Translation of excerpts from Robert Heinlein’s book, Take Your Government Back - part 27

Chapter 11

Notes on democracy

“What are we striving for, for whom,
Gaining and losing?
For those ordinary people
Who is fooled over and over again.
Goodness, dignity and intelligence
Sow slowly around the ground // American poet Carl Sandberg

“When you gather a group of people to concentrate their combined wisdom, together with them you inevitably collect all their passions, prejudices, delusions, selfishness and short-sightedness. How can such meetings be expected to be perfect in decisions and actions?
And, nevertheless, it amazes me how close the work of this system is to perfection. ” //
from the speech of Benjamin Franklin at the Constitutional Convention

The art of politics is chaotic and multi-layered like stew on a plate, and as infinitely vague as an encrypted text. Despite numerous deviations and additions, I have not touched on many nuances in politics in this book. Some of them are too long to explain, they do not fit them in this book, and in addition they are not worth writing about them in a book for novice politicians. You will learn all these nuances by taking up practical politics. You will not make any fatal mistakes if you firmly adhere to your principles.

We will not consider such moments as holding party congresses at the level of a country and a state, the work of state legislators, where there are such phenomena as laws that are not going to be adopted, using them only to receive money from interested corporations, and laws that must be passed, because without them all the work will stop. We will not talk about how a speaker can convince a committee to vote for or against. We will not describe the work of the committee on regulations, the practice of suspension of voting on the adoption of a law for its further discussion, we will ignore the entire internal cuisine of the congress. Let us pass over in silence lobbies, lobbyists, honest and dishonest ways to replenish the campaign fund, political blocs, elections with an assessment of candidate preference in points, political newspapers, a legislative ban on government officials from engaging in party activities, organizing national party committees and national election campaigns, and politicians interaction city ​​level, state and country. All these issues have their own nuances, however, in fact, they are all solved by the same methods that I described to you above. Only entity names can change.

And yet, when a large family is going on the road, no matter how carefully the packing of baggage is planned, after the end of loading, there will always be some forgotten things that you need to take with you. And then these things are collected, wrapped in wrapping paper and carry the bundle in their hands. This chapter is just such a bundle.

Personal expenses of a policy volunteer

I will say right away: you can be quite an active politician without spending a cent on it. However, small expenses will make your work much easier and more pleasant. Here is the minimum weekly budget that allows you not to fall into awkward situations and in your political activities do not restrain yourself in anything:

Cost averaging compensates for increased political spending during the campaign period, at the expense of political lull periods, when all your expenses for the week are a pair of postcards and one phone call. In the calculation of costs, the fact that while you are engaged in politics you do not spend money on going to the cinema, playing bridge for money, and other hobbies and entertainment, is also ignored. Usually spending on politics is much less than the cost of entertainment. Thus, by taking up politics you can reduce your expenses, even though you pay the costs associated with the policy from your own pocket.

Of course, donations to political organizations and trips to political congresses can be spent as much as necessary. Therefore, you need to learn to say "no, I do not have so much money" when you will be persuaded to spend as much as you cannot afford. Respect for this will not cease for you, and in the future these refusals will not affect your political influence.

How to deal with the communists

There are not many communists in our country, but they are there, and you can meet them anywhere. There is a common misconception in our policy that communists can only be found in the organizations of the left wing of the Democratic Party, but I personally became convinced that this is not so. The communist party cell can appear in any place where more than four people have gathered. I found them in such conservative organizations, where the very fact of their discovery would have caused an epidemic of deaths in the organization as a result of a heart attack.

