Do The Work
Aug 26th, 2006 at 12:44 pm by Susie
Norman Mailer, via Poputonian posting at Digby’s place
Democracy is existential. It changes. It changes all the time. That’s one reason why I detest promiscuous patriotism. You don’t take democracy for granted. It is always in peril. We all know that any man or woman can go from being a relatively good person to a bad one. We can all become corrupted, or embittered. We can be swallowed by our miseries in life, become weary, give up. The fact that we’ve been a great democracy doesn’t mean we will automatically keep being one if we keep waving the flag. It’s ugly. You take monarchy for granted, or a fascist state. But democracy changes all the time.
Reader Patrick Kennedy in comments:
I have always believed we have a great constitutional system in our country. As I watched Senator Russ Feingold take on the Bush administration during the uprising over the NSA spying issue, calling for President Bush to be censored, it really came home to me that the constitution, great as it is, doesn’t run itself. We have to make it work which is what Feingold was trying to do.
The same is true with democracy. If we don’t make it work, we can lose it. Isn’t it ironic that democracy is being endangered by “flag conservatives.”
