If you haven’t been paying attention to what’s been going on here at the opinion section of The Daily, I don’t blame you. It’s a bit ridiculous. Many of you who voted in our poll to see what should be the next major topic of discussion for us decided to choose bread. Not everyone, mind you. But many of you. It was enough to win out over actual issues like health-care reform, gay rights and, yes, even abortion. Frankly, I don’t want to write about bread. So I’m using this as an opportunity to talk about something that at least has some semblance of importance: Democracy.
The fact that we have to write about bread for a week — bread, over issues that actually affect people directly and need to be seriously addressed — shows the fundamental flaw in direct democracy. When ordinary people are given a direct voice, they can — and do — make bad decisions. Yes, I know it’s just the opinion section of a college newspaper, but the fact remains the same: We are a representative democracy for a reason.
Bread won for the same reason that we need representatives: People make bad decisions. Ordinary people are incapable of making the best policy decisions most of the time because they lack sufficient knowledge, background and generally will not take the time to educate themselves.
I don’t trust myself to manipulate the Fed’s open market operations or discount rate, so I trust Ben Bernanke to do it. I don’t trust myself to coordinate war efforts or to draw battle plans, so I let Gen. David Petraeus do it. I don’t trust myself to negotiate with doctors and lawyers and lawmakers and lobbyists about health-care reform, so I let President Barack Obama do it.
Rather than make every decision for ourselves, we choose representatives to make important decisions for us. And although there are certainly flaws in our national system (as well as state systems) of representation, I trust it over direct citizen participation any day.
Some states, including California, have direct democratic systems known as the initiative, whereby citizens propose — or “initiate” — legislation to be approved, and a referendum, whereby that legislation is put to a statewide vote of the citizenry. In California, its referendum is known as a ballot proposition.
Notice what happens when they do this. In 2005, the California State Assembly passed the nation’s first statewide bill allowing same-sex marriage.
What a momentous occasion for California, we all thought. It had become the first state to grant gays and lesbian equal rights. We got to witness history in the making.
But then history took a turn for the worse. In 2008, Proposition 8, a proposed amendment to the California Constitution, became a ballot proposition put to a statewide vote. Prop 8 said plainly: “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” And the it passed by a 52-percent majority.
The people of California voted to get rid of gay marriage after it had been passed by a representative body and become law. Oh, the things direct democracy does.
Representative democracy simply works better than direct democracy. Whether it’s bread being chosen as a topic for a college newspaper’s opinion section, or gay marriage being overturned in California, direct democracy is irresponsible. Representation is a necessity for an effective democracy.
The Founding Fathers realized it, hopefully the state of California has realized it and now the opinion section of The Daily realizes it.
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itssunshine 2 years, 2 months ago
soonerboomers and Kurtz.... well said. I have nothing to add, but to say I agree completely.
Kurtz 2 years, 2 months ago
As an “ordinary” person who voted for Gerard Keiser’s original bread column, I take umbrage at the assertion that bread is not an “actual” issue and therefore unworthy of discussion in the hallowed pages of this elite paper. I voted thusly for two reasons. I tire of the same old shallow back and forth on gay marriage and abortion found on the opinion page, and Mr. Keiser’s column was simply the best, in both argument and style. As to your assertion that bread is unworthy of debate, bread does, in fact, “affect people directly”- according to the Department of Agriculture, the average American consumes over 140 pounds of wheat flour a year. Mr. Keiser raised valid objections to the way in which we do this, hinting at how bread’s treatment by our modern fetish of efficiency, which strips it of its natural goodness and pretends to replace that which is lost by artifice, is emblematic of modernity’s effects on the human condition. Surely such a topic is important enough for our renowned opinion page.
On your "serious" point that direct democracy is contrary to good governance, the idea that the ordinary voter is incapable of excellence in direct political action is indeed well-supported by the Constitution. Prior to the ratification of the 17th amendment, United States Senators were not popularly elected, reflecting the Framers’ distrust of popular majorities. However, we have witnessed a breakdown in the idea of constitutionally controlled government, which has led to the sad necessity of hoi polloi having to do it themselves.
The example you cited from California of the Assembly legalizing same-sex marriage is inaccurate. In reality, Proposition 8 overturned the California Supreme Court’s ruling in In re Marriage Cases (2008) that same-sex marriage is a fundamental right according to the state constitution, an idea that would be laughable to those who wrote that document in 1849. The California Supreme Court seized power that did not rightfully belong to them, a wrong that was righted by the Californian people. Additionally, not all of the adults in California voted in the 2008 elections. Only the 13.7 million (52%) most motivated and educated citizens over 18 came to the polls.
Furthermore, in writing “what a momentous occasion for California, we all thought,” the implication is that to be included in this "all," a fair-minded, intelligent human being could not disagree with your opinion on same-sex marriage. This opens the door to a politics of arrogance in which all opposition is assumed to be stupid or malicious, an attitude not conducive to decent political discourse.