Communists are best viewed as a special kind of religious fanatics. By saying this, I mean the American Communists, because I have never been to Russia and have not met Russian Communists. After adopting the point of view of communism as a religion, all the oddities in the behavior of the communists become clear. They have their own, completely anti-scientific Holy Scripture, which they consider to be the last word in science, and which exists in “canonical” and “heretical” translations. They have their own god - the idea of ​​the "proletariat", their great and small prophets, and their apostates. They are confident in the absolute superiority of their point of view over all others and intolerant of disputes on this topic. For them, everything that helps propagandize their faith is permissible, no matter how much it hurts non-believers in their religion. Their morality and justice is “supreme”, and the rest is “decadent” and “bourgeois”. They are tireless and intolerant. And usually they are altruistic and sincerely convinced of the correctness of their “religion”. You will hear many more similar characteristics from other politicians.

The favorite method of action of the Communists is the seizure of political organizations from within. Usually, secret communists do this, hiding behind the mask of some other parties, from the point of view of their code of honor is permissible. They use parliamentary procedures and democratic freedom of speech in order, in the end, to do away with both. Their concept of freedom of speech is to give speeches on topics chosen by them at a meeting organized by you. And this freedom of speech of theirs is not mutual - try to come yourself to speak at the meeting of the communists!

Communists most often act in cells of three - one makes statements in order to conduct the meeting, the second supports it, and the third - delivers speeches. Usually they are scattered around the hall, and may even pretend that they are strangers to each other. Faced with such triple opposition, the chairperson of the meeting can get into a difficult situation. For speeches at other people's meetings, the Communists always choose a topic that is vital for the audience, and is not directly related to communism. Only three communists, acting in concert, can encourage the assembly to take actions that are fatal to the future of their organization, but favorable to some long-term communist plans.

Having seen that he is dealing with the Communists, the experienced chairman of the assembly can prevent undesirable developments by taking advantage of the techniques described earlier in this book. Fortunately, these tricks usually help. American communists are rarely very clever, although many of them are quite bright personalities. Rather, they tend to behave, according to the pattern-based techniques they are trained in, and by which their party affiliation can be determined. The most reliable feature of them is the propensity for the same sets of snappy phrases and slogans that change from year to year, but which you will soon begin to learn after listening to them in politics. A few years ago, the word “activate” was such a sign. For a long time the phrase “united front” and phrases with the word “popular” were used. I can not predict what slogans the Communists will have in the near future, so find out for yourself by looking from time to time in their newspaper Polennyi Rabochy to keep abreast of new trends in communism.

Some of the communists themselves reveal themselves, calling themselves "communist sympathizers." Such subjects usually say that they sympathize with communist social ideals, but they are not communists themselves. Have you ever heard of sympathetic Republicans, or Democrats, but not them? There is simply no such thing!

However, in general, being a source of annoying troubles, the Communists do not pose a serious threat to our society. Only the most fearful or malicious politicians can speak about the danger of the communist revolution in our country. Anyone familiar with the American mentality and culture will clearly see that ninety-nine Americans out of a hundred will not want anything to do with communism: it is simply not compatible with our individualism and with our ambitions.

What then can be useful for the American Communists? The fact that even if we didn’t have them, we would have to start them, because they can do an excellent service, acting as an indicator for identifying the real sources of threat to our Republic.

For all respectable Americans, communism is so odious that the emergence of populations in which it is becoming popular is a sign that the country needs urgent action to correct the situation. Unfortunately, much more often we ignore such groups of the population, limiting ourselves only to building up police units abandoned against them.

Lawyers in politics

Lawyers are about half of all our deputies in state and congress meetings. The number of their elected posts is in clear disproportion with their total number in our country. Many take it for granted, and indeed - such a state of affairs is a logical consequence of certain features of the structure of our society. I already wrote that lawyers find it easier to allocate time to participate in elections than to people of other professions, and that, working in the government, lawyers can take bribes on an almost legal basis. In general, the presence of lawyers in power does not cause objections in me: they are as honest and patriotic as any other group of people. I even think that, on average, a typical lawyer is smarter than an average person. And yet, the fact that lawyers are trusted to write laws makes me very concerned. And I would also add that lawyers should not work as judges, which may seem like a very radical idea to you. But the work of a judge is far from the same work as the one that lawyers, lawyers, and attorneys are involved in, it would have to be completely separate professions, and their merger seems to come from those biblical times when a priest, a teacher, the judge and the lawyer made up the same profession. Two of these incarnations became separate activities, the other two could also be divided, as, for example, in England, where a lawyer and an attorney are two completely different professions. Yes, and we now have no law requiring that the judges of the Supreme Court were lawyers.

