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The 'Crisis in Democracy'
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The 'Crisis in Democracy'
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by Sean Gonsalves
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One of our Founding Fathers was among the first Americans to articulate the "crisis of democracy," as contemporary establishment eggheads term it.
What's the crisis? In the 1787 debates over the federal Constitution, James Madison pointed out how "In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place."
To fend off such a crisis, "our  government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation," putting in place checks and balances in order to "protect the minority of the opulent against the majority," Madison explained.
This stuff is never taught in history class, although the material is well known to celebrated historians like Thomas Carothers, who served in the Reagan administration to "assist democracy" in Latin America.
Analyzing the region, where U.S. influence on foreign soil has been greatest, Carothers notes that Washington "inevitably sought only limited, top-down forms of democratic change that did not risk upsetting the traditional structures of power with which the United States has long been allied."
The aim of U.S. planners, Carothers explained, was to maintain "the basic order of...quite undemocratic societies" and avoid "populist-based change (that could upset) established economic and political orders."
But it's the rise, fall and rise of another Reagan administration official that ought to interest any patriotic, democracy-loving American. The retired Lt. Col. Oliver North is apparently getting ready to launch a campaign for Congress in Virginia.
Gov. James Gilmore of Virginia and chairman of the Republican National Committee told the Washington Times last week: "Ollie would be a fantastic candidate. He can raise money like few other people, he has star quality and people love him." Can't argue with that. Ollie is good at raising "money like few other people."
It was in 1986 when the nation learned that not only was North instrumental in illegally selling arms to Iran in exchange for freeing U.S. hostages, North used the artificially inflated profits of the weapons sales to finance an illegal covert operation in Nicaragua.
The Iran-Contra scandal gave us a glimpse into the Madisonian contempt for democracy the Reagan administration harbored and nourished.
"Almost lost in the clamor was the 'fixer' role North played along the way - looking after (then-CIA director) Bill Casey's 'friends' on the American domestic front," writes David Harris in "Shooting the Moon," probably the best book written by an investigative journalist on the U.S. relationship with the former head of the Panama Defense Force, Manuel Noriega.
"By (North's) own account, in the summer of 1986, alone, Casey's fixer succeeded in getting a Miami criminal investigation into contra gun-running slowed to a crawl and a congressional inquiry into contra drug-smuggling derailed indefinitely," Harris writes.
One situation that needed fixing involved Noriega. Casey was conducting a "secret" war against the poor in Latin America under the guise of "rolling-back communism." Noriega was offering his services to help fight the Sandanistas in clandestine defiance of a congressional mandate not to.
When the New York Times published a scathing article detailing Noriega's criminal record, the Panamanian general asked Ollie for advice.
"North, demonstrating virtually no feeling at all for where his 'friend' was coming from, simply referred him to a public relations firm that North had used for his own contra fund-raising efforts," Harris reports.
At a meeting in a London hotel, North told Noriega that in return for his pro-contra assistance, "there will be a clean slate; we'll forget about all the bad stuff we've heard. We'll just forget about it."
Of course, when Casey died and the whole Iran-Contra scandal prevented Noriega's "friends" from helping him, the Panamanian general went to jail and North was pardoned.
North then became a radio talk show host for WWRC, 980 AM. The show's PR gimmick was "It's no lie - a shred of truth from Washington - your dial is set to true North."
If North doesn't get elected, he ought to at least be given the George Orwell Doublespeak Award. If he does get elected, he'll be in good company.
In a campaign speech that Dubya gave at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, Calif., he said, "We live in a nation President Reagan restored, and the world he helped save" - no doubt with people like North doing the dirty work.
North and Bush deserve each other. Of course, it will be hard to take the GOP values and morality rhetoric seriously if they support a congressional candidate who was convicted of obstructing Congress and unlawfully shredding government documents in an effort to "protect the minority of the opulent against the majority."
Sean Gonsalves is a Cape Cod Times staff writer and syndicated columinist. He can be reached via email: sgonsalves@capecodonline.com
Copyright © 2001 Cape Cod Times
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