I for one applaud the faithful readers of the Daily for seeing a fertile, new avenue of discussion in bread, a most peculiar thing, both humble and profound, and I challenge the Daily’s opinion writers to make something of it. Who knows, we might find this brave new discussion more intellectually fulfilling than the weary old issues of yesteryear.
dargus 2 years, 2 months ago
I don't know if you've been paying attention to our government over the last couple hundred years, but there have been plenty of idiotic decisions. If the people believe idiotic things, they will elect idiots. Perhaps you should have followed the will of the people and written about bread instead.
soonerboomers 2 years, 2 months ago
People voted for bread precisely because they think the Daily is a joke. I think they articulated themselves quite well.
brunokaufmann 2 years, 2 months ago
I totally agree with the view on representative democracy. However, representative and direct democracy do not contradict another as in medieval times. Since the big revolutions in the 1700th century direct democratic procedures have always been part of representative democracy, as indirect democracy has done. The question in California and across the globe is, how to combine and balance indirect and direct democracy within a modern representative democracy. This summer citizens from all over the US and the world will gather in San Francisco to work on exactly this question (www.2010globalforum.com).>
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Erasmus 2 years, 2 months ago
Kurtz - you've got your facts wrong. First, the CA Supreme Court didn't "seize" power. It fulfilled its legally constituted role in protecting the rights of the minority. It found nothing in the CA constitution that would prevent same-sex couples from marrying. When the voters passed Prop. 8 and added the discriminatory language to the constitution, they were consistent in upholding the constitution. The word "seize" is about as far from the truth as you could get. Secondly, your assertion that "only the 13.7 million (52%) most motivated and educated citizens over 18 came to the polls" is a "fact" out of thin air. Motivated, perhaps. Educated? Are you kidding? Check the stats. Most of the motivation came from people interested in imposing their religious views on fellow citizens not of their church. Believing the Scriptures should hold sway over the constitution does not mark you as “educated.”
Kurtz 2 years, 2 months ago
Erasmus-
I do not have my facts wrong, as you allege. It is not that the California Supreme Court found nothing in the constitution to prevent gay couples from marrying; they created a constitutional prohibition on same-sex marriage bans ex nihilo.
As evidenced by your belief that the role of the judiciary is to protect the rights of the minority, you do not hold, as I do, that the first and foremost job of a Supreme Court is to uphold the constitution of its jurisdiction. The California Constitution did not intend that the legislature cannot pass laws against same-sex marriage until the Supreme Court conveniently “discovered” that it did all along in 2008. This is the usurpation of power I accuse it of.
On to the statistic, my 52% figure overestimates the proportion of the California population that voted. My data on the total adult population comes from the 2000 census, which places Californians over 18 at 26.1 million. That number has certainly grown since then, making it the case that an even smaller portion of Californians cared enough about the issues to bother to vote.
These people did not impose their religious views on their fellow citizens. They neither prevented anyone from practicing their religion nor established a state church, thus they did not violate the 1st Amendment of the United States Constitution. What they did do was decide, based on their religious and philosophical first principles, that only heterosexual marriage should be legal in California. A foundational belief that marriage is fundamentally a contract entered into by two people who love one another, thus making it arbitrarily discriminatory to forbid gays to marry, would inform a vote against Proposition 8. Neither of these beliefs is more constitutional than the other.
While the conviction that marriage must be heterosexual does not automatically mark a person as educated, neither does it mark them as uneducated, as you seem to imply. The tragic fact of a diverse society is that there will be fair minded, intelligent, educated people who vehemently disagree on certain issues because they hold different things to be fundamentally true. The key to living in such a society is to realize that those with whom you disagree are not brutal troglodytes. They may be dedicated to destroying all you hold dear, but they are just as intellectual and considerate as you are.
patch 2 years, 2 months ago
If it saved us from even one other whiny, petulant column such as this one, then voting for bread was the best and wisest decision I've ever made.
TheJeff 2 years, 2 months ago
I think this is also pertinent with the "abolish the Senate" or "abolish the filibuster" arguments floating around these days. Yeah, they suck when you believe in the President, but I don't know exactly what the plan is the next time a Dick Cheney gets in power and we've taken out all the checks and balances. There is a reason we have them. So incredibly short sighted.
WalkingMan 2 years, 2 months ago
I voted for Bread because I'm tired of reading your crap articles about actual issues. This newspaper is a joke, especially the opinion section.
pino 2 years, 1 month ago
Representative democracy protects us from idiotic decisions of all normal people about single matters. Are you sure? Unfortunately these same normal people must choice persons who decide for them about all matters all times.
So, idiotic people must judge about capabilities of representatives to be able to do not idiotic choices about all matters.
What is more idiotic?
Then maybe a dictatorship is the best, so we can have only one idiot to choice for all.