(published 2/3/00)
  When technocrats rule the world
    by Mischa Gelman

    If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly - G.K. Chesterton

  Chesterton's statement may sound strange today, and probably did when he
made it, but he had good reason for thinking as he did. He took the fact
of things being done badly as a sign that things were being done by normal
folks, making that arrangement a positive. If things were being done well,
the experts were handling everything, and everyone else was merely
watching on and not accomplishing anything.
  To me, this notion lies at the heart of democracy, an inherently flawed
system. As citizens of a republic, we should believe that ordinary people
are capable of taking care of the nation. We need not rely upon
professionals to tell us how to run our lives. One person, one vote - we
are all equal. Unfortunately, this idea does not seem to have won great
favor in modern America. We have ceded a government of the people, by the
people and for the people to the technocrats, creating a government of the
experts and by the experts (who it serves would require at least one
column on that topic alone).
  When Congress holds hearings, it is not everyday people who do all the
testifying, but rather the specialists, the technocrats who look at
minutaie in research and strive to avoid common sense. Career politicians
seize office, and thanks in part of the need of a great deal of money to
enter meaningful positions, the idea of citizen-legislators, the root of
representative governments, has sadly gone by the wayside. We had been
warned such a political age was coming. In 1912, presidential candidate
Woodrow Wilson said, "What I fear...is a government of experts. G-d
forbid that a in a democratic country we should resign the task and give
the government over to experts. What are we for if we are to be
scientifically taken care of by a small number of gentlemen who are the
only men who understand the job? Because if we don't understand the job,
then we are not a free people."
  This has become the case. In talking to fellow students, I am sometimes
amazed how few care about their responsibility as citizens of a republic
to decide an opinion on key issues and make their voices heard. Too many
are willing to let the experts run their country for them, turning our
democracy into a quasi-oligarchy.
  The premise behind America, especially after the Jacksonian Era began,
is that Americans now how to govern themselves. This sovereignty saw
expansion over time, as race and gender were excluded from being
restrictions on voting, opening up the process properly. Recently, though,
the losses in democracy have begun to outnumber the gains. An unelected
foreign body, the World Trade Organization, now has the ability to
overturn hundreds of environmental, trade and labor laws, as chronicled in
this column last November. The unelected Federal Reserve Board has
tremondous power over our economy. The idea that those making the
decisions are responsible to the American citizenry and to those citizens
only is getting progressively weakened each year. The only people who
seemed to be raising their voices against this for years were some
far-libertarian militia types who hated government of any level, but at
least had the nerve to hate undemocratic government the most. In this,
even the extremists caught onto what the mainstream media missed. One
wonders if the folks at the major media outlets forgot to pay attention in
9th grade civics classes.
  Thankfully, we might be seeing a change in the assumption that democracy
is bad. The WTO meetings were met with tens of thousands of pro-democracy
protestors who felt decisions made by elected officials should not be able
to be overruled by unelected trade bureacrats. Again, the media missed the
boat, claiming the protestors were anti-trade (which a miniscule
percentage may have been), anti-capitalist (some certainly were, but the
WTO is also anti-capitalist) and destructive (only a hundred or so
anarchists and opportunists did any damage, some protestors protected
property and there were no fatalities). Police brutality against
non-violent citizens was overlooked, as were the key issues at hand. 
  Chesterton rooted for democracy in 1910. Wilson pointed out that
unelected experts were starting to seize power two years later. Now,
unelected officials can overrule many democractically made decisions. All
the while, the media has turned a blind eye. We can only hope they develop
sight before we are no longer a republic at all.

  Mischa Gelman is good at doing things badly.