Greetings loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is just working himself into a lather about the whole California recall election. (BTW, does anyone really use the old state abbreviations anymore? Your Maximum Leader is quite fond of Calif., Penn., Fla., and Minn.. Just to name a few.) Regardless, in last night’s post, your Maximum Leader paraphrased H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) who said, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.” Oh how true. Our friends in California are learning this.
Indeed, when it comes to getting democracy good and hard, California leads the way. The home of the Proposition is now the home of the Recall election. Your Maximum Leader could shower you all with quotations from all manner of learned men and their proof of the folly of democracy for the great masses. Not the least of those against true democracy were the Founding Fathers of this great nation. Read the Federalist Papers and you will see how those great men feared the unchecked power of the masses in a true democracy. But, for many decades now, the good citizens of California have moved more and more away from a democratic republic, and more toward the tyranny of the masses. Now they are getting some comeuppance.
Your Maximum Leader is shocked (shocked I say!) to read that many commentators, and members of the chattering classes are espousing that the recall is actually anti-democratic. (As an aside, to those of us with Blogs have to include ourselves in the chattering class?) In this article in the Globe and Mail, Jeffery Simpson states that the recall election is populism gone wrong. And this whole site is dedicated to the idea that elections are somehow sacrosanct and cannot be changed.
And while your Maximum Leader is discoursing on this subject, allow him to quote liberally from today’s Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal:
Alas for the Democrats, good sense is in exceedingly short supply in their party at the moment. All the major Democratic candidates, as well as all the minor ones except John Edwards and Bob Graham, attended a union-sponsored forum in Philadelphia yesterday, where, Reuters reports, every one of them “blasted California’s recall campaign,” saying the Golden State is, in the “news” service’s words, “being swept by the same right-wing tactics used against Democrats in Florida and Texas and during the impeachment of former President Clinton.”
“I think it insults democracy in this country,” said Sen. John Kerry of an effort that, according to the California secretary of state’s office, collected 1.7 million signatures, 1.3 million of which have been verified. “They should overwhelmingly reject this right-wing, ideolgical interference in the electoral process of the United States of America,” added the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat, who by the way served in Vietnam.
“This is an attack on the institutions of our government,” said Dick Gephardt, referring to a Progressive Era procedure that has been part of the California Constitution since 1911, adding: “That’s what Republicans do.” Even Joe Lieberman, the occasional voice of sanity, said: “We may disagree, the seven of us here tonight, on a lot of things. But we don’t disagree on this one.”
Jesse Jackson, who for reasons unknown the Chicago Sun-Times sees fit to have as a regular columnist, is even more hysterical:
“Democracy offends reactionaries. The majority of Americans oppose their extreme agenda, so they plot ways to subvert democratic elections.
Now these Jacobins of reaction have increasing control over the Republican Party. In the French Revolution, the extremist Jacobins espoused liberty and the rights of the people, but used the guillotine to silence the opposition. Today’s reactionary Jacobins call themselves conservatives but would overturn democracy to suppress the opposition.
That is what the recall effort against California Gov. Gray Davis is all about.”
Jackson even seems to hint at political violence, saying that a successful recall effort threatens to “turn American politics into an unending alley fight that could get very ugly very fast.”
Well allow your Maximum Leader to point something out to these fine people. This recall election is not populism gone wrong. It is not anti-democratic. It is not an insult to the institutions of government. It is not a guillotine to use against opposition. (BTW, what are the chances that Brother Jesse acually wrote that quote? Your Maximum Leader is agog trying to digest the possibility that The Reverend Jackson could describe for a member of his flock what a Jacobin was. Your Maximum Leader is so flummoxed by this he is going to have to settle himself down with a good scotch whisky. He would also like to pass a note to the founder of the Rainbow Coalition. Watch those college boys you hire Jesse, they might actually make you say something that would cause people to confuse you with a liberally educated man.)
The recall election is populism in it truest form, out of control. It is proof that when you give a man the franchise, you do not also issue him a brain.
In my earlier post about California I expressed my dismay with the whiners in the Golden State. Well my minions, recall elections are what happen when the whiners can vote. Someone can whip up the masses into a frenzy, next thing you know, the state is racking up a $70 Million bill to hold an election that will confuse the very masses that want the election. If the good people of South Florida can’t figure out a butterfly ballot, I doubt many of the denizens of the Bay Area will fare well against a 4 page ballot with over 200 names. And all this crying about the recall election being anti-democratic, or just a way for out-of-control Republicans to take back the state that they lost to Gray Davis you Maximum Leader can say only this. If you don’t like the provisions of your own state constitution (its in there - read Article 2), change it and stop your bellyaching.
There is nothing un- (or anti-) democratic about the recall. The faction that wanted Davis recalled followed all the rules and are getting their way. For all of those people bemoaning the fact that the next governor of California might be elected with less than 20% of the vote should get their arses in gear and vote no on the first question facing the voters of California. That question being should Gray Davis be recalled? Once that question passes, all bets are off baby.
And so, where do things stand among those running for governor? Well, it seems that Arh-nold will not get any Kennedy endorsements. (Beyond the one that Maria has given him for all these years.) And what is Arh-nold doing in NYC campaigning? Shouldn’t he be in Orange County (or “The O.C.” as Fox tries to call it) pressing the flesh?
According to the California Secretary of State, the Honorable Kevin Shelley, candidates are being certified day and night. Your Maximum Leader saw a number of familiar names on the list of those already certified. He hopes that every one of the applicants will be on the ballot.
Just remember my minions… Dictatorship is the natural state of government for men. One day, perhaps one sooner rather than later, your Maximum Leader will come and remove you all from the troubles of self-governance.
Carry on.
