It only became clear once I left the US the immense sacrifices Americans make for their cheap gasoline and consumer goods (see Feb 10 blog). The most obvious is a range of domestic programs that other developed countries take for granted. These include publicly financed universal health care (in all industrialized countries except the US) and a range of education, jobs and social programs enacted under Roosevelt, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon, which have long since vanished. With the current War on Terror on eight fronts (Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, the Philippines, Africa and Columbia), even state and local tax funding sources are being diverted to military spending. In state after state there is no money to repair badly decrepit roads and bridges or provide adequate street lighting and policing. While dozens of clinics, libraries and homeless shelters shut their doors and teachers, cops and other state and local employees get laid off.

Sacrificing Democratic Rights and Civil Liberties

However Americans also make serious non-financial sacrifices – especially around democratic rights and civil liberties – as citizens of the world’s greatest military power. This, too, only became clear to me once I became an expatriate. Civilized society is innately repelled by the wholesale carnage of war, especially where there is a high risk of losing friends or loved ones. In fact, the majority of women, who comprise more than fifty percent of the population, consistently oppose any military tactics that kill large numbers of enemy civilians. Moreover taxpayers of both sexes logically expect their hard earned tax dollars to be spent on public programs that directly benefit them, rather than Wall Street banks and corporate war profiteers. Thus genuine democracy – in which Americans had some say in spending more than half their tax dollars on weapons and war – is totally incompatible with a military empire. This was the main reason Roman leaders abandoned their democracy when they set about building a vast Roman empire.

Creating a Constitution Conducive to Empire

Although representative government and civil liberties have been under clear attack (for example Patriot Act, which repealed habeas corpus and legalized government spying on law-abiding citizens) due to the growing wealth and power of multinational corporations and the military-industrial complex, there are clear structural flaws in the US system of government that make it less democratic than other industrialized countries. They mostly relate to what the Constitutional framers referred to as “separation of powers.” In social studies we were taught these “checks and balances” were intended to make the US government more democratic. However it’s clear from the writings of Hamilton, Madison and other members of the colonial aristocracy who wrote the Constitution that their real intent was to minimize the risk of a direct popular vote harming the interests of wealthy landowners and merchants or interfering with their plans for military expansion. In fact the founding fathers make no secret of their imperialistic ambitions (their plans to declare war on the Native Americans and Mexicans who possessed the lands west of the 13 original colonies), which were extremely unpopular among a mainly farming population who experienced enormous personal and economic privations during the Revolutionary War. Military expansion didn’t end when the Southwest and Pacific coast became US possessions. In 1895, the US declared war on Spain to expand our empire to include Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, the Philippines and other Pacific islands.

Parliamentary Democracy=One Man One Vote

Unlike the majority of industrialized countries, the US doesn’t employ a “one-man-one-vote” system of representational democracy. The only hope our Constitutional framers had of enacting their pro-business, pro-military agenda was to establish two branches of government (the Senate and Presidency) that wouldn’t be chosen by direct popular vote, in order to block populist legislation enacted by the democratically elected House of Representatives

After 8½ years experience with New Zealand’s, parliamentary democracy, I have absolutely no doubt that it’s far more democratic than the US system. Under a parliamentary system, the head of the party which controls the majority of legislative seats automatically becomes chief of state. This places their government under constant pressure to continuously pass reform legislation demanded by the voters who elect them. The moment the prime minister loses the majority he/she needs to pass legislation, the government collapses and a new election is called. This is in marked contrast to the US Congress, which has been struggling for 30 years to reform education and health care – while American schools and the US health care system virtually disintegrate in front of their eyes.

Another important advantage of a parliamentary democracy is the establishment of an official opposition party, which is expected to attack and embarrass the party in power. The result is vigorous and often raucous parliamentary debate, characterized by booing, cheering and outright heckling (called barracking) by members of the opposing party. Even though both New Zealand’s major parties are increasingly pro-business, bipartisan consensus on a specific issue is extremely rare. Open “bipartisan consensus,” which is so heavily promoted by the US media, Obama, the Clintons, and pro-corporate would be extremely unpopular in New Zealand. The majority of Kiwi voters still retain a strong working class consciousness, are extremely dismissive of politicians with open ties to the corporate and business lobby.

Question Time NZ Parliament

(click link to watch)

To be continued