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Published on Tuesday, June 19, 2001 in the Cape Cod Times
The 'Crisis in Democracy'
by Sean Gonsalves
One of our Founding Fathers was among the first Americans to
articulate the "crisis of democracy," as contemporary
establishment eggheads term it.
What's the crisis? In the 1787 debates over the federal
Constitution, James Madison pointed out how "In England, at this
day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property
of landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would
soon take place."
To fend off such a crisis, "our government ought to secure the
[Image] permanent interests of the country against innovation,"
putting in place checks and balances in order to
"protect the minority of the opulent against the
majority," Madison explained.
This stuff is never taught in history class, although the material
is well known to celebrated historians like Thomas Carothers, who
served in the Reagan administration to "assist democracy" in Latin
America.
Analyzing the region, where U.S. influence on foreign soil has
been greatest, Carothers notes that Washington "inevitably sought
only limited, top-down forms of democratic change that did not
risk upsetting the traditional structures of power with which the
United States has long been allied."
The aim of U.S. planners, Carothers explained, was to maintain
"the basic order of...quite undemocratic societies" and avoid
"populist-based change (that could upset) established economic and
political orders."
But it's the rise, fall and rise of another Reagan administration
official that ought to interest any patriotic, democracy-loving
American. The retired Lt. Col. Oliver North is apparently getting
ready to launch a campaign for Congress in Virginia.
Gov. James Gilmore of Virginia and chairman of the Republican
National Committee told the Washington Times last week: "Ollie
would be a fantastic candidate. He can raise money like few other
people, he has star quality and people love him." Can't argue with
that. Ollie is good at raising "money like few other people."
It was in 1986 when the nation learned that not only was North
instrumental in illegally selling arms to Iran in exchange for
freeing U.S. hostages, North used the artificially inflated
profits of the weapons sales to finance an illegal covert
operation in Nicaragua.
The Iran-Contra scandal gave us a glimpse into the Madisonian
contempt for democracy the Reagan administration harbored and
nourished.
"Almost lost in the clamor was the 'fixer' role North played along
the way - looking after (then-CIA director) Bill Casey's 'friends'
on the American domestic front," writes David Harris in "Shooting
the Moon," probably the best book written by an investigative
journalist on the U.S. relationship with the former head of the
Panama Defense Force, Manuel Noriega.
"By (North's) own account, in the summer of 1986, alone, Casey's
fixer succeeded in getting a Miami criminal investigation into
contra gun-running slowed to a crawl and a congressional inquiry
into contra drug-smuggling derailed indefinitely," Harris writes.
One situation that needed fixing involved Noriega. Casey was
conducting a "secret" war against the poor in Latin America under
the guise of "rolling-back communism." Noriega was offering his
services to help fight the Sandanistas in clandestine defiance of
a congressional mandate not to.
When the New York Times published a scathing article detailing
Noriega's criminal record, the Panamanian general asked Ollie for
advice.
"North, demonstrating virtually no feeling at all for where his
'friend' was coming from, simply referred him to a public
relations firm that North had used for his own contra fund-raising
efforts," Harris reports.
At a meeting in a London hotel, North told Noriega that in return
for his pro-contra assistance, "there will be a clean slate; we'll
forget about all the bad stuff we've heard. We'll just forget
about it."
Of course, when Casey died and the whole Iran-Contra scandal
prevented Noriega's "friends" from helping him, the Panamanian
general went to jail and North was pardoned.
North then became a radio talk show host for WWRC, 980 AM. The
show's PR gimmick was "It's no lie - a shred of truth from
Washington - your dial is set to true North."
If North doesn't get elected, he ought to at least be given the
George Orwell Doublespeak Award. If he does get elected, he'll be
in good company.
In a campaign speech that Dubya gave at the Reagan Library in Simi
Valley, Calif., he said, "We live in a nation President Reagan
restored, and the world he helped save" - no doubt with people
like North doing the dirty work.
North and Bush deserve each other. Of course, it will be hard to
take the GOP values and morality rhetoric seriously if they
support a congressional candidate who was convicted of obstructing
Congress and unlawfully shredding government documents in an
effort to "protect the minority of the opulent against the
majority."
Sean Gonsalves is a Cape Cod Times staff writer and syndicated
columinist. He can be reached via email:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Copyright 2001 Cape Cod Times
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