Standard |
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Quoted from
Let
the Whitewash Begin by Eric Alterman, The Nation, January 8,
2001.
Spin is king in the Spinocracy,
but this kind of spin may be closer to the truth than anything the Right
can come up with--a Bush administration might be the best thing that ever
happened to this country. No. I haven't lost my mind. I haven't been kidnapped
by rabid Republicans. Here's the spin... A Bush administration will, in
the words of William Kristol, "give rise to a determination on the part
of the people to resume the burden and the privileges of self-government."
The great mass of Americans,
the centrists, have remained asleep too long. But now, after the events
of the coup, they have begun to stir and take notice of their government.
They will oppose the Bush administration. Unprecedented numbers of people
will become involved in their own governance. What could be better for
the suffering democratic movement that struggles against the reigning oligarchy?
How should the Center and
the Left mobilize? A two pronged approach will work best. First, people
should act positively at the local level to protect their freedom, the
environment, and their communities against the oppressive Right. Second,
people should work actively through legal means to undermine the effectiveness
of the Bush administration. As a loyal opposition, it is our duty to perform
this role. We all know the cost if we sit by and allow Bushlosevic, Chancellor
Cheney, and the cabinet of Spooks do their dirty work unchecked.
A few days ago, I stumbled
across a group of people who are actively opposing the legitimacy of the
Shrub administration. The group is called
Citizens
for Legitimate Government. The group "promotes itself as a strategic
grassroots group recently created by concerned citizens after the activist
interventionism of America's judicial system and the elimination of the
democratic presidential election process.
The members of the group
refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the Bush government." My first reaction
to the installation of Shrub as Pres-elect was denial. "Shrub is not my
President!" Individually, this kind of close-your- eyes and plug-your-ears
kind of protest is not very productive. Regardless of what I might wish
to believe, Shrub remains Pres-elect and nothing is going to stop his spiraling
decent into the Oval office. (Short of a challenge of the Florida electors
on January 6 by the Congress.) What real good does it do for a single citizen
to deny the legitimacy of a particular administration if those leaders
are legally recognized by the institutions of government?
But what would happen if
a sizable portion of the US population (and perhaps the national and international
press) refused to regard Shrub as legitimate? Such a refusal is powerful.
The Right is already worried about the appearance of legitimacy. As early
as December 3, 2000 the Right tried to spin Shrub's legitimacy into existence.
In an editorial "Recognizing Bush as president", William F. Buckley the
well-known, Yale educated conservative wrote that when Bush is sworn into
office:
"...The formal authority of President Bush would therefore
be acknowledged as simply factual. But if a corrosive dissent, alleging
his failure actually to have won a majority of the Florida voters were
doggedly advanced, the authority of the president would be affected in
ways other than simply by the congressional friction one anticipates when
the 2 political parties are roughly equal in representation in the Senate
and the House, and in the distribution of electoral support..."
Here Buckley acknowledges that
Shrub might find it difficult to rule effectively if he lacks legitimacy.
The lack of an effectual ruler worries people on both sides of the ideological
divide. Would the US benefit from what would, in effect, be a four year
lame duck administration? Probably not. The economy would be sure to suffer.
A President does not need legitimacy to be the President, but he
does need legitimacy to act as the President. So it appears that
a good way to protest the right-wing coup d'état is to hurt
Shrub with the illegitimacy issue. The argument from the Left is that the
only legitimate government is a democratically elected government. The
Right responds:
"...There are abundant historical reasons to remind ourselves
that the ballot isn't necessarily the agent of wholesome government..."
[Source: Buckley, 3 Dec 2000]
Buckley explains that Adolf
Hitler was democratically elected. The obvious conclusion being that democracy
cannot be trusted since a murderous, tyrant was endorsed by a democratic
process. The speciousness of Buckley's implication should be obvious to
a grade-schooler. The choice between Shrub and Bore was not one between
Mother Theresa and Atilla the Hun (although Shrub's puppet-masters might
be closer to Hitler than we want to admit). We cannot point at Hitler's
election in Germany as a justification of remaining silent about the failure
of our electoral system to ensure that the candidate who received the most
votes actually won the office.
Buckley concludes his editorial
by attempting to disarm the legitimacy question by insisting that those
who deny Shrub is the legitimate President are missing the point or are
guilty of some logical error. He insists that a procedural flaw in the
electoral process does not constitute an invalidation of the result. The
comparisons Buckley makes is to a Priest's act of consecrating the eucharistic
wine. Who would say that the sacrament is illegitimate because of some
defect in the Priest's execution of the office? The analogy is flawed severely.
First of all, as Buckley,
a good Catholic, knows, transubstantiation is not authenticated by the
Priest's action. God is the ultimate authority and catalyst for the conversion
of the elements into spiritual substance. Where the analogy fails is that
the Priest and the electorate (the voting citizens of the US) do not occupy
interchangeable positions in the dialectical form of Buckley's argument.
The Priest is more like the public servants who certify the election results.
The electorate did not make an error because in a democracy the electorate
is God, imparting legitimacy and taking it away at its discretion.
If the High Priests of Government
fail to carry out their office in accordance with the will of the people,
then the Priests have failed and must suffer divine retribution. The electorate
has the right to seek the reversal of the High Priests' mistake. In a democracy,
the power of the people lies in bestowing legitimacy to an official. If
the people withhold the blessing of legitimacy, then that is their prerogative.
The weight of responsibility then shifts to the official. If he is not
recognized as legitimate and his continued occupation of office could endanger
the health and well-being of the nation, then he is obligated to step down
and yield to the candidate that received the endorsement of the electorate.
Donavan Hall,
Ph. D. publisher and editor of DonavanHall.net
and "Donavan's
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