Democracy is a state where:
- Citizenship is universal. Each person born within the boundaries of the state is a citizen, as is one born abroad to at least one citizen parent or who swears allegiance to the state in a rite of naturalization.
- Citizenship is equal. Each citizen has an equal opportunity to participate in and influence public affairs. Every adult citizen shall be enfranchised with the right to vote. Decisions are made by a majority voted based on the principle of one man/one vote.
- Citizenship is inalienable. A guaranteed set of civil liberties is in place to assure full and open public discourse of civic affairs. No citizen may be stripped of his citizenship or otherwise punished by the state for expressing any point of view, no matter how unpopular or even absurd.
Both Bush's America and Kim Jong Il's North Korea flunk these tests. Kim's North Korea, more than Bush's America, is a system designed to protect the power of the political elites, the leader in power and his apparatchiks. Bush's America is a system designed to protect the power of the wealthy elite, the owners of large corporations. However, Bush's America shows signs of moving toward a system that will have the same adverse effect on democratic processes as Kim's North Korea, including machinery to maintain the power of a narrow political class.
Ironically, the official name of North Korea is the
Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Like Bush, Kim Jong Il is the spoiled child of power and privilege, a man with an inflated view of his own abilities.
Like Bush, Kim Jong Il holds that he, as leader, is beyond any restraint any law puts on him, rendering any law meaningless. He, too, maintains that this is true unless he is removed from power, a process that he makes as difficult as possible through disenfranchisement of voters. North Koreans are disenfranchised by having their choices restricted in most elections to supporters of the regime; Americans are disenfranchised by having their choices effectively limited to those whose campaign bills the wealthy are willing to foot and to elections in which votes will be counted by easily-rigged machines. We are now witnessing in America refugees from a natural disaster having it made difficult to return to their homes in New Orleans on a basis that is designed to discriminate against those less likely to vote for supporters of Mr. Bush. Those who were originally refugees from a natural disaster are now, in effect, political refugees.
In both North Korea and America, news and information is filtered by those in power. In North Korea, it's Kim's government; in America, it's the wealthy who own the major media outlets. With major media outlets coming into fewer and more homogeneous hands, it is almost as difficult for an American to learn something those in power don't want him to know as it is for a North Korean.
In spite of official Marxist ideology and rhetoric, Kim Jong Il doesn't give two bits for the welfare of his people. In North Korea, people are starving. In America, wages are falling as manufacturing jobs are moved overseas. Personal bankruptcies have increased this year. How much longer will it be before famine becomes a problem in America? Of course, will we know it if it does? Will the corporate-owned major media outlets report it if that happens?
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