Not In Their Agora
Christian Science Monitor alerts us to the resolution on the Iraq war up for debate in fifty Vermont towns on Tuesday during that state’s hallowed (overly hallowed, in Arendt’s On Revolution) Town Meetings. Proponents of the measure say it’s exactly what should be discussed, because many Vermonters serving in the National Guard have lost their lives or been wounded in the conflict. Opponents say that those claims may be valid, but Town Meeting is a time to talk about snowplows, not diplomacy.
From my perspective, such debates add little to democracy. The advocates of the resolutions want to ask Vermont’s state legislature to investigate the impact National Guard deployments have had on the local communities from which the citizen soldiers are drawn–but to what end? Alert citizens are already aware of the articles in such liberal, anti-war news sources as The Wall Street Journal about the harm done to small businesses and proprietorships by the call-up of the Reserves and the Guard; this is part of the reason Rumsfeld and Congress are finally increasing the permanent number of the Regulars. But in the meantime, the Pentagon must recruit, train and deploy these soldiers, and so the Guard and the Reserves become essential to meeting America’s commitments abroad.
Those commitments, ideally, are made by Congress and the President after deep thought, consultation and finally consent. (If, in the real world, they are sometimes made in a fit of absent-mindedness, that is not the fault of American constitutional theory.) Foreign policy has long been an undisputed prerogative of the federal government. It was in large part the American Confederation’s weakness in conducting a unified foreign policy that the Constitution was created.
And so, finally, it is not the Town Meeting where opponents of the war should rightly concentrate their efforts. It is the federal government that should be their target. The United States already has feedback mechanisms by which local communities can influence federal policy-making. As a small state, Vermont is disproportionately represented by its two Senators in one of those institutions.
Whatever activist Vermonters may wish, the debate on the Iraq war is over for the time being. This attempt to force a debate on an issue that Vermonters, and Americans, have already spoken on is misguided. Like all such attempts to “make a statement” or let people “speak their minds,” it confuses politics with spectacle, and rhetoric with action. Better to let the Town Meeting in Burlington talk about snowplows than discuss the IEDs of Basra.
8 Responses to “Not In Their Agora”
true words of wisdom.
thanks!
dlw
From the CSM story: “Vermont active service members have died [in Iraq] at a per capita rate higher than in any other state.”
You tell ‘em, Paul. Snowplows, ya hear? Not war. Snowplows. That’s what your town meetings are for.
Good thing somebody finally spoke up. That was getting out of control, with all that non-snowplow talk. Upitty little blue state.
“”If you call a meeting in Town Square to denounce [President] Bush, that is fine,” says John McClaughry, moderator of the Kirby Town Meeting since 1967. “But they are hijacking Town Meeting … to protest a completely different agenda.”"…
“”There’s a legitimate debate that goes on about what is appropriate for discussion at Town Meeting,” says Deb Markowitz, Vermont’s secretary of state. “To the extent we get sidetracked with national and international issues, we lose energy for doing the real work of Town Meeting.”
I dunno, Paul, to me that sounds like government officials trying set out rules about what the electorate is allowed to tell the public officals.
Which, if you’re tired of hearing dissent is great. For the rest of us it’s a litte creepy.
Especially when mass media, not to mention bloggers, are joining in the chorus right next to said government officials — “shut up! Talk about snowplows”!
All this over a little town meeting? Nah. I think it’s about people who are tired of hearing dissent about the war looking for any context in which they can have the satisfaction of legitimately saying “Hey — you’re can’t say that!”
If I’m wrong, please tell me the last time the CSM — or ITA — has covered the content of Vermont town meetings. And taken a side, for crissakes.
“If I’m wrong, please tell me the last time the CSM — or ITA — has covered the content of Vermont town meetings. And taken a side, for crissakes.”
As it happens, the occasional eruption of pro-/anti-war demonstrations and debates at local functions (particularly in IU student government and Bloomington city council meetings) has been covered, off and on, by ITA’s constituent bloggers since before the current conflict in Iraq.
In any event: There is a difference between saying “You can’t discuss this” and “You should discuss this some other time.” I would hope a reasonable person would see the distinction.
“Especially when mass media, not to mention bloggers…”
I should note that I find the implication that ITA and the Christian Science Monitor are joined together in some sort of vast conspiracy ridiculous on its face. Yes, we here at ITA have much in common with the centre-leftists in Boston…
I don’t see any conspiracy here. I see human nature on display, that’s all.
You can’t see why ITA taking a stand that Vermont citizens “shouldn’t” be talking about the war at their town meetings is a bit disturbing?
It’s all about the choice of story here. Say Montana residents tried to push though a bunch of city counsel ordinances stating support for the troops, asking state reps to present them to the President.
Would ITA run a page-long article clucking about how such an activity was a waste of time, an abuse of democracy? Even if it pushed back discussion of snowplows? I dunno, maybe … but I doubt it.
If the discussion of national/international issues is actually getting in the way of some of the real local business that needs to be done the these meetings, then of course the amount of time spent on those issues should be trimmed back.
Having said that, there’s a certain kind of idealism in Paul’s post that is worth poking at a bit. He offers the line to the would-be Vermont protestors: look, if you don’t like US policy, then you should restrict your relevant political actions to ones involving the US government; and anyway let’s not confuse politics with spectacle. But in this day and age, in which the current federal government does all it can to pre-empt any real debate on its policies and to keep any power from accidentally devolving to any outside of its ruling clique, and in which by and large spectacle has become an essential component of politics — under those circumstances, I don’t feel comfortable blaming those Vermonters for trying to make their point in whatever limited way they can manage. If you don’t like what the current system has driven them to, blame that system, not them.