US Faces Democratic Deficit

On Dec 6th 2005, Noam Chomsky spoke to a standing-room-only crowd at a Bikes Not Bombs event in Jamaica Plain, MA. In this edited excerpt from his speech, Chomsky points out a “democratic deficit” which allows national policymakers to ignore the opinions of the majority of the American people.

Noam Chomsky:
Let’s start with some proposals about the federal budget announced last February. It should have a sharp cut in military spending, including supplementals for Iraq and Afghanistan. It should have sharp increases in social spending, meaning education, job training, renewable energy, medical research, veterans’ benefits, UN peacekeeping operations, in fact, UN generally. With regard to fiscal policy, it ought to be committed to reducing the deficit—it’s a burden on future generations, a very serious one. And it should rescind Bush’s tax cuts for the rich, a large proportion of them, say for people over 200,000 dollars.

Well, that proposal happens to be very conservative. It’s the position of a very large majority of the American population. Immediately after the budget was announced, there was a careful study of attitudes toward the budget, undertaken by the most prestigious research institution in the country, based at the University of Maryland. As they pointed out, overwhelming public preferences were basically a mirror image of what the budget actually was. That is, where the budget went up, the population, by an overwhelming margin, wanted it to go down—and far down. Where the budget was going down, the same overwhelming margins wanted it to go up, by again, very large margins. Now, among people who think that democracy is a value that is useful to uphold, the gap between public opinion and public policy would be extremely important. It would be an urgent task to let people know about popular opinion, so that each citizen doesn’t have to think, “I’m some kind of a nut.” Rather, “the large majority shares my beliefs, so let’s get together and do something about it.” That’s what is known as democracy.

Not a single newspaper in the country reported popular attitudes on the budget that had just been passed. The media understands that it’s best to keep people ignorant of what their neighbors think. Take popular opinion on the tax cuts. After Katrina, a huge disaster with tremendous expenses, there was no talk about paying for them by rescinding the tax cuts. It was explained to us by the media that they are sacrosanct. A very large majority of the population wants them rescinded, but that’s irrelevant if you make sure that people don’t know about it.

Last November there was something called an election. A couple weeks before the election the same polling institution published a detailed study of people’s attitudes, mostly on international affairs. Here’s what they are: Large majority in favor of signing the Kyoto protocols, the same large majority in favor of accepting the jurisdiction of the international criminal court, and the international court of justice - the World Court. The US now has the honor of being the only country to have rejected a World Court decision. That’s the 1986 judgment ordering the US to terminate the terrorist war against Nicaragua. The US rejected this judgement, then vetoed two security council resolutions reaffirming the court judgment, and then went on to escalate the terrorist war, which practically destroyed the country. It’s considered a great exercise in democracy promotion. The population thinks otherwise, thinks we shouldn’t be the only country in the world to reject World Court decisions.

The public by an overwhelming majority thinks that in international crises, the United Nations should take the lead, not the US. Different polls show, that immediately after the invasion in April 2003, a large majority thought that the UN should take the lead in reconstruction, security, political transformation, and the US should join, under UN supervision. In March 2004, Spanish voters were in favor of giving the UN the responsibility, which wasn’t happening, so they decided Spanish troops ought to leave Iraq. There is a difference between Spain and the US. In Spain people knew what their neighbors think. Here you have to do an individual research project to discover that what you think is what others think. And in Spain, you can vote on it. Here, you can’t. Neither party would permit anything like that. Nor the media.

A large majority, again, feels that in the so-called war on terror, the US should use diplomatic means, and other peaceful means, rather than military means. With regard to perhaps the most crucial issue on which survival really rests - the use of force in international affairs - a large majority says that we should follow the basic principles of international law, which are in the UN charter. And the population gives a fairly conservative interpretation of the use of force – it would be legitimate only if ordered by the security council, or in self defense against an imminent threat. If you take a look at the voting in the last election, people who said that terror was a leading concern, by a considerable margin voted for Bush. Which is interesting, another illustration of the effectiveness of government-media propaganda. The Bush administration actually assigns terror a very low priority. The invasion of Iraq was done with the anticipation that it would increase the threat of terror, which in fact it did. It even increased the threat of nuclear terror. The US intelligence community estimates the probability of a dirty bomb in the US in the next decade at about 50%. A major nuclear attack is considered very likely. The report of the 9/11 commission bitterly condemned the administration for not fulfilling the provisions, the recommendations on how to protect the country from the threat of terrorists. It’s true, it’s a low priority. There are much higher priorities. In Iraq, for example, the priorities are to control the world’s major energy supplies. Control, not access, control. Controlling energy gives the US what is called critical leverage over rivals: Europe, Asia, it goes way back to the 1940’s. If you want to run the world, control its energy. And that’s far more important than protecting the population from terror, including nuclear terror, as is enriching the wealthy.

On domestic issues, it’s the same as I just described. The public is strongly in favor of increases in spending on health, education, renewable energy, so on and so forth. That’s been true for a long time. The large majority of the public feels we should have a national healthcare system, like every other industrial society. In fact, about 80% of the population regard it as a moral issue, that the government should provide adequate health care to everyone. The number of people who think the healthcare system is working is about 8%. In the last elections, the last presidential debate was supposed to be on domestic issues. It was reported in the NY Times on Oct. 28, and it was pointed out that Kerry did not mention any form of government involvement in the healthcare system. And it explained why, it says he couldn’t because it lacks political support. It’s only supported by the overwhelming majority of the population, but not the people who matter. The pharmaceutical companies, the HMOs, the insurance companies, they don’t want it, for good reasons. And that’s called democracy.

There are lots and lots of serious problems, problems of survival. The core of all of them is sometimes called the democratic deficit of the US. That is, the fact that public policy is essentially uninfluenced by public opinion. There are formal democratic institutions, but huge efforts are made to make sure they don’t function. And in a sense, that’s a hopeful sign, of all the problems there are, this is the one we can do something about. But it takes work. Work doesn’t mean going to the polls every 4 years and pressing a button. It doesn’t mean going to a demonstration and it didn’t work, so I go home. It means dedicated, engaged work, every day. Building organizations, integrating with one another, and so on. It’s being done, it could be done on a much greater scale, and that’s a very hopeful sign. That means it’s in our hands.

NOTES:
- For more information on Noam Chomsky visit www.chomsky.info.
- Poll results are at www.pipa.org. The Feb. 2005 poll on the federal budget poll can be seen here.