Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Emerald Coast
“Growing Into Democracy”
Rev. Rod Debs
October 17, 2004

In just two weeks, we will vote in our nation’s 2004 General Election. Long before the notorious “hanging chads” and padded list of inelligible felons, Tom Stoppard wrote: “It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting.” (Jumpers, 1972) This morning I would like to raise the topic of what, exactly, is the democratic process.

As member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association our UUA Bylaws declare, “We… covenant to affirm and promote: … the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large.” (You can find the entire Statement of Principles on the back of your Order of Service.) As U.S. citizens and as Unitarian Universalists, it is important to ask, beyond the voting and the counting, what all does the democratic process entail?

Let me start off with the unsupported speculation that early human society did not have democratic processes. Perhaps we retroject the daily competition of our modern economic system, capitalism, and simply cannot imagine human society without it. Nonetheless, common culture concedes that “might makes right,” that life is all about survival of the fittest individual in a dog-eat-dog world. More and more Americans accept the capitalist creed that greed is good because the strongest brute survives to perpetuate and strengthen the species.

There is, however, contrary evidence to the common sense that life is all about competitive self-interest: Animal groups with selfish rogue individuals are arguably less successful in competition for survival against groups that cooperate for the common good. Yes, some animals are carnivorous killers. We observe others animals compete for food and shelter, less violently, yet without regard for the common good or sustainability. For many animals, might does makes right.

Last Sunday this reality came home to me forcefully. While Interfaith leaders were speaking to us about how to relate to others in our community with the spirit of open-heartedness, two pitbulls were killing small animals in my neighborhood. Five neighborhood cats had been found dead this summer. When I came home from church, I saw why. The two pitbulls were surrounded by fifteen small animals they had simply crushed moving from one to another. It was a massacre, and those beautiful pitbulls were calmly doing what they have been bred to do: kill.

My mind goes back to my childhood in Ohio, when I used to stalk and shoot sparrows. I didn’t kill them for food. And I remember stepping on ants, seeing how many I could kill on the sidewalk. And flies---flies and mosquitoes in my surroundings are squashed with relish.

We humans are killers too, especially if we are selectively bred and trained for it. Sparta of ancient Greece was a prime example. When all social and economic structures serve to promote military functions, we call such societies “fascist.” Fortunately the most successful militarized societies have proved not to be long-lived. Societies with even the most sophisticated killing technology seem to fall short in providing sustainable meaning for its citizens. Winning the bloody competition for survival is a dead end for victim and killer alike.

The U.S. Catholic Bishops’ Pastoral Message on the U.S. Economy named three steps toward democratic processes. They identified three types of justice clearly articulated in Hebrew Scriptures: commutative justice, distributive justice and jubilee justice.

The first, commutative justice is an essential element of democratic processes. As Ancient Egypt’s power and reach waned, the former mercenary David, unified the various desert tribes of Palestine into the twelve tribes of Israel. Unlike the slave society of Egypt where 2000 years of Pharoahs declared themselves each to be the son of God and the givers of law, Hebrew Scriptures set forth one law for all people. No one, ruler or priest would be above the law. There would be one law for the people of Israel as for the sojourner.

Commutative justice means equal treatment under the law, what we call simple fairness. In asking if the United States is democratic we would have to ask whether our legal system provides actual fairness in the courts: Do the poor as well as the rich have equal access to comparable legal counsel? Well, in recent years, legal services have been defunded and hog-tied, no longer permitted to take any class action cases. Court-appointed attorneys are notoriously incompetent in some states.

Does the justice system arrest and prosecute and sentence rich and poor, citizens and foreigners, alike? Since 9-11, profiling has expanded from targeting African American and Hispanic men to include profiling of Middle Eastern-looking people, Muslims and anyone coming from a Muslim country.

As a nation, do we hold ourselves to the same international law as other nations? Well, we are seeing that the U.S. military has different legal standards for foreign nationals as compared to U.S. citizens. The U.S. military operates off-shore prisons in Guantanamo Bay, aboard navy ships, and in other countries, like the Abu Graib prison in Iraq, where we do not forbid torture. Perhaps most telling is that the United States will not submit ourselves and our citizens to the same accountability as other nations in The World Court. Practices of commutative justice, fairness under one law, are democratic processes that the United States has abandoned in recent years.

The second type of justice identified by the U.S. Catholic Bishops in Hebrew Scriptures is distributive justice or charity. The Hebrew people were commanded to bring tithes of their produce to be stored and shared with widows and orphans, the poor and needy, and with strangers. Gleaning laws forbid harvesting the corners of fields and forbid picking up any produce that is dropped during harvest or transport; the gleanings were to be left for the poor and for animals. Every seven years, personal debts were to be forgiven so that the disadvantaged would be able to make a fresh start free of the burden of debt-payments to the rich.

In asking whether the United States is democratic, we need to ask whether our nation practices distributive justice relieving the burden of poverty and destitution in our nation and world-wide? Let me begin by saying that I consider taxes to be a sacrament. Social programs such as school lunches, a living-wage minimum wage, affordable housing, unemployment insurance, welfare, universal health care, and Social Security ---these are all measures of distributive justice, the safety-net of sharing and caring that we have seen dismantled since the 1980’s.

I believe that taxes are a sacrament because the alternative, private charity is both anemic and spotty. Systematic problems require systematic solutions. The false “charity” of politicians who pander for votes by offering to give taxes back to the people through tax cuts, masks tax cuts and loop-holes to the “haves and the have-mores” and constant cuts in social services to the most needy.