But lawyers do the greatest harm in lawmaking. And in the first place - by the fact that they write laws in their legal language, incomprehensible ordinary citizens, forced to hire others as a lawyer, so that they explain what their colleagues - the authors of the law had in mind. Among lawyers, it is widely believed that laws should be written in their professional language, because ordinary human language, they say, is not accurate enough to describe laws. This is a very dubious statement, which is disputed by many linguists who deal with the semantic aspects of human languages. An ordinary person who does not know the avian legal language also has the right to doubt the need for piling up legal terms in laws, reasonably noticing that after lawyers wrote the law, they themselves begin to challenge its meaning in the courts. I wonder what would happen if someone questioned the compliance of our laws with our own Constitution, on the grounds that an adult with a secondary education is not able to understand the text of the laws? At the same time, the state requires that it comply with the laws, which implies that it must understand the meaning of the laws in order to comply with them. But how can you enforce laws that are impossible to understand? Even a lawyer should not require me to be "cheated" if he cannot explain to me in human language what I must do in order to "cheat".

And with all this, that foreign language in which the laws are written is not the greatest sin of lawmakers from jurisprudence. You can somehow master a foreign language, or hire a translator from it. Worst of all, lawyers are making laws in the wrong direction. Have you ever heard of the fabulous bird Filili? According to the myth, it flies backwards because it wants to see not the place where it flies, but those places where it has already flown by. Lawyers are like this bird - with their knowledge of past precedents, their nearness, and their desire to flock together. They always look to the past. To create completely new laws governing completely new situations, this is an absolutely inappropriate way of thinking. Now we are just seeing a discouraging situation where lawyers are trying to create laws regulating atomic energy issues, for which they are trying to find similar precedents in the past of mankind, where there have never been such precedents. But this does not bother lawyers at all, because their educational system does not include, neither the data obtained by the exact sciences, nor the scientific methods that are used in them.

The problem is not new, just now it has become the most acute. A group of people versed in real-life phenomena is much worse than farmers, engineers, mechanics and traders, we allow for us to make crucial decisions based on the precedents that have sunk into oblivion, created long ago by their late jurisprudence.

So in reality, the main problem of the participation of lawyers in public life is that most of them do not know what reality looks like.

Do we need another batch?

The emphasis I made in this book on the existence of two main parties in our country, on party discipline, and the need to support one of the parties, may lead you to believe that I am opposed to any attempts to create other political parties. If you thought so, I would like to correct you. The constant support of one’s party and the observance of party discipline are ethical, and from a purely pragmatic point of view are necessary for any political party that intends to fulfill its political promises. This principle is especially true in relation to the candidates losing the primaries: no one should be nominated as a candidate for the primaries if he is not ready to accept the will of the majority of the members of the political group that nominates him. Nomination for primaries is voluntary, as is acceptance of the terms of caucus, and it implies both rights and obligations. Nobody forces the candidate to stand for the primaries. In addition, he can always run for election as an independent candidate.

In some states, participation in the primaries is subject to certain conditions: the candidate must pledge to support the party list of candidates formed by their results. Such a condition is quite true, and can prevent some unscrupulous politicians from wanting to participate in the primaries all at once.

Sometimes there is such a strange situation as the struggle of two fundamentally different opinions on the main issues of political groups, for the right to bear the name of the party to which, according to both groups, they both belong. In such cases, of course, there can be no question of the fact that the losers will support the winners, therefore, one cannot speak about the constancy of support of their party. But more often there is a case when the loser candidate begins to act up like a small child, insisting that he be allowed to act according to his own rules, otherwise he does not play then.

