The word is “Democracy.”
The denigrating reference to one of the most honored words in our American existence was stunning when I read it.
“Democracy” seems to have become a bad word for some people.
The Jefferson City newspaper had an article yesterday about whether our city council elections should become partisan political elections again. The City Charter adopted three or four decades ago made council elections non-partisan. But in last month’s city elections, the county Republican committee sent out postcards endorsing candidates.
All of them lost.
A new political action committee established to oppose a Republican-oriented committee that killed a library tax levy increase last year had its own slate last month. All of the non-GOP candidates won, which prompted a leading member of the GOP-oriented group to comment in the paper that the new PAC, as the paper put it, “used leftist buzzwords like ‘transparency’ and ‘Democracy’ on their website.”
Friends, when things have gone so far out of whack that “Democracy” is nothing more than a “leftist buzzword,” our political system is in extremely perilous condition. And if the same side considers “transparency” to be something that is politically repugnant, it appears that a substantial portion of our political system has abandoned one of the greatest principles of our national philosophy—-that government of the people, for the people, and by the people should not hide what it does from its citizens.
City councils are the closest governments to the people. Elections of members of city councils should focus on the issues that most directly affect residents of wards and cities, not on whether candidates can pass party litmus tests or mouth meaningless partisan rhetoric.
The Jefferson City newspaper spent weeks publishing articles giving candidates’ opinions on the issues that confront citizens living on the quiet (and some noisy) streets of the city. Voters had ample opportunities to evaluate candidates on THEIR positions, not whether they were an R or a D.
Bluntly put, the county Republican committee did not respect the non-partisan system that has served our city well for these many decades. And to have one of its leading characters dismiss words such as “transparency” and—especially—“Democracy” as “leftist buzzwords” is, I regret to say, a disgrace.