University of Virginia Library

No Answer

President Choices Unindicative

By Alan Ogden

Democracy as a tradition very
likely has stronger roots in the US
than in any other country. Yet
in 1968 we will be faced with a
choice of Presidential candidates,
as in 1964, which will be unrepresentative
of the people's
wishes. People are confused. They
are increasingly aware of their
powerlessness but turn still to the
powerful for reassurances that they
are citizens.

The understanding has long existed
that the reality is a government
out of tune with real needs
and desires, a politics corrupt,
dirty, elitist. It can only become
more and more obvious that public
policy treats people's lives more
as means than as ends. It is quite
clear that the promise of liberalism-equality
and justice for all has
failed on a stunning scale.

Democracy cannot exist as a
static system. New methods, institutions,
and spirit must constantly
supersede the old, because
the old necessarily fail to serve the
people. Because the positive political
creation of past ages has
turned into an alien force-bureaucracy
and armed might against
us and against innocent foreign
peoples-the restoration of democracy
requires a new humanism,
a revolution of method.

To be productive, public spirit,
the passion for justice, the democratic
spirit must be creative, innovative,
aggressive, totally fresh.
The resolution to create a new
social system here within the rotting
timbers of the old is a declaration
of freedom and a declaration of
democratic faith.

The new democracy which alone
will keep democracy alive on this
earth is government decentralized
and responsive to the real needs
of small local groups and to
humanity as a whole. It is government
which will liberate the exploited
and oppressed by making
them powerful. It is government
concerned with bread and butter,
happiness, and liberty, and not
with the pocketbooks and ego
games of the Henry Fords, Kaisers,
Thius, Kennedys and Elbie Jays
of the world.

Almost all of us are exploited
people. The courtesans of Rand
and Boeing. We are the "human
element" that screws up the models
of the ideal capitalist economy.
Escape from the mawkish, the dehumanizing,
and the horrible involves
the conscious creation of
new cultural, economic, and political
forces to challenge the old.