Undermining the Foundation

Government is being stripped of its legitimacy by the transformation of elections into political charades.

The game currently is being played out in Minnesota where the odious Al Franken garnered enough votes to almost win a U.S. Senate seat. The closeness of the election made it worthwhile for him and his supporters to continue the process -- . . . count . . . and count . . . and count . . . and keep on counting, and then recount . . . and recount . . . and recount . . . and keep recounting, and all the while keep finding and producing enough additional votes to win or at least to get the decision into the courts. And, if the counts, recounts, and judges still don't provide a victory, take it to the majority party in the Senate itself to overturn the Minnesota majority.

Several precedents for this comedy were seen four years. Everyone remembers and therefore there is no need to relate anything about the Florida spectacle. But fewer people recall or ever knew about a court ordering that the polls in St. Louis be kept open beyond the specified closing time to enable the city's political machine to produce enough additional votes to swing the state's electoral college vote. And don't forget how Washington State's governorship was switched when a third recount turned up more votes than there were voters in certain selected urban precincts.

All this builds on, and emulates the corrupt traditions of our big city political machines. Just recall Chicago, where the dead emerged from the city's graveyards to vote early and often in sufficient numbers to shift the Illinois results and the presidential election outcome to the hallowed John F. Kennedy.

(Despite having despised Nixon from beginning to end, I always have had to admire and respect his acceptance of, and refusal to challenge JFK's election. He clearly foresaw the consequences of refusing to accept even a highly questionable election outcome.)

The chicanery is escalating because it now is easier to steal elections than it has been in the past. Motor voter registration, same day registration and voting, willful lack of oversight by supposedly responsible but irresponsible and partisan election officials, and a complicit judiciary all contribute to what is increasingly becoming -- and coming to be widely recognized as -- a farce.

Is it any wonder that an increasing percentage of eligible citizens refuse to participate in a process that they realize is being manipulated by political insiders.

We areoming dangerously close to the third world system of one man, one vote, one time. No government produced in this way has any claim to legitimacy. It has no basis for expecting acceptance, loyalty, or respect. Accordingly, such a government can expect compliance with its actions, decisions, and policies only from those who agree with them on an ad hoc basis in each individual instance, and beyond that only to the extent that it has the will and the ability to use plain and simple brute force to compel obedience.