randolph@SUN.COM (09/24/86)
Hello. I am not certain that this group is the place for this article but I know no place better. Instead of preaching, I'm going to write about the way our government works. I hope some of you are interested. There is, in American democracy, an inherent conservatism. Congressmen, driven by the desires of their electors, will seldom propose acts that will change the lives of their electors. Such acts, however good, will invariably be opposed by a majority of voters. It is popular to be radical in two ways only: a way that does not obviously affect the electorate or a way that appears to counter change in the conditions of the electorate, radicalism with a conservative end. Into the class of radical acts which do not obviously affect the electorate we may place the military policies of the past 40 years. The main domestic effect of an ever-expanding peacetime military is an ever expanding military budget, which does not ever provide the kind of jarring change which would make voters suddenly turn to other candidates or parties. Into the class of radical acts which appear to have conservative ends we may place many of the responses to the Great Depression and the wage and price controls of the 1970s. In answer to the Great Depression the United States government implemented stringent bank regulations and made the government a major employer; socialist policies of a violently anti-socialist nation. The first red scare was only a decade past. But people were accustomed to stable banking and near-universal employment; if these policies would bring them back they'd live with (oh, say it softly) socialism. Wage and price controls are another socialist innovation, applied during the presidency of Richard Nixon, who was a red-hunter during the second red scare. Wage and price controls, it was hoped, would counter the economic effects of rising oil prices. Again, people were accustomed to stable wages and prices. If radical plans would return wage and price stability, then bring on the radical plans! -- Randolph Fritz sun!randolph randolph@sun -------