Obstacles of a Democratic Republic

Demo Obstacles

Democratic Obstacles to Liberty: Evidence from the Occupy Protests

Already a distant memory to most of the nation, if indeed they registered as more than the faintest blip on someone's field attention in the first place, the Occupy protests that swept through most major cities in the United States and several cities around the world were demonstrative both of the spirit of liberty that is still strong among some in this nation, and the problems that occur when this liberty meets the institutions established by a long-stagnant democracy. Some insist that the protests were not a failure, in that they reinvigorated national debate on a range of issues and actually made some concrete gains in areas such as the way banks treat their customers and the way cities treat their citizens. An honest look at the world about six months after the height of the protests tells a very different story, however, as the parks were forcibly cleared of protestors and the banks are back to business as usual.

There is a definite problem in the United States with achieving true liberty and a truly representative democracy, and this problem is not new. The Occupy protests highlighted debates regarding free speech and other first amendment rights (namely the rights to assemble and to petition the government), and did indeed create some policy debate in these areas at local, state, and federal levels, but truly these same debates have been taking place in one way or another since this nation's birth. Examining the Occupy protests and the problems they illustrated in our country through the lenses of some of society's most prominent commentators sheds a great deal of insight into the problems with liberty and democracy.

Voice and Democracy

One of the primary issues the Occupy protests highlighted, both in the direct cries of the protestors and in terms of how the protests were covered and presented in the public discourse, is the common citizen's lack of a true voice in the workings of American democracy. By any measure, and certainly in the perspective of the Occupy protesters, the federal government and the network of those that influence the federal government -- lobbyists, especially, and other special interest representatives and systems of influence -- has grown large and prohibitively encumbered (Zakaria, 2003). It is all but impossible for an individual or a small group of un-moneyed individuals to gain the attention of policy makers in a meaningful way, let alone to actually influence their decision-making; instead, this is left to special interest groups with large sums of money that ostensibly work on the "people's" behalf.

While it was posited that this type of special interest lobbying would lead to a "rational mean" as competing interests effectively cancelled each other out, this has not actually been the case, and instead as lobbyists have taken on greater levels of influence in the government there has been a move towards consolidation and piggy-backing in a cascade of ruinous tax breaks, subsidies, and other handouts (Zakaria, 2003). This has increased the degree to which moneyed interests can control the government and whose voice gets heard in society, and increased the money available to exert such control (Zakaria, 2003). The Occupy protests were a direct reaction to this trend, and led to direct demonstrations of these facts, as well.

The media coverage of the Occupy protests was almost non-existent for the first several weeks of the protests, despite their unique nature and their size and extent. If it were not for the advent of the Internet and the "blogosphere," enabling "citizen journalists" to report and disseminate information to the public nation- and world-wide, it is unlikely that anyone not in the immediate vicinity of the protests would have known they were even happening, let alone would they have known enough to have it affect their perspective on national issues. The manner in which the media worked to remove the Occupy protests and the issues raised by the protestors from the public discourse demonstrates the same problem that exists in accessing the government, however in this incarnation it is access to society that is being limited. While the Occupy protests might have been born out of frustrations at the lack of access to the government, they because just as much about lack of a voice in the nation as a whole.

The relationship between the media and democracy is of vital importance, even more so in the age of instant mass communication and competing media sources than ever before. Walter Lippmann, in his book Public Policy (1922), even discusses a very similar issue arising in Waorld War I and propoganda used by the Allies. It was not merely that false or misleading information was given out, but on a more profound level it is by the limiting of access to the actual information and events that propaganda is successful. If there can be no story other than the official story, there can be no discussion of other facts or implications, and no pondering on the deeper ramifications and tangential considerations of any issue.