Timothy Wilken, MD writes: In modern representative democracies,
we find the majority rule mechanism used to select our representatives,
to make decisions within committees and to make decisions within the
legislative bodies.
In the United States, we elect one president, 100
Senators and 435 Congressman. As of 2000, this is one President for ~276 million
Americans. There are two Senators for each state. Senatorial
representation would vary from one Senator for ~16 million Californians
down to one Senator for ~350,000 Delawareans. The members of the first
House of Representatives were elected on the basis of 1 representative
for every 30,000 inhabitants, but at least 1 for each state. At present
the size of the House is fixed at 435 members, elected on the basis of
1 representative for about 500,000 inhabitants.
Our representatives do
not even know us. If any Congressman met with 10 of his constituents
every day for 365 days a year, it would take over 137 years for him
just to meet all of them. And Congressmen are only elected for two year
terms.
If our Congressman don’t even know us how can they represent us?
So if we carefully examine modern representative democracy scientifically, we discover it is an oligarchy. In other words, we are ruled by the few.
When we go to the poles to elect a President, we are simply electing the leader of the few who rule.
Majority rule democracy ends for we the people the moment we exit the
voting booth. And, our elected leader will have no need of our opinion
for four years. (10/14/08)
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