From all this, one thing follows: if you decide to switch over to another political organization, then do it to the fullest extent: leave your party and join another, or even some third. Do not think that the Republicans or the Democrats will allow you to manipulate them, threatening to leave their party every time you rush.

The issues of creating a third party, now or in the past, are beyond the scope of this book, however, the contradictions now observed among members of both main parties lead to the fact that the right and left wing of each party, in their views, are closer to the corresponding wing of the other party, than to her own party colleagues from her other wing. In such a situation, ideological regrouping would be reasonable, and could lead to the creation of a third party. But the practical benefits of this venture - and this is what interests us most of all - depends on whether the risk of failure of such an event is balanced by its benefits and goals. Creating a third party is a very risky venture, with failure it ends more often than with success. But still, in our history such precedents have happened, and more than once. For example, Mr. Lincoln was nominated for the third time on both his terms: for the first time - by the Republicans, for the second time - by the United Party (which is a rather obscure fact). In addition to the Lincoln, John Fremont, Republican candidate from 1856, advanced this time in 1864, this time nominated by the so-called “Radicals”, which in fact are Republicans not included in the United Party (which, in turn, was a coalition of Republicans and Democrats) .

Reformer failures

In politics, there is a well-known rule that says: “Only one thing worse than the corrupt in power is the reformers who replaced them.” Why did it originate? After all, most reformers sincerely seek to form a good government, running for elected office, are full of the best intentions, and, in my experience, their aspirations are truly sincere. Some of the reformers' failures can be attributed to their terrifying naivety: occupying posts, they are completely unprepared to deal with the alcohol lobby, women's rights advocates, initiative groups, are not ready to receive insidious blows from opponents from the corner. Some of the reformers are idealists divorced from reality, unable to retain power because, unlike the previous corrupt officials, they do not understand what the voters want from them. And, finally, there is such a sad phenomenon, as reformers who have fallen into power, who, realizing the insufficiency of the salary that our society offers to its statesmen, are amenable to their temptations, and roll down the inclined plane of bribery and bribery.
However, personally it seems to me that most often the reformers lose because of the vanity and awareness of their unconditional rightness, which turned their heads after an impressive election victory. I myself can relate myself to reformers, so I am very interested in unraveling the causes of this phenomenon. And it surprises me and it is frustrating that my fellow reformers turn out to be so weak at the moment when they have a chance to realize their ideals.

The dawn and dusk of a political reformer’s political career usually looks like this: full of enthusiasm and resentment from what is happening around, he goes into politics, giving himself an oath to have nothing to do with what he calls politicking. He is not going to make any dubious promises, and is always ready to be an independent representative of the interests of all ordinary people. A little later, he realizes that he will still have to give some obligations, because no one owes anything to anyone will advance in any field, and because social life is built on obligations and agreements. Because of his inexperience, the reformer makes the wrong moves, assuming obligations that he will be challenging to perform. In addition, it finally brings the head, turned into being in power. As a rule, he is surrounded by sycophants who tell him about what a great statesman he is, neither give nor take - the second Savonarola, that he is too big a bump to be bound by any obligations there, that he works for the happiness of all people, and therefore, may not be concerned about the fulfillment of specific promises to particular persons, especially if these promises are difficult to fulfill, as is often the case.

In such a situation it is very convenient to make a deal with a conscience, deciding that promises can be broken, in the name of higher considerations. Conscience in general can be trained so that it will give a convenient at the moment, every day a different answer - "My light, mirror, tell me, who in the world is all the sweeter?" - of course, all the sweeter - you yourself! And after a series of such decisions, you will replay the political mafia, once again being in power.

Political professionals, both more or less honest of them, as well as hardened corrupt officials, have amassed a wealth of political knowledge and experience. Reformers cannot compete with them if they are inexperienced in politics, and are not ready to offer voters the same things as professionals, and a little more than that. The two most important policy rules that reformers need to learn from professionals are that promises must be fulfilled, and that votes are collected at polling stations.
Knowing these two points, everything else in this book can not be read.

