The Ins and Outs of America’s Shrug at the Threat to Democracy – by Ben Norton
I have a piece to post at Open Democracy, but it is rather long, and a little long-winded, so I won’t post it here. Instead, I will be posting the piece, and the comments and other responses to it, on Social Media.
The author, Ben Norton, has produced a thoughtful, scholarly piece that should be read, including comments, here. As he says, it is a very long piece, which will also take time to digest. I will cut and past the parts that apply to my own situation. I will also give my own reactions to it. But, I have to say, from the outset, I was surprised by how much, even in this piece, there is a very strong libertarian tinge to it.
In general, we libertarians have always been suspicious of the rise of political parties, whether they are based on left or right, but I have seen a small, but now increasing number of libertarians, particularly among anarchists who are not at all interested in party politics, arguing that our current system of political parties is a bad system and actually undermines the growth and freedom of democracy.
To many libertarians, particularly libertarians who are also anarchists, party politics is, in effect, a “system of violence”: that, and more importantly, parties are controlled by the state. The question is, why is this so? Why does the state not allow people to be free?
As I see it, it is a combination of things: the state’s desire to maintain stability, even at the expense of liberty (there are many examples in the United States of this); and the system of party politics in the US.
To explain the reasons, first let’s go back and look at that whole discussion about parties and voting. It is now clear that parties may be controlled by the state. And there is a very good reason for this: parties are meant to preserve order and, in the long run, stability.
In the end, we libertarians know that a party of order, in the sense of order,