Jesus above all taught generosity declaring, “insofar as you have done it to one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me.” And he condemned those rich who did not give to the needy saying, “It is harder for a rich man to get into heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.” The early Christian faith was not about beliefs or legalistic rules. Faithful Christian life involved nothing more than sharing of the common table, where all came together bringing their gifts in Jesus’ spirit of kindness and generosity. Taxes, the common table in our day, is more a sacrament than the ritual Eucharist of a bit of bread and wine. The widespread unpopularity of taxes to assist the least advantaged among us, and the widening gap between the very rich and everyone else, is an indictment against our nation as a democracy. The democratic process of distributive justice, “leveling the playing field,” is being dismantled.

Republicans were absolutely right three decades ago when they claimed that welfare creates dependency rather than empowering the needy to become contributing members of society. Distributive justice, charity does not give people what they need to provide for themselves. Without a job, the poor will always need charity. Without a living wage, the working poor will always need charity. Without affordable housing, the poor will always need charity. Without quality public education and affordable college, in this technological society the poor will remain dependent on charity. Without childcare and affordable health care, the poor will always need charity. And it’s not just the poor! Because I am not able to be in a group health plan, for the last three months, I have been paying $958 every month for health insurance to cover our daughter and me! And ask me about the price of Katrina’s university education!

The third type of justice identified by the U.S. Catholic Bishops and an essential element of democracy, is jubilee justice. The Hebrew Scriptures, God’s law required a Year of Jubilee, when the land, the means of productivity, would be redistributed to the tribes of Israel thereby giving every person including strangers restored access to land, the essential means of productivity. Today, what we need to be productive citizens is not simply a land grant! We are no longer an agrarian society. We are an urban, technological society. Charity is not enough! To be productive citizens contributing to the community, we need a job with a living wage, advanced education, affordable housing and health care. Being able to contribute empowers democratic participation. Dismantling the very government programs that actually enable those dependent on charity to become productive, contributing members of society undercuts democracy.

These three, fairness under one law, the leveling distribution of taxes and benefits, and social resources that empower each of us to be productive members of society, these types of justice are necessary for democratic participation. Freedom from control by a royal elite is another necessity in a democracy.

The Puritan founders of our country sought to be pure (or free) of bishop, priest or king, in their free practice of religion. In defiance of the Church of England, common people gathered themselves into churches based on their own mutual covenant. No authority, king, bishop or priest authorized their religious community beyond the covenant of the members themselves. Before William Bradford and other Pilgrims came by Mayflower to the New World, before he became the first governor of the Plymouth Colony, at the age of seventeen Bradford penned this description of an English congregation gathering themselves: “there was first one stood up and made a covenant, and these two joined together, and so a third, and these became a church, say they, etc.” (Alice Blair Wesley in Redeeming Time, edited by Walter P. Herz, 1999)

The Mayflower Compact, our self-governing churches and our constitutional democracy, all were created by covenant of the people, free of the dictates of bishop, priest and king. The question that must be asked, is there a new royal priesthood that controls our nation today? Do corporate royalty through lobbyists, through campaign contributions, and through high-cost media assassination comprise a wealthy royalty controlling U.S. politics? Do brilliant, high-paid, ideological “think-tank” analysts communicating through corporate media control the issues we hear and how we think about them? Do “embedded journalists” limit our access to information about our nation’s military actions?

The fact that our vast nation must function as a representative democracy (rather than direct democracy) raises the question whether our voting involves informed consent or systematically misinformed voters? Do wealthy corporations and wealthy individuals in deciding who will be funded to run for elected offices and who will not be funded, do they actually function as a royal oligarchy who limit the options from which we must choose? Do they serve as gate-keepers of what we are permitted to even imagine as possible for our country and for our world?

The process of democracy requires broad and accurate information, free from funding controls upon who can and who cannot run and get their message out. The process of democracy involves analysis of the issues, free from the ideological think tanks and talking heads who manufacture consent and who assassinate character of opponents. Sure, a very privileged few may access international news sources and independent journalist’s investigative reporting. But systematic problems require systematic solutions. Media decentralization and campaign finance reform are two systematic remedies to reclaim meaningful election processes from the wealthy wizards of Oz behind their media screens.

One more observation: Each of us is shaped in our political thinking by the sources of information that we access, reaching way back to the influences of our childhoods. We may have inaccurate information. None of us has full information.

This election season I know that we all have been bombarded by offensive political rhetoric about our candidates, and sometimes we have relayed offensive political rhetoric about the candidates of others as well. Such rhetoric is incomplete if not a total caricature. Would it not be good for us to restrain such hurtful rhetoric no matter how certain you feel that it is at least partly true, simply because it is hurtful. One thing is certain. Political conversations that are generous and respectful of others’ candidates and of our own incomplete perspective are more likely to reach the heart and mind of others than political ridicule and hyperbole. You draw more flies to honey than to vinegar!

The comic book character Charlie Brown once asked an important question. Lucy was going on in her usual ignorant, opinionated way saying: “Snow goes up from the ground, Charlie Brown. Snow goes up! The wind just blows it around, but snow goes up!” I imagine that I am Lucy, so sure of my perspective, so concerned about the world. Charlie Brown says to me: “Has it ever occurred to you that you might be wrong?”

It may be that I am not wrong. But it is certain that my knowledge is incomplete. It behooves me to “seek to understand before seeking to be understood.” (Study Circles)

Rather than offending one another these last two weeks, or just as bad, rather than avoiding engaging one another on the critical life-and-death issues of this election, may we reclaim the pure participatory process of democracy, representative self-government free from the mind-control rhetoric of ideological and moneyed elite. Let’s listen with respect and win others’ respectful dialogue.