Is the democratic system effective?

In the thirties, this question was a favorite topic for pessimistic thinking. Having safely survived the Second World War, our country in practice confirmed the effectiveness of democracy. I myself was once very concerned about this issue, because, being a supporter of democracy, I was afraid that in the future totalitarian structures would oust it from the face of the Earth. My doubts were completely dispelled by a refugee from Nazi Germany, who, while living in Berlin, was a successful businessman, but in order not to join the Nazis, he chose to flee the country, eventually finding himself in New York - without work, and without a single penny in the pocket. I gave him my doubts, to which he replied: “Do not listen to anyone who tells you that some form of dictatorship can be more effective than democracy. Human society consists of individuals, and both components of this system may be wrong. Seeing the disorder, in a free society, someone will immediately raise the alarm, and in the end the error will be corrected. In the dictatorship, in this case, no one will dare to criticize, and the error will be fixed forever, turning into a life rule. The main distinguishing feature of this democracy, my friend believed freedom of speech. Democracy and freedom of speech are like Siamese twins who cannot live without each other.

Can I really influence something?

Despite the persuasive narration in previous chapters, where Mr. Busy is seeking to elect his candidate, removing the professional politician who has sat up there from power, and thus influencing - at least for a certain period of time - on the development course of the whole country, you have the right to doubt whether such a course of events. In the end, when I wrote this book, I could lie in it and something. However, do you remember what I wrote about Susie? About this formidable political army consisting of only one woman? About that same Susie, who has a lot of children? (At the same time, she was involved in politics so much that when Susie decided to go to the mountains for a week with her children, her nine-year-old son asked, “Are we going to have a rest, and not at the next party congress?”).

In the state where Susi lives, the law on primaries requires that local party supporters elect delegates to the national party congress at which they will nominate a presidential candidate. And that the members of the delegation supported those candidates with whom they were on the same list for the primaries, thus allowing ordinary voters to influence the nomination of presidential candidates. In addition, according to the law, lists of delegations to the congress should be compiled based on the results of collecting signatures of voters - party supporters, which practically excludes the possibility of fraud with the composition of delegations. Suzy volunteered to organize the collection of signatures for her candidate, but the Big Party Boss advised her not to bother, because “Joe Tototam will control everything. He has money, and he is going to hire experienced professional signature collectors. ” In his speech, Susie caught the hint that her amateur methods were too unprofessional for Big Politics. And she said nothing, but she did not forget about the signatures, tracking the publication of announcements about collecting signatures in the newspapers. But they all did not appear. When only a week remained before the signatures, she called the Party Boss and asked him how the signatures were:

• "I'm sorry, what? And the signatures? I told you Joe will take care of this. ”
• « ».
• « , ».

, - , , . , , , , . ? - , - , , . , , , . . , , . , , - , ó . .

, , , , . , , , , , , . . , . , . , .

, : , , . 4 . – , , , , , . 15 000 , !

20 , . . « », , , , , 50 .

, , , . , , , . , , , , . . , , 1944 – - .

, , , , – , , , , , , . , , - , . , . , – -, , , .

, , , , . , : , . ? Yes worth it! – , .

– , . , , , , . , , . 15 000 , . , - , , , , . .

, , – 15 000 – . – , 3 000 , , 9 000 . , , . , 4 000 , . , . , , , , , .

, , , . , , . - , . , , , . , : . , , – . . , , . , , .

, - , , . - . , , – . , , , . , ( ), . , , . , , . , .

, – , . , , . , - – , – . , . , – , – . , , «» «» . , . . , . , , , . , , , . , .

, , , ? , . , – : , - . ? , , – . , , . , . . , -, ! «» – , . «» – . , , , , . «» , , ( – . .), . , .

, - . – . , – , , – , – , — , . , «» , , – . . ( , , , , , ).

, , , , , . , , , .

, , , , , . – !

→ 1,