Paradigm lost: We are losing the society we were supposed to be
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Many assume that chronology and history are the same.
Chronology is basically a listing of happenings in the order of occurrence. The order is sequential, not consequential. Once the events are dated and recorded, they are relegated to the definite past like last year's desk calendar.
Historians, however, look for patterns or relationships between events. If something happens because something else made it happen, then the relationship is consequential. Linking cause and effect is the historian's way of understanding how the past perpetuates itself in the present. Where the chronicler stops is where the historian begins.
As we enter the second decade of this century (Time magazine called 1999 to 2009 "The Decade from Hell"), three major alterations have been initiated that directly affect the judicial, legislative and executive branches of government and could have lethal consequences for democracy itself.
At the risk of repeating the already overdone, consider the election of 2000. Forget the usual counterarguments, i.e. Al Gore won the popular vote nationally, Enron flew in lawyers on corporate jets to obfuscate the outcome, office help came from Washington to create mayhem during the recount, etc. The crucial point to remember is that the law of one-man one-vote was suspended when the Supreme Court stopped the re-count before it was finished.
Because there was no final count, the court literally awarded George W. Bush the presidency on a 5-4 vote, a ratio that continues to this day. Whatever the justification, this created a precedent whereby for the first time in our history a presidential election was determined not by voters but by Supreme Court justices -- actually, by one Supreme Court justice.
Justice John Paul Stevens said ominously in his dissent: "Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner in this year's presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law."
First Published January 7, 2011 12:00 am
