Democracy is not about trust; it is about distrust. It is about accountability, exposure, open debate, critical challenge, and popular input and feedback from the citizenry. It is about responsible government. We have to get our fellow Americans to trust their leaders less and themselves more, trust their own questions and suspicions, and their own desire to know what is going on.
Interpretation
Democracy thrives on questioning and accountability rather than blind trust in leaders.
In this quote, Michael Parenti emphasizes that true democracy relies on a critical and skeptical approach from citizens toward their leaders. He advocates for accountability in governance, suggesting that citizens should prioritize their own judgments, inquiries, and instincts over uncritical trust in authority figures, highlighting the importance of active participation and feedback in the democratic process.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about civic engagement at a community meeting.
Conservatives say the government can't end poverty by force, but they believe it can use force to make people moral. Liberals say government can't make people be moral, but they believe it can end poverty. Neither group attempts to explain why government is so clumsy and destructive in one area but a paragon of efficiency and benevolence in the other.
What matters is that the majority of American people have become complacent in a senseless injustice that occurs all around them. What matters is that most American politicians have become more easily swayed by money than by the people who voted them into office.
If the United States loses the economic weapons of control, it is very much weakened.
I consider it…as subverting the fundamental and characteristic principle of the Government…and as bidding defiance to the sense in which the Constitution is known to have been proposed, advocated, and adopted. If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one.
Governments that use violence to stop democratic development will not earn themselves respite forever. They will pay an increasingly high price for actions which they can no longer hide from the world with ease, and will find themselves on the wrong side of history.
A president cannot meaningfully honor certain token artists while the people at large are so dishonored.'”
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