chicken shit we are

bigots objecting to a meritocracy have always seemed to me the most ridiculous of sorts. if your philosophy is based upon your own intrinsic superiority, what then could you possibly have to fear about instituting a system that rigorously and assiduously defends against favoritism of any sort? wouldn't that just be removing the very last leg your inferiors would otherwise have to hope to stand on?

well, this past week i was reminded that bigots aren't the only authors of ludicrous out there, and among the many others would be the so-called proponents of democracy who cannot escape their own abiding fear of being voted against. one fresh-faced and eager proponent of local democracy, actively participating in a specific endeavor to increase voter turnout, actually used the phrase "if we lose" in subjective reference to this year's city council election and the efficacy of said specific endeavor.

whuh?

um, i should think any true devotee of democracy would be satisfied in having the largest possible number of people deciding the outcome of any election, guaranteeing as that would the closest possible alignment with what i always understood as the principle object of democracy, which would be governing at the will and whim of the entire electorate. however, as might be deduced by the use of the term "lose", it would appear that many purported fans of democracy are actually either base partisans at their core, and possessed of very little interest in the will of the majority if it should coincidentally not happen to coincide with their own, or of the lowest possible respect and regard for the intelligence and wisdom of the voting public at large. either way, you clearly don't care about the will of the majority--in the one case refusing to acknowledge its validity, or, in the other, refusing to truly believe that democracy is the best form of government, and that the people need to be protected from themselves by wiser sorts. (such as oneself).

it's a wonder to me that we ever manage to govern ourselves, sometimes.

the reason i got onto all this is a thought provoked by a very thought-provoking post over at the right side of lowell. it would appear that the earnest and tireless opponents of the argued-to-be failed policies of the previous, alernatively-partied administration, cannot wait to flatter it by continued imitation. to wit, the US government is still proudly in the business of kidnapping people (as long as its on foreign soil, it must not be breaking any of *our* laws, right?) and sending them to convenient places (syria, guantanamo, etc.) from which to have torture and other american-extra-legal means carried out in pursuit of truth, justice and the american way.

so here's my problem:

how can anyone be a patriot and true believer in this great nation of ours, and the constitution upon which it is founded, and accept even for a nanosecond the premise that any of its founding principles are subjective to the accident of genealogy or geography? if all men are indeed endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, who among us have the standing to cross that creator and deny those rights to anyone anywhere anytime? either we stand for something as a nation, or we don't.

oh, sure, the argument will be that if we allow terrorists to use our legal system against us, they'll be "winning", but, seriously, how can this possibly be so? if our system is superior because it is just, is it not just for us to follow our faith in that superiority to its very limits?

bigots betraying their underlying fear of inferiority, like proponents of democracy afraid to trust the will of the full electorate, are the mothers milk of so-called american patriots who refuse to respect their own constitution--obviously out of their fear that it is weak and flawed in its philosophies, and in need of being selectively enforced a la the pigs on orwell's animal farm.

chicken shit. that's what those people are. all of them.

and it pisses me off that nobody calls them